A Study of the Signal-to-Noise Ratio of a High-Speed Current-Mode CMOS Sample-and-Hold Circuit

Yasuhiro SUGIMOTO  Masahiro SEKIYA  Tetsuya IIDA 

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences  Vol.E80-A  No.10  pp.1986-1993
Publication Date: 1997/10/20
Online ISSN: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on VLSI Design and CAD Algorithms)
Category: 
Keyword: 
signal-to-noise ratio,  noise analysis,  sample-and-hold circuit,  current-mode circuit,  MOS analog circuit, 

Full Text: PDF

Summary: 
Our study investigated the realization of a high-precision MOS current-mode circuit. Simple studies have implied that it is difficult to achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) in a current-mode circuit. Since the signal voltage at the internal node is suppressed, the circuit is sensitive to various noise sources. To investigate this, we designed and fabricated a current-mode sample-and-hold circuit with a 3V power supply and a 20MHz clock speed, using a standard CMOS 0.6µm device process. The measured S/N reached 57dB and 59dB in sample mode, and 51dB and 54dB in sample-and-hold mode, with 115µA from a 3V power supply and 220µA from a 5V power supply of input currents and a 10MHz noise bandwidth. The S/N analysis based on an actual circuit was done taking device noise sources and the fold-over phenomena of noise in a sampled system into account. The calculation showed 66.9dB of S/N in sample mode and 59.5dB in sample-and-hold-mode with 115µA of input current. Both the analysis and measurement indicated that 60dB of S/N in sample mode with a 10MHz noise bandwidth is an achievable value for this sample-and-hold circuit. It was clear that the current-mode approach limits the S/N performance because of the voltage suppression method. This point should be further studied and discussed.