Abstract
An embedded current amplifier compensation (ECAC) for three-stage amplifiers with large capacitive loads is presented in this paper. Two current amplifiers are embedded into the first stage. The compensation capacitor is connected to the input of the current amplifier rather than the output of the first stage, which enables the non-dominant complex poles of the ECAC amplifier to be located at high frequencies for bandwidth extension; in addition, the compensation capacitor required is greatly reduced. The amplifier has been fabricated in a 0.13 µm CMOS process. When driving a 2000 pF capacitive load, the ECAC amplifier achieves 1.85 MHz gain-bandwidth product by dissipating 33.6 µW power at 1.2 V supply and using total compensation capacitance of only 0.8 pF.
