Miscellaneous active electrical nonlinear devices – circuits – and – Specific signal discriminating without subsequent control – By amplitude
Patent
1998-01-23
1999-08-10
Tran, Toan
Miscellaneous active electrical nonlinear devices, circuits, and
Specific signal discriminating without subsequent control
By amplitude
327 74, 327 77, H03K 5153
Patent
active
059364335
ABSTRACT:
A comparator including one or more transconducting inverters, each inverter biased to operate in a subthreshold state so as to have a desired high transconductance. In preferred embodiments, the transconducting inverter is biased in subthreshold by a bias voltage whose value is independent of process and environmental variations (so that the subthreshold current density in the inverter remains fixed despite supply voltage variations and other process and environmental variations). The bias voltage is generated by servoing an unregulated supply voltage so that the bias voltage has lower magnitude (relative to ground potential) than the supply voltage. The reduced-magnitude, regulated bias voltage precisely regulates at least one transistor in each inverter by forcing a constant current density therein, thereby causing the cell to operate in subthreshold. Due to the process-independent nature of the closed loop servo system inherent in the bias voltage generation circuitry, the bias voltage can be reliably generated with a precise, desired value which forces subthreshold operation of each inverter, and this precise bias voltage can be reliably distributed to multiple inverter. Also within the scope of the invention are analog-to-digital conversion circuits, each including a slave cell implemented as a CMOS inverter and biased in accordance with the invention, and switching circuitry implemented with CMOS technology (or with NMOS transistors but without PMOS transistors).
REFERENCES:
patent: 4612461 (1986-09-01), Sood
patent: 4894620 (1990-01-01), Nagaraj
patent: 5467306 (1995-11-01), Kaya et al.
patent: 5528184 (1996-06-01), Gola et al.
patent: 5689206 (1997-11-01), Schaller
patent: 5774014 (1998-06-01), Stecker et al.
patent: 5801576 (1998-09-01), Ooishi
National Semiconductor Corporation
Tran Toan
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