DESIGN OF OPERATIONAL TRANSCONDUCTANCE

AMPLIFIER (OTA) FOR LARGE CAPACITIVE LOAD

Hajeera Bee1, Sneha Tiwari2,*

1,2,3
School of Electronics Engineering, VIT University, Chennai, India

An operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) is a voltage controlled current source

which is used widely in analog building block. An implementation of OTA design to drive a
large capacitive load is presented. Driving large capacitive load is very important in various
application. The proposed method uses folded cascode topology along with multi-stage which
enables the amplifier to have a high output voltage swing. Multi stage amplifier is used to
achieve high gain but causes stability issues. Miller compensation technique is used to
stabilize the circuit and achieve gain without stability issues. The design procedure of OTA is
based on the main parameters like Noise, Phase Margin, Gain-bandwidth product, Load
capacitance, Slew rate, Input common mode range and input offset voltage. Various
approaches to improve slew rate and current to drive capacitance load is presented. This
overall design is implemented in an 180nm technology using 1.8-V power supply.

Keywords: OTA, capacitive load, slew rate, Miller compensation, folded cascode, slew rate
enhancer, push pull stage, Multi stage amplifier.