Zhong

Low Noise Operational Amplifiers

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

University of Maine, Orono, ME, 04469, USA

ECE 547, VLSI Design/Layout

Spring 2007

Design By
Guixiong Zhong

Computer chip

Low noise operational amplifiers have applications in Nanopore-based gene sequencers. In this project the design, layout, simulation and comparison results of two different low noise Operational Amplifier (Op-Amp) structures were accomplished by Cadence. Emphasis has been placed on the comparison of the Op-Amp performance. These two Op-Amps including a new structure and a Folded-Cascode structure were designed and laid out for 0.5 process. While the literature emphasizes the reduction of flicker noise, these two structures minimized the flicker noise and thermal noise simultaneously. Simulation results show that these two Op-Amps have comparable performance.

The project report (PDF) contains a description of the project, details of the design and layout, and simulation results.

Spring 2007, University of Maine