1. technology and computing
2. electronic components

Sample-and-Hold Design
Eric Sorensen
March 16, 2012
Abstract
This report describes the design of a fully-differential precision
sample-and-hold amplifier, providing high accuracy, low droop, and fast
acquisition time.
Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Design Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 C-Pi Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
3
4
2 Functional Blocks of a Differential SHA
2.1 Topology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2 Input Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3 Switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.4 Output Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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5
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3 Design Details
3.1 Current Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2 Feedthrough Capacitance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3 Hold Capacitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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4 Results
4.1 Acquisition Time . . . . . . . .
4.2 Aperture Time . . . . . . . . .
4.3 Power Supply Rejection Ratio .
4.4 Output Impedance . . . . . . .
4.5 Power Consumption . . . . . .
4.6 Slew Rate . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.7 Feedthrough Attenuation Ratio
4.8 Sample/Hold Current ratio . .
4.9 Full Power Bandwidth . . . . .
4.10 Accuracy . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.11 Hold Mode Settling Time . . .
4.12 Droop Rate . . . . . . . . . . .
4.13 Step Hold . . . . . . . . . . . .
11
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5 Conclusion
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Amplifier
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19
Bibliography
20
1
A Final Schematic
21
B Device Plots
23
B.1 Gummel Plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
B.2 Early Voltage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2
Chapter 1
Introduction
This paper discusses the design of a fully-differential precision sample-andhold amplifier (SHA). SHA’s are a critical component in digitizing analog
signals. They are usually found at the input of analog-to-digital converters
(ADC). During the acquisition phase of the ADC, the SHA holds the output
voltage at a constant level. This allows accurate sampling of high-frequency
signals.
1.1
Design Requirements
Acquisition time: 100 ns (5 V step to 0.1%)
Aperture time: 5 ns
V
Slew rate: 0.2 ns
Feedthrough attenuation ratio: 80 dB
Droop Rate: 10.0 mV
ms
Signal transfer nonlinearity: 0.1%
Hold mode settling time: 50.0 ns
Power dissipation: 750mW
Sample/Hold Current Ratio: 103
Output Impedance: 20Ω
HOLD step: 0.1mV with C = 1.0 pF
Hold capacitor charging current: 5 mA
Supply voltage rejection ratio: 80 dB
Full Power Bandwidth: 100kHz
Input Impedance: 100kΩ
Power Supply: 5V
Signal range: 2.5V
3
1.2
C-Pi Library
The design is implemented using the provided C-Pi library. This library
includes 3 NPN transistors, 3 PNP transistors, and two resistors. Although
it is not currently in use, the library has historically been used for integrated
circuit designs and is characteristic of transistors in real-world usage. As
such, the use of the library imposes some design constraints.
The first step in the design process is to characterize the devices in the
C-Pi library. Gummel plots were generated for each of the NPN devices to
determine the ideal operating points. The PNP transistors are assumed to
function similarly to their NPN counterparts for biasing. The early voltage
of the transistors is calculated by plotting the saturation current against
both the base-emitter voltage and the collector-emitter voltage. The saturation current is extrapolated back to find the x-intercept. The early voltage
of the wn2, wn8, wn32 transistors was found to be 22.0, 21.1, and 16.0 respectively. All the plots which were used to characterize the devices can be
found in Appendix B.
The final schematic can be found in Appendix A.
4
Chapter 2
Functional Blocks of a
Differential SHA Amplifier
Figure 2.1: Functional Diagram of an SHA. Figure from [Vorenkamp]
The basic building blocks of an SHA are shown in Fig. 2.1. During the
tracking phase, the switches are closed and the buffered input is allowed to
charge the capacitors. In the hold phase, the switches are opened and the
output is maintained by the slow discharging of the capacitors.
2.1
Topology
Using a differential design is critical when designing an SHA using bipolar
technology because many of the errors inherent in SHA’s can be rejected as
common-mode signals. For instance, the droop across a single capacitor is a
significant design constraint when dealing with finite base currents in BJT
technology. However, in a differential design the two hold capacitors each
have a similar droop which cancels out as a common-mode signal.
After doing a thorough literature search, a differential SHA topology was
5
Figure 2.2: Differential SHA Topology
found as a reference design [Vorenkamp]. This topology can be seen in Fig.
2.2.
2.2
Input Buffer
Transistors Q1-Q4 and resistors R1-R4 form a unity-gain input buffer (provided R1 = R2 = R3 = R4). Using diodes in the load of the differential
pair adds a 1/gm series resistance to the load and improves the unity-gain
accuracy by about 10%.
The following transfer function was found for the input buffer using halfcircuit analysis:
Vo =
−gm(R1 +
1+
R2
Rπ
1
gm )
+ gmR2
Vin
(2.1)
Using typical values of Ic = 1mA, β = 100, and R1−4 = 500 this reduces
to:
Vo = 0.9906Vin
(2.2)
Slightly increasing the values of the top resistors (R1) brings it to a gain
of exactly one.
The input resistance is found using the same small-signal model:
Zin = (Rπ + R2 + gmR2 Rπ)
(2.3)
This shows that the most efficient way to increase the input resistance
is to increase the Resistor values.
6
2.3
Switch
The switch is made up of transistors Q5, Q6, and Q7. When the SAMP
signal is high in reference to the HOLD signal Q6 is turned off, and Q5 acts
like as emitter-follower. This low-impedance node can quickly charge the
hold capacitor.
During the HOLD phase, Q5 is turned off, and Q6 sources all of the
current for I2 (which must be drawn from the load of the buffer). This
shields the holding capacitor from the input signal.
The voltage levels for the SAMP and HOLD signals must be chosen
carefully so that VBC of Q5, Q6, and Q7 remain reversed biased throughout
the entire operating range of the amplifier.
2.4
Output Buffer
Q8, Q9, and Q10 form an emitter-follower unity-gain output buffer. The
current gain of this buffer must be high enough that a very small current is
drawn from the holding capacitor during the hold phase. In the final design,
transistor Q10 is replaced with a Darlington pair to further decrease the
loading on the capacitor.
7
Chapter 3
Design Details
3.1
Current Mirror
A supply-independent Widler source with helping transistors is used to provide a reference for the current mirrors in the circuit. Initially a simpler
current mirror was used, but the PSRR was limited to 70dB which did not
meet the specifications.
Figure 3.1: Current Mirror
Although the SHA seems to startup and run correctly without it, this
current source needs a startup circuit to ensure it reaches the correct operating point. This can be seen in Fig. 3.2. Although this startup circuit was
not included when most of the results were calculated (it was added after
the graphs were generated) it has a negligible effect on the circuit once it is
in operation. The startup circuit is used in the Power Consumption results
graph where it has a meaningful impact.
The sink currents were initially chosen to be reasonable values for the
8
Figure 3.2: Startup Circuit
devices used (according to the gummel plots). The switching current limits
the speed at which the capacitor can be charged, so it was set at 2.5mA. The
output buffer was initially set at 2.5mA, but the output impedance of the
circuit was too low so it was increased to 5mA. The input buffer operates
with collector currents of 2.5mA.
3.2
Feedthrough Capacitance
Figure 3.3: Feedthrough Capacitors
One of the interesting aspects of this design is the method in which the
capacitance across the base-emitter junction of Q5 is handled. Without
9
compensating for this, a large portion of the input signal will couple into
the output during the hold phase. This is called feedthrough. During the
hold phase, a very small amount of current is being drawn from the holding
capacitor (on the order of a few nA). Even a small amount of feedthrough
has a significant impact on the output.
In my first few SHA designs I tried to come up with a filter which could
selectively filter out the input signal at the hold capacitor node [Razavi].
This filter inevitably loaded down the node too much and caused problems
with droop. In this topology an equal-and-opposite signal is injected into the
node in order to counteract the feedthrough. This opposing signal is taken
from the opposite side of the input buffer. Fig. 3.3 shows the placement
of capacitors needed to achieve this. In order for the amplitude of the
correction signal to be correct, the CFF capacitor should be equal to CBE
of Q5. The paper [Vorenkamp] suggests using a series-parallel arrangement
of the transistor to accomplish this. Better results were achieved using ideal
capacitors. Figure 3.4 shows an example where the two signals sum to nearly
zero.
Figure 3.4: Feedthrough Example
3.3
Hold Capacitor
40pF was used as the holding capacitor size because it seemed to be a sweetspot between the droop and acquisition time.
10
Chapter 4
Results
4.1
Acquisition Time
Figure 4.1: Acquisition Time for a 5V step is 87.5nS
4.2
Aperture Time
11
Figure 4.2: Zoomed out view of a signal hold
Figure 4.3: Zoomed in showing an aperture time well within 5ns
12
4.3
Power Supply Rejection Ratio
To calculate the PSRR the positive and negative rails were each increased by
0.5V with a constant DC input of 2v and the change in output was observed.
P SRR = −1 ∗ 20 log(
4.4
2.00077 − 2.00069
) = 81.93dB
1V
Output Impedance
Figure 4.4: Differential output impedance is less than 20Ω
13
(4.1)
4.5
Power Consumption
Figure 4.5: Power consumption is less than 300mW
14
4.6
Slew Rate
Figure 4.6: SHA with a 33MHz 1V signal on the output (31MHz is the
maximum achievable with a 0.2V/ns slew rate)
Figure 4.7: Slew rate = 2V/9ns
15
4.7
Feedthrough Attenuation Ratio
attenuation ratio.png
Figure 4.8: Feedthrough for a 5V pk-pk sine wave. Feedthrough attenuation
= −20 log( 611µV
5V ) = 78.25dB.
4.8
Sample/Hold Current ratio
Figure 4.9: Sample/hold current ratio = 3522. The capacitor current is well
within 5mA.
16
4.9
Full Power Bandwidth
Figure 4.10: The full power bandwidth is more than 100KHz. This is a 2.5V
signal (maximum power) at 100KHz with no attenuation.
4.10
Accuracy
Figure 4.11: Accuracy is within 0.1%(0.04%)
17
4.11
Hold Mode Settling Time
The hold-mode settling time can be seen to be less than 50nA in Fig. 4.3.
4.12
Droop Rate
Figure 4.12: While occasionally the droop is slightly larger than 10mV/ms
at the beginning of the hold period, for the vast majority of the time the
droop is within spec.
4.13
Step Hold
Regretfully, step-hold is a spec I was not able to meet. My step-hold with a
1pF load is consistently 1mV (an order of magnitude too large). I choose
to spend my time optimizing the other specifications because I consider the
step-hold of lower importance than the others in a full ADC system. A large
step-hold value will simply introduce a DC offset into the sampled signal. If
I was very concerned, I could even add a dc-offset to the output so that the
system is accurate during holds and inaccurate during tracking.
18
Chapter 5
Conclusion
This project presented a comprehensive look at the material covered in
ECE422. I sometimes use ADC’s at work, and it was helpful to see how
such a critical component of an ADC operates. In particular, the benefits
of using a fully differential system are very clear to me.
In the future, I am interested in doing a similar design using CMOS
technology to see how the two circuits compare.
19
Bibliography
[Gray] Gray,Hurst,Lewis, and Meyer Analysis and Design of Analog
Integrated Circuits, Fifth Edition
[Jaeger] Jaeger and Blalock Microelectronic Circuit Design, Third Edition
[Smith] Sedra and Smith Microelectronic Circuits, Fifth Edition
[LTC] LTSpice Users Manual
[Kester] Walt Kester Data Conversion Handbook, Analog Devices, Section
7.4: Sample-And-Hold Circuits
[Moreland] Carl Moreland A 14-bit 100-Msample/s Subranging ADC, IEEE
Journal of Solid-State Circuits, VOL. 35, NO. 12, December 2000
[Vorenkamp] Pieter Vorenkamp and Johan P. M. Verdaasdonk Fully Bipolar, 120-Msample/s 10-b Track-and-Hold Circuit, IEEE Journal of
Solid-State Circuits, VOL. 27, NO. 7, July 1992
[Razavi] Behzad Razavi Design of a 100-MHz 10-mW 3-V Sample-and-Hold
Amplifier in Digital Bipolar Technology, IEEE Journal of Solid-State
Circuits, VOL. 30, NO. 7, July 1995
20
Appendix A
Final Schematic
Figure A.1: The primary circuit schematic.
21
Figure A.2: Schematic including parameters, supplies, and adjustment resistors.
22
Appendix B
Device Plots
Plots used to characterize the C-Pi library.
B.1
Gummel Plots
Figure B.1: Gummel plot for wn2 device showing a maximum gain with a
collector current of approx. 200µA
23
Figure B.2: Gummel plot for wn8 device showing a maximum gain with a
collector current of approx. 1mA
Figure B.3: Gummel plot for wn32 device showing a maximum gain with a
collector current of approx. 3mA
24
B.2
Early Voltage
Figure B.4: Plot used to determine the early voltage of the wn2 device.
Figure B.5: Plot used to determine the early voltage of the wn8 device.
25
Figure B.6: Plot used to determine the early voltage of the wn32 device.
26