Design of a comparator-based switched-capacitor circuits

Abstract

As CMOS technology scales down to nanometer-scale regime, the design of switched-capacitor (SC) circuits in a mixed-signal IC system is getting challenging mainly because of the difficulty in designing high gain operational amplifier. Recently, a new technique to implementing switched-capacitor circuits called Comparator-Based Switched-Capacitor (CBSC) has been proposed by the researchers in MIT. In the CBSC circuits, operational amplifiers are replaced by comparators and current sources, saving power consumption. The objective of this project is to investigate the design of CBSC circuits for potential applications such as SC filters, delta-sigma modulators and etc. The student will first study the working principles of CBSC circuits. He/She will then design and simulate some of the circuit building blocks for CBSC circuits. Finally the student will demonstrate the designed circuit blocks to form some SC circuits. This project involves CMOS integrated circuit design and simulation. Student opting for this project should have a keen interest and good knowledge in CMOS analog/mixed-signal integrated circuit design.