The stochastic I-Pot: A circuit block for programming bias currents
In this brief, we present the “Stochastic I-Pot.” It is a circuit element that allows for digitally programming a precise bias current ranging over many decades, from pico-amperes up to hundreds of micro-amperes. I-Pot blocks can be chained within a chip to allow for any arbitrary number of programm...
| Autores: | , , , , |
|---|---|
| Formato: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión aceptada para publicación |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2007 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | Universidad de Sevilla (US) |
| Repositorio: | idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:idus.us.es:11441/77503 |
| Acesso em linha: | https://hdl.handle.net/11441/77503 https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSII.2007.900881 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | Analog circuits Current-mode circuits Current biases Low-power circuits |
| Resumo: | In this brief, we present the “Stochastic I-Pot.” It is a circuit element that allows for digitally programming a precise bias current ranging over many decades, from pico-amperes up to hundreds of micro-amperes. I-Pot blocks can be chained within a chip to allow for any arbitrary number of programmable bias currents. The approach only requires to provide the chip with three external pins, the use of an external current measuring instrument, and a computer. This way, once all internal I-Pots have been characterized, they can be programmed through a computer to provide any desired current bias value with very low error. The circuit block turns out to be very practical for experimenting with new circuits (specially when a large number of biases are required), testing wide ranges of biases, introducing means for current mismatch calibration, offsets compensations, etc. using a reduced number of chip pins. We show experimental results of generating bias currents with errors of 0.38% (8 bits) for currents varying from 176 A to 19.6 pA. Temperature effects are characterized. |
|---|