Innovation in Current Source Designs

Jennifer Parmiter, James Kelly, Harvish Mehta

EE 311 Honors Option
Spring 2016

What we already know

Current sources:

Provide a constant current bias

Replace resistors

Eliminate capacitors

Lecture 18- Professor Wharton

Design Challenges

Low voltage input

Large voltage swing

High output
resistance

Stability/Accuracy

High-Swing Cascade Current Cell (HCCC)

We have referred to this as wide-swing current source

Body-Driven Auxiliary Amplifier

Proposed solution

W/L

RO

VDS
Capacitance

Poles

Compared Output Impedance

HSC = high swing cascade

BE-HSC = Body enhanced

high swing cascade

RBD = Regulated bodydriven current mirror

High Super Swing Wilson Current Source

This a combination of wide

swing current source and a
Wilson Current source.

General Output Resistances

Proposed Circuit Design

What Changed

M1 connected to gate of M2
Replace biased currents with
current sources using PMOS
Input Current connected
between M1 and M2

Rout = (gm6|| gm1)* gm2*R05 * R01 *R01

The factor of the Rout is increase by is about (gm|| gm)* R0

Results from the Improved Circuit

Old error
Error = 1/(1+2/B)
Larger B values, lower error
Smaller output current,
percentage error becomes more
of a problem

Improved model Stages 1, 2, and 3

Based on Howland current source, this model is used because it provides a

stable output
User sends commands to a microcontroller which is connected to a 16 bit
D/A converter connected to Vin

Stages 4, 5, and 6

Measurements are taken across sampling resistor, common signals between

two ends are not amplified
Low pass filter suppresses noise and interferance
A/D Converter sends the value of the current back to the microcontroller

Overall Operation

Results

References
[1] S. M. Hokmabadi, S. A. Zabihian and R. Lotfi, "Body-Driven Enhanced-Impedance Current
Source: An Approach to the Implementation of Low-Voltage Current-Steering D/A Converters,"
Electronics, Circuits and Systems, 2007. ICECS 2007. 14th IEEE International Conference on,
Marrakech, 2007, pp. 1147-1150.
[2] E. Raguvaran, N. Deepak Prasath, J. Alexander, N. Prithiviraj and M. Santhanalakshmi, "A
very-high impedance current mirror for bio-medical applications," Recent Advances in Intelligent
Computational Systems (RAICS), 2011 IEEE, Trivandrum, 2011, pp. 828-830.
[3] C. Gianni, G. Scotti, A. Trifiletti and S. Pennisi, "CMOS body-enhanced cascode current
mirror," Circuits and Systems, 2009. ISCAS 2009. IEEE International Symposium on, Taipei,
2009, pp. 1593-1596.
[4] Y. Peng, Y. Xia and S. Wang, "Design of a high precision current source," Electronic
Measurement & Instruments, 2009. ICEMI '09. 9th International Conference on, Beijing, 2009,
pp. 1-1065-1-1069. doi: 10.1109/ICEMI.2009.5273991