An Improved Recycling Folded-Cascode Amplifier with Nested Current Mirror for Front-end Readout ASIC

A nested-current-mirror (NCM) recycling folded cascode (RFC) operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) for front-end readout ASIC is designed in this work. The nested current mirror technology is applied to the recycling folded cascode amplifier, which improves the small signal transconductance and output impedance, and significantly improves the DC gain, gain-bandwidth product (GBW) and slew rate (SR). The proposed amplifier has been implemented using HHGrace 0.11μm CMOS process. According to the simulation results, for the same 3pF load, the proposed amplifier improves 26MHz in GBW, 69V/us in slew rate, and 22dB in DC gain compared to the conventional RFC amplifier.