A low-power, high-bandwidth LDO voltage regulator with no external capacitor

A low-dropout (LDO) voltage regulator for low-power applications is designed without an external capacitor for compensation. The regulator has two stages, the first a folded cascode amplifier and the second a large pass transistor acting as a common-source amplifier. To better explore the tradeoff between bandwidth and power supply rejection, transistor dimensions are modified to support three different bias current levels for the same topology. Tradeoffs involving phase margin and load capacitance are also explored. In simulation, the regulator provided an output of 1.3 V from an unregulated 1.8 V supply, using a 0.75 V reference. By exploiting the tradeoffs between PSRR, bandwidth, and power consumption, a PSRR between 40-60 dB is achieved with a bandwidth between 10 kHz-350 kHz while burning no more than 150 pA of current. The output voltage is stable for load currents between 18-174 mA.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Ha, Miranda J. (Miranda Joy)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Matt Rowley and Joel L. Dawson.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/45647

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/45647