A 5.3µA quiescent current fully-integrated low-dropout (LDO) regulator with Transient Recovery Time Enhancement

A new technique to decrease the transient recovery time in a very low-quiescent current low-dropout (LDO) voltage regulator is introduced. The new Transient Recovery Time Enhancement (TRTE) block comprises a voltage-to-current converter, current comparator and an NMOS output transistor. The proposed LDO using the TRTE block was fabricated in a 0.5-μm 2P3M CMOS process. The circuit operates at a total quiescent current of 5.3 μA with a maximum load current of 50 mA while supplying a regulated output voltage of 1.5 V to a 100 pF load. Experimental results indicate a drop-out voltage of 123 mV with an average recovery time of 5.22 μs under maximum load current changes.