Enhanced Single-Stage Folded Cascode OTA Suitable for Large Capacitive Loads

An enhanced single-stage folded cascode operational transconductance amplifier able to drive large capacitive loads is presented. Circuits that adaptively bias the input differential pair and the current folding stage are employed, which provide class AB operation with dynamic current boosting and increased gain-bandwidth (GBW) product. Measurement results of a test chip prototype fabricated in a 0.5-μm CMOS process show an increase in slew rate and GBW by a factor of 30 and 15, respectively, versus the class A version using the same supply voltage and bias currents. Overhead in other performance metrics is small.