2021 3rd International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communication Control and Networking (ICACCCN)

Four OTA-Based Mixed-Mode Filter Configuration

2021 3rd International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communication Control and Networking (ICAC3N) | 978-1-6654-3811-7/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICAC3N53548.2021.9725521

And Quadrature Voltage Mode Sinusoidal Oscillator

Ajishek Raj Pragati Kumar D. R. Bhaskar

Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering
Delhi Technological University Delhi Technological University Delhi Technological University
Delhi, India Delhi, India Delhi, India
ajishekaerotek@gmail.com pragatikumar@dtu.ac.in drbhaskar@dtu.ac.in
0000-0002-6508-9734 0000-0002-5889-6781 0000-0001-6322-3998

Abstract—Operational transconductance amplifiers (OTAs)

based mixed-mode biquad filter configuration employing four II. PROPOSED OTA BASED MIXED-MODE FILTER
OTAs has been presented in this paper. The circuit utilizes CONFIGURATION
canonic number of grounded capacitors (02), which is Symbolically an OTA is represented as shown in Fig. 1.
eminently suitable for IC fabrication. The proposed biquad
structure has orthogonal tunability of pole frequency (ω), pole V1
quality factor (Q) and bandwidth (BW). A sinusoidal oscillator
with quadrature outputs is also realizable from the voltage
+
IO
mode filter topology with electronic adjustment of condition of gm
oscillation (CO) and frequency of oscillation (FO). Various V2 _
simulation results using CMOS OTA with 0:18µm CMOS
technology parameters have been included to confirm the
validity of the presented circuits. Fig. 1 OTA notation
Keywords—Operational Transconductance Amplifier, analog In an OTA, the voltages are applied at input terminals and at
Signal Processing, Mixed-Mode Filter, Voltage Mode Oscillator, output terminal, current is obtained. The input and output
Quadrature Sinusoidal Oscillator impedance of an OTA is ideally infinite. The output current
in terms of applied input voltages are given by:
I. INTRODUCTION
Io = gm (V1 – V2) (1)
Integrated circuit mixed-mode active filters have various
applications in telecommunications, instrumentation systems, here gm is an electronically controllable parameter known as
control systems, and measurement systems [1]. In such transconductance gain of the OTA.
filters, different outputs can be obtained merely by changing In Fig. 2, the OTA-based mixed-mode biquad filter
input voltage and current signals. Recently, different active configuration has been depicted.
building blocks (ABB) have been used for designing such
filters [2]-[38]. On the other hand, quadrature sinusoidal
oscillators (QSOs) are also important blocks which provide
two sinusoid voltages/currents with a phase difference of
90°. There are numerous applications where QSOs are
required viz. quadrature mixers, single sideband modulators,
or for measurement purposes in vector generators or
selective voltmeters. Because of these reasons, various QSOs
have been realized with different ABBs [39]-[50]. From an
extensive literature survey of various mixed-mode filter
configurations reported so far, it has been found that no
mixed-mode biquad filter circuits exists in open literature
which also has a QSO feature available in the same topology.
The present communication, thus, is an attempt to fill this
void by proposing a new mixed-mode filter circuit in which a Fig. 2 Proposed mixed-mode filter configuration
second order QSO can also be realized. Four OTAs (three
single output OTA and one dual output OTA) along with two A circuit analysis of Fig. 2 (assuming ideal OTAs) yields
grounded capacitors have been employed to devise such a the expressions of output voltage and current, from which
filter configuration. The proposed filter structure has different modes of operation can be derived by an
orthogonal adjustment of ω, Q and BW. The feasibility of the appropriate choice(s) of input voltages and currents.
presented mixed-mode filter and QSO has been tested by
PSPICE tool using CMOS OTA with 0.18µm TSMC
technology parameters.

ISBN: 978-1-6654-3811-7/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE

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 2021 3rd International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communication Control and Networking (ICACCCN)

A. Realization of voltage mode and transconductance mode gm2 or gm4 for a constant value of ω. For a constant BW, ω
(TCM) filters can also be varied by varying transconductance gm3.
Case I: In Fig. 2, if the input currents I1 = I2 = I3 are zero, III. CONVERSION OF VM FILTER INTO QUADRATURE
then the expressions for the output voltage and the output SINUSOIDAL OSCILLATOR
current can be given by:
The second-order QSO circuit derived from VM BPF
2 g   g g g  configuration shown in Fig. 2 is displayed here in Fig. 3.
s  m2  V1 (s) + s  m3 V2 (s) + m1 m2 V3 (s) 
g
 m4  
 2C C g
1 4 
g g  (2)
+  m1 m3  V3 (s)
V0 (s) =  C1C2 
D(s)
g   g m3 
s2  m2  V1 (s) + s   V2 (s)
I0 (s) = 
g m4   C2  (3)
D(s)

From equation (2), it is clear that four filter functions with

appropriate choices of input voltage signals can be realized.
Similarly, from equation (3), two filter responses namely
HPF and BPF can be obtained in TCM through the proper
selection(s) of input voltages.
Fig. 3: Quadrature sinusoidal oscillator obtained from Fig. 2.
B. Realization of current mode and transimpedance mode
responses The characteristic equation (CE) of QSO with CO and
FO are given below as:
Case II: when the input voltages V1 = V2 = V3 are set to
zero in Fig. 2, then the filter functions in current mode (CM) s 2C1C2g m4 + s ( C2g m1g m2 − C1g m3g m4 ) + g m1g m3g m4 = 0 (8)
and transimpedance mode (TIM) can be obtained (with
CO :C 2g m1g m2 − C1g m3g m4  0 (9)
appropriate choice(s) of input currents) and their expressions
are given by: FO : 0 =
g m1g m3
(10)
C1C2
g   g m1g m2 g g 
s 2  m1  I1 (s) − s  I 2 (s) − m1 m3 I3 (s) 
 g m4  C g
 2 m4 C g
1 m4  From equation (9), it is noted that, CO of QSO can be
g g  (4) controlled independently through gm2 and gm4 (for gm1 = gm3).
+  m1 m3  I3 (s)
I0 (s) =  C1C2  In Table I, the sensitivity analysis has been carried out for
D(s) filter parameters with respect to the transconductors and
 1   1 g  capacitors.
s 2   I1 (s) − s  I 2 (s) − m2 I3 (s) 
 g m4   C2 C1g m4  TABLE I
 g 
SENSITIVITIES OF FILTER PARAMETERS WITH RESPECT TO
+  m3
(5)
 I3 (s) TRANSCONDUCTORS AND CAPACITORS.
 C1C2 
V0 (s) = X gm1 gm2 gm3 gm4 C1 C2
D(s)

where SX 0.5 0 0.5 0 -0.5 -0.5
SQ
X -0.5 -1 -0.5 1 0.5 -0.5
2 g g   g m1g m3 
D(s) = s + s  m1 m2  +  C C  (6) SBW 1 1 0 -1 -1 0
 C1g m4
X
  1 2 
It may be noted from equation (2) that four different filter From Table I, it may be noted that the filter parameters are
functions i.e., LP, HP, BP and BR can be obtained in VM less sensitive with respect to transconductors and capacitors
while through equation (3), only HP and BP can be realized i.e., below unity
in TAM. In CM and TIM, all five generic second-order filter
IV. PSPICE SIMULATION RESULTS
functions are obtainable from equations (4) and (5) by proper
selection(s) of the input current signals. The mixed-mode filter and quadrature sinusoidal oscillator
structure shown in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 have been validated
From equation (6), the different filter parameters viz. ω, BW through PSPICE simulations. An exemplary OTA
and Q of the filter configuration shown in Fig. 2 are implemented in CMOS using 0.18µm TSMC technology
calculated as: parameters has been used to simulate the proposed circuits.
g m1g m3 g m1g m2 g C1g m3 The CMOS OTA [51] is depicted in Fig. 4. The width (W)
0 = , BW = Q0 = 4m (7)
C1C2 C1g m4 g m2 C2g m1 and length (L) ratios of MOSFETs employed in Fig. 4 are
taken from [38]. For the biasing of OTAs, the power supply
From equation (7), it may be observed that the filter
voltages of value ±0.9V D.C. were used.
parameters have orthogonal electronic tunable feature, i.e., Q
may be electronically controlled by varying either gm2 or gm4
for constant ω. Similarly, ω and BW can also be controlled
electronically i.e., BW can be changed by transconductance

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 2021 3rd International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communication Control and Networking (ICACCCN)

Fig. 4: CMOS OTA implementation.

The presented mixed-mode filter and QSO have been Fig. 7: Magnitude responses of proposed TRM filter
designed for a nominal frequency of 32 MHz by selecting the configuration
equal valued transconductances (gm1 = gm2 = gm3 = gm4) =
2mS and equal capacitors of C1 = C2 = 10 pF. The value of
VBias was selected as -0.36V.
Fig. 5 - Fig. 8 demonstrate the gain responses of the
proposed VM, CM, TIM and TAM respectively. The gain
and phase responses of APF in CM are displayed in Fig. 9.
The frequency obtained from simulations is 31.85 MHz
which is very near to the designed value. The electronic
adjustment of Q and ! have been displayed in Fig. 10. Fig. 11
shows the time responses of quadrature output voltages of
QSO whereas, steady state voltage responses of QSO have
been depicted in Fig. 12. The Lissajous pattern (XY plot) of
the QSO has been illustrated in Fig. 13 while in Fig. 14, FFT
spectrum of the quadrature output voltages has been shown. Fig. 8: Magnitude responses of proposed TCM filter
configuration

Fig. 5: Magnitude responses of proposed VM filter

configuration

Fig. 9: Magnitude response of proposed APF in CM filter

configuration.

Fig. 6: Magnitude responses of proposed CM filter

configuration

Fig. 10: Tunability of Q and gain with ω

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 2021 3rd International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communication Control and Networking (ICACCCN)

Fig. 11: Sustaining oscillations for transient voltage response
of QSO.
Fig. 12: Steady state quadrature output voltage responses of
Fig. 3.
Fig. 13: XY plot between quadrature output voltages.
Fig. 14: FFT spectrum of proposed QSO.
The frequency of oscillation was found to be 31.85 MHz
for a design frequency of 32 MHz. The power dissipation for
VM, CM, TIM, TAM and QSO are found to be 21mW,
23.2mW, 21mW, 9.23mW, and 4.32mW respectively.
V. CONCLUDING REMARKS
This paper presents a new mixed-mode analog filter
topology employing four OTAs (three single output OTAs
and one dual output OTA) and two grounded capacitors.
The proposed circuit is capable of providing LP, HP, BP,
and BR filter functions in VM while in CM and TIM, the
proposed configuration can yield all five generic filter
functions. In TAM, only two filter responses namely HP and
BP can be obtained. The filter parameters ω, BW and Q
offer orthogonal electronic tunability. Furthermore, the
proposed circuit in VM can be transformed into a second
order QSO. The CO and FO of QSO have electronic control.
The sensitivity analysis for both the presented circuits has
been carried out with respect to transconductors and
capacitors. The various sensitivity coefficients have been
found to be low. PSPICE tool has been used to validate the
theoretical propositions of the proposed mixed-mode filter
structure and QSO circuit using a CMOS OTA architecture
given in [50].
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