DIFFERENT TYPES OF CURRENT MIRRORS
Vedant Patel Jugal Upadhyay
Electronics and Communication engineering
Institute of technology, Nirma University,
Sarkhej – Gandhinagar Highway
Ahmedabad - 382482, India
20bec134@nirmauni.ac.in
Abstract -This paper presents an in-depth
analysis of current mirror circuits, which are
essential building blocks in various analog and
mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs). Current
mirrors play a critical role in accurately replicating
and controlling electrical currents, making them
crucial in applications such as amplifiers, biasing
circuits, and current-mode circuits.
The primary objective of this study is to provide a
comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art
mirror designs, including their operating principles,
performance metrics, and key challenges. The paper
investigates both basic and advanced current mirror
topologies, discussing their advantages, limitations,
and trade-offs.
Keywords – Current Mirror, Minimum output voltage, MOSFET,
Output impedance, Sink current
I. INTRODUCTION
An often-used circuit applying the bipolar
junction transistor is the so-called current mirror,
which serves as a simple current regulator,
supplying nearly constant current to the load over a
wide range of load resistances. In other words, we
can define it through two terminal circuits whose
output current is independent of the output terminal
voltage and depends only on the input current.
Generally, it is used to generate a replica of a given
reference current. If necessary, it can also amplify or
attenuate the reference current. A current mirror can
be thought of as a current controlled current source.
Ideally, the output impedance of a current source
should be infinite and capable of generating or
drawing a constant current over a wide range of
voltages. However, a finite value of output
Electronics and Communication engineering
Institute of technology, Nirma University,
Sarkhej – Gandhinagar Highway
Ahmedabad - 382482, India
20bec048@nirmauni.ac.in
resistance and a limited output voltage is required to
keep the device in saturation will ultimately limit
the performance of the current mirror. Current
mirror has been used for biasing, loading, current
amplification etc. Current mirrors are employed in
many applications such as operational amplifiers,
analog to digital and digital to analog converters.
II. Literature review
Current mirrors are essential building blocks in
analog circuit design, enabling accurate replication
of currents for various applications. Over the years,
researchers have developed different types of
current mirrors to enhance performance, stability,
and linearity. This literature review aims to provide
an overview of the various types of current mirrors
proposed in the literature, highlighting their unique
features and applications.
1. Basic Current Mirror:
The basic current mirror is the fundamental
configuration comprising two or more transistors
connected in a specific manner. It provides a simple
and straightforward method of current replication
but may suffer from limitations such as output
impedance variation and reduced linearity.
2. Wilson Current Mirror:
The Wilson current mirror is an improvement over
the basic current mirror, addressing the limitations
of output impedance variation. It uses an additional
transistor to form a feedback loop that compensates
for changes in the output impedance. The Wilson
current mirror offers enhanced linearity and
stability.

3. Cascode Current Mirror:

The cascode current mirror utilizes a cascode
configuration, combining a common-source NMOS
transistor and a common-gate PMOS transistor.
This arrangement provides improved output
impedance, enhanced linearity, and reduced
sensitivity to process variations. Cascode current
mirrors find applications in high-frequency circuits
and systems requiring accurate current replication.

4. Widlar Current Mirror:

The Widlar current mirror, introduced by Bob
Widlar, is designed to provide a stable and accurate
current source. It employs a combination of bipolar
transistors and resistors, offering a low output
The current mirror uses the principle that if the
impedance and precise current replication. The
Widlar current mirror is commonly used in gate–source potentials of two identical MOS
precision voltage references and current sources. transistors are equal, the channel currents should be
. equal. Figure 1 shows the implementation of a
III. BASIC CURRENT MIRROR simple n-channel current mirror. The current iI is
assumed to be defined by a current source or some
A basic current mirror circuit is a fundamental
building block in analog circuit design, widely used other means and iO is the output or “mirrored”
to generate a replica of a reference current. It current. M1 is in saturation because vDS1=vGS1.
consists of two or more transistors connected in a Assuming that vDS2 >= vGS2 - VT2 allows us to
specific configuration. The main objective of a use the equations in the saturation region of the
current mirror is to achieve high accuracy and MOS transistor. In the most general case, the ratio
stability in current replication. The input transistor,
of iO to iI is
often referred to as the reference transistor, sets the
desired current, while the output transistor attempts
to replicate this current. The output current is
typically a scaled version of the input current.
Common current mirror configurations include the
simple current mirror, the Wilson current mirror, Normally, the components of a current mirror are
and the cascode current mirror. These circuits find processed on the same integrated circuit and thus all
applications in a variety of analog circuit designs, of the physical parameters such as VT and K are
such as operational amplifiers, voltage regulators, identical for both devices. As a result, Eq simplifies
and data converters. They play a crucial role in to
maintaining current stability and precision, ensuring
reliable performance in various electronic systems.
If vDS2 = vDS1 (not always a good assumption),
then the ratio of iO/iI becomes

Assuming if we use identical

mosfets(W1/L1=W2/L2) then iO/iI becomes unity.
We can further prove this by doing simulation in LT
spice software.

As we can see Ir1=Ir2.

Spice Netlist
* C:\Users\Jugal\Desktop\SEM-6\ACIC\SPASS.asc
R1 N001 IREF 380K
R2 N002 IR1 500
M1 IREF IREF N005 N004 NMOS
M2 IR1 IREF N005 N003 NMOS
V1 N001 0 12
V2 N002 0 12
V3 0 N005 2.5
.model NMOS NMOS
.model PMOS PMOS
.lib
C:\Users\Jugal\AppData\Local\LTspice\lib\cmp\stan
dard.mos
.tran 100m
.backanno
.end
Changing the value of W/L IV. CASCODE CURRENT MIRROR
The small signal output resistance is a good
measure of the perfection of the current mirror.
Higher performance current mirrors will attempt to
increase the value of rout. The approach used to
increase the output resistance is to use cascode
structure. Standard cascode CM shown in Fig. 3 is a
good choice for increasing output resistance.
The minimum input voltage vin for this structure is
given as

This value is double of the input compliance voltage

for a conventional CM
Output compliance voltage is given as

As we can see(L1W2/W1L2)= 2
Therefore iO/iI = 2
This is greater than the minimum voltage required
for a conventional cascode, by an amount of vt,
threshold voltage of a transistor. The output
resistance is given as

This can be approximated as

Which is greater than the output resistance of

simple CM, by gain of a transistor

 The output characteristic for this structure is
Output waveform- shown in Fig below. As shown in figure, the output
compliance voltage is near about 1.5V which is
lower than the value for standard cascode CM. So
this is a better topology than standard cascode CM.

The problem with this structure is that the Vds of

V. High Swing Cascode Current Mirror
M1 and M2 are not equal. So the current iout will
not be an accurate replica of iref due to channel
The disadvantage of standard cascode current
length modulation. If exact mirroring of iout is
mirror is its higher input and output compliance
desired with iref, then a slight modification of Fig
voltage. This high swing cascode topology shown in
will minimize this problem. The required structure
Fig is better alternate as it provides the same output
is shown in Fig below. An additional transistor M5
resistance as of standard cascode but it provides low
is added in series with M1 so as to make the drain
input and output compliance voltage in comparison
voltages of M1 and M2 to be equal, thus removing
to standard cascode structure.
any error due to channel length modulation

VI. Wilson Current Mirror
This is another type of current mirror. This circuit is
an nchannel implementation of the well known
Wilson current mirror.
Wilson current mirror
As shown in Fig, the output resistance of the Wilson
current mirror is increased through the use of
negative current feedback. This structure has a large
input and output compliance voltage. The output
resistance for this structure is given as
The output resistance is seen to be comparable with
that of standard cascode current mirrors.
The input compliance voltage is given as
The output compliance voltage is given as
The output characteristic for this structure is shown
in Fig below
The output characteristic for this structure is
shown in Fig below. As shown in figure, the output
compliance voltage is near about 1.5V which is
lower than the value for standard cascode CM. So
this is a better topology than standard cascode CM.

As shown in this Fig, the output compliance voltage
is approximately 1.63V. Also in the saturation
region its output current is not varying with output
voltage just because of its higher output resistance.
The advantage of Wilson CM is its higher output
resistance. Its main drawback is the asymmetrical
biasing, which causes large DC matching errors.
This can be removed by adding one transistor in
series with transistor M1.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this article, various possible CM structures are
presented along with their merits and demerits. Any
one of them can be selected as per requirement. The
most important performance parameters for a CM
are its compliance voltages and output resistance.
The most frequently used CMs have been
considered for comparison of the performance
parameters. They are simple CM, standard cascode
CM, high swing CM, Wilson CM, Regulated
cascode CM.
XIV. REFERENCES
[1] M. Ismail and T. Fiez, “Analog VLSI Signal and
Information Processing,” New York: McGraw-Hill
1994.
[2] B. Razavi, “Design of Analog CMOS Integrated
Circuits,” New York: Tata McGraw-Hill 2002.
[3] P. E. Allen and D. R. Holberg, “CMOS analog
circuit design,” New York: Oxford University Press,
2002.
[4] S. S. Rajput and S. S. Jamuar, “A high
performance current mirror for low voltage
designs,” Proc. APCCAS-2000/IEEE, Tianjin pp.
170-173, China, Dec 2000.
[5] I. M. Filanovsky, “Current Mirrors with Limiting
of Linear Dynamic Range,” University of Alberta,
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 2El.
[6] D.A. Johns and K. Martin, “Analog Integrated
Circuit Design, ” John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New
York, 1997.
[7] G. R. Wilson, “A Monolithic Junction FET-npn
Operational Amplifier,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits,
Vol. SC-3, N0. 5, pp. 341-348, Dec. 1968.
[8] Z. Wang, “Analytical determination of output
resistance and DC matching errors in MOS current
mirrors,” IEE PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 137, Pt. G, No.
5, OCTOBER 1990.
[9] E. SACKINGER and W. GUGGENBUHL, “A
versatile building block: the CMOS differential
difference amplifier,” IEEE J., 1987, SC-22, (2), pp.
287-294.