Low Noise Operational Amplifiers

A project for ECE 547 "VLSI Design" - Spring Semester 2007
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Maine

Designed by: Guixiong Zhong

Low noise operational amplifiers have applications in Nanopore-based gene sequencers. In this project the design, layout, simulation and comparison results of two different low noise Operational Amplifier (Op-Amp) structures were accomplished by Cadence. Emphasis has been placed on the comparison of the Op-Amp performance. These two Op-Amps including a new structure and a Folded-Cascode structure were designed and laid out in a 0.5 micron process. While the literature emphasizes the reduction of flicker noise, these two structures minimized the flicker noise and thermal noise simultaneously. Simulation results show that these two Op-Amps have comparable performance.

The project report contains a description of the project, details of the design and layout, and simulation results.