• Francisco de Assis Brito Filho (Faculty member)
• Hugo Dias Giló (Undergraduate student)
• Daniel Da Silva Santos (Undergraduate student)

The proposed circuit is a Digitally Programmable Gain Amplifier (DVGA) which will work to amplify voltage signal with programmable gain options, ranging from 1 V / V to 256 V / V. The main core is an OTA Miller with output buffer configured as an inverter amplifier. The circuit feedback resistances is controlled by 8 CMOS switches (Transmission Gates) that are configured according to binary word stored in the shift register which is connected to a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) that provides a connection for external control.

Table 1 – DPGA performance.

Figure 1 – DPGA Block Diagram.

The circuit is composed by an operational amplifier with adjusted gain programmable using CMOS switches. The programmable interface is a serial input as an SPI in order to provide access to external devices to control the gain.

Below are the schematics of the critical circuit core, an Operational Amplifier using the OTA Miller with output buffer.

Figure 2 - OpAmp with digitally programmable schematic.

The negative feedback loop of the Operational Amplifier has resistances controlled by CMOS switches in order to program the overall gain, as in figure 3.

Figure 3 - OpAmp with digitally programmable schematic.

Below are the schematics created in the XSCHEM software.

Figure 4 - Digital potentiometer.

Figure 5 - Digital potentiometer and OTA.

Figure 6 - DPGA top entity with load.

Figure 7 - OTA Miller schematic.

Figure 8 - Transmission gate with control.

The analog and digital circuit layouts created will be presented below.

Figure 9 - Digital potentiometer layout.

Figure 10 - DPGA layout.

Figure 11 - OTA Miller layout.

Figure 12 - SPI module layout.

Figure 13 - SPI module layout with ports highlights.

The results of the simulations carried out will be presented below.

Figure 14 - DPGA minimum gain.

Figure 15 - DPGA maximum gain.

Figure 16 - Digital potentiometer simulation.

Figure 17 - OTA CMRR simultation.

Figure 18 - OTA gain.

Figure 19 - OTA DC simulation.

Figure 20 - OTA large signal simulation.

Figure 21 - OTA transient simulation.

Figure 22 - SPI simulation.

Main references for OpAmp Design are:

• P. E. Allen, D. R. Holberg. CMOS Analog Circuit Design. 2nd Ed., Oxford, New York, 2002.
• B. Razavi. Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits. McGraw -Hill, New York, 2001.
• P. Jespers, B. Murmann. Systematic Design of Analog CMOS Circuits: Using Pre-Computed Lookup. Cambridge Press. 2017.