Design, optimization and fabrication of a tanh/sinh-type bipolar transconductor with maximum linearity

Abstract

We have designed, optimized and fabricated a bipolar transconductor with maximum static transfer function linearity. The optimization was based on an analytic function that corresponds to the integral nonlinearity of the circuit. This transconductor is composed of two parallel-connected non-linear blocks: a hyperbolic tangent-type transconductor and hyperbolic sine-type transconductor. The transconductor was fabricated using 0.5 /spl mu/m BiCMOS mixed-signal process. A minimum THD value of 0.2% was obtained with a 100 /spl mu/s transconductance up to a maximum input voltage swing of 50 mV peak.