International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882

Volume 4, Issue 8, August 2015

CMOS Realization Voltage Differencing Transconductance

Amplifier and Based TowThomas Filter
Dipti Singh1, Praveen Kumar2
Student of IMS Engineering College, Ghaziabad
2
Assistant Professor, ECE Department

ABSTRACT
This paper presents, a new and simple CMOS realization
of VDTA is presented. And the proposed block use for
the design of an electronically tunable Tow-Thomas
biquad filter. The presented filter is constructed using
two VDTAs, two capacitors all are grounded. This
circuit simultaneously realizes Low Pass and Band Pass
filter responses, without changing the circuit topology.
Tow-Thomas biquad filters implemented using VDTA
are simulated with PSPICE simulation using the 0.18um
CMOS technology to confirm the good performance of
the proposed design in the paper.
Keywords - VDTA, Tow-Thomas filter CMOS Integrated
circuit.

element. Our proposed filter employing two VDTAs,

two grounded capacitors can simultaneously realize LP
and BP biquadratic filtering function from the same
circuit configuration. The proposed circuit employing
minimum number of passive and active components uses
no external resistors. Furthermore, no parameter
matching condition is required.
The Tow-Thomas [4] biquad filter is a very useful
second-order function block and it is also the more
popular universal filter structure. Since this structure
offers several advantages such as low passive and active
sensitivity performance, low component spread and
good stability behavior. The Tow-Thomas biquad circuit
[5,6].

II.
I.

INTRODUCTION

In the decade, progress in the microelectronic area

presents new circuit principles of active building blocks
for fast analog signal processing and improving the
properties of existing ones, such as operational
tranconductance amplifier (OTA) or current conveyor
(CC) [2]. Some new analog active building blocks
providing the potentially in analog circuit design were
and are being introduced, such as current differencing
transconductance amplifier (CDTA) [3]. The voltage
differencing transconductance amplifier (VDTA) is a
recently introduced active element [1].The VDTA is
composed of the current source controlled by the
difference of two input voltages and a multiple-output
transconductance gains. Therefore, the VDTA device is
very suitable for electronically tunable active circuit
synthesis. Another advantageous feature of the use of the
VDTA as an active element is that compact structures in
some applications can be achieved can be achieved
easily [2,1].
Furthermore, VDTA exhibits two different values of
transconductance so that there is no need to external
resistors for VDTA based applications All these
advantages make the VDTA an alternative choice for the
implementation of voltage-mode analog signal
processing circuits.
This paper deals with the design of the voltage-mode
biquadratic filter based on the use of the VDTAs active

DESCRIPTION OF VDTA

The VDTA element is a simple active block that consists

actually of two interconnected transconductance
sections. Each of them provides two independent
electronically adjustable transconductances (gm1 and
gm2). A number of outputs of the first and the second
section varies according to the particular requirements of
intended application ([1, 710]). The basic structure of a
particular variant of VDTA active element is shown in
Fig. 1a, the schematic symbol in Fig. 1b. VDTA has two
voltage inputs (p and n), a small number of auxiliary
high impedance ports (z+ and z, i.e. positive and
negative output of first OTA section) and positive and
negative current outputs (x+ and x). The input of the
second section (OTA2) is connected directly to the z+
output of the first section (OTA1).

Fig.1Voltage differencing transconductance amplifier

(VDTA) with two independent electronically adjustable
transconductances: schematic symbol.

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898

International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 4, Issue 8, August 2015

Outer behaviour of the VDTA element is described by

the following matrix:
0

0
0

0
0
0
0

=
0
0

0
0

(1)

According to input terminals, an output current at Z

terminal is generated. The intermediate voltage of Z
terminal is converted to output currents. The new CMOS
realization of the VDTA is shown in Fig.2. The
introduced circuit employs two Arbel-Goldminz
transconductances
[11].
Input
and
output
transconductance parameters of VDTA element in the
circuit are determined by the transconductance of
outputs transistors. It can be approximated as
(2)
(3)
where gi is the transconductance value of ith transistor
defined by
(4)
i is (i = n, p) the mobility of the carrier for NMOS (n)
and PMOS (p) transistors, COX is the gate-oxide
capacitance per unit area, W is the effective channel
width, L is the effective channel length and IBi is bias
current of ith transistor.

and it was supplemented by the well-known structure of

multiple-output current conveyor of the second
generation (MO-CCII). Particular transistor dimensions
are included in the Table.1. The structure has three main
parts: two OTA sections and one MO-CCII. MO-CCII
serves as a two-output current follower that helps to
obtain the required number of outputs of the first OTA
section. The transconductance of the first section is
controlled electronically by current IB1and IB2 the
second transconductance is also controlled electronically
by current IB3 and IB4. It is obvious that the number of
outputs can easily be changed according to particular
requirements (in the case of OTA1 stage).
Table 1.Aspects of MOS Transistor (m/ m)
MOS
M1,M2,M5,M6
M3,M4
M7,M8
M9,M11,M13-17
M10,M12,M18-M22

III.

W/L
3.6/0.36
16.64/0.36
17.16/0.36
5/1
20/1

APPLICATION EXAMPLE

The proposed circuit current-mode TT biquad filter is

shown in Fig.3. The circuit consists of one Modified
VDTA, two grounded capacitors. Since all the capacitors
are grounded, thus the circuit is beneficial to an IC
implementation.
Unfortunately, most of these reported circuits suffer
from one or more of following weaknesses:
Excessive use of the active and/or passive elements
Lack of electronic adjustability (tunability)
The pole frequency and quality factor cannot be tuned
independently
Active filters with current controllable (tunable)
frequency have a wide range of applications in the signal
processing and instrumentation area. New advantageous
filter topologies can be realized by introducing VDTAs
in the filter design that leads to current controllability of
the filters.

Fig. 2 Designed CMOS implementation of proposed

VDTA active element
The basic structure from Fig. 1a was the starting point
for the design of the CMOS implementation of VDTA
shown in Fig. 2. The transistor solution of both OTA
sections was derived from the structure presented in [10]
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Fig 3. Circuit diagram of TT biquadratic filter

899

International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 4, Issue 8, August 2015

A single-input multiple-output Tow-Thomas filter based

on VDTA configuration is shown in Figure 3 .Circuit
analysis yields the following transfer functions:
Circuit analysis yields the following transfer functions:
(5)

(6)
The resonance angular frequency
and the quality
factor Q of proposed Network is given by:

Fig: 5. DC transfer characteristics of Iz+,Izwith respect to voltage Vp.

(7.a)
(7.b)

But =
and
as mentioned earlier. By
substituting in (7) we obtain:
,
Where x = 1 or 2.
Q = 1.

(8.a)

The PSpice simulation of proposed TT biquadratic filter

has been performed with given circuit parameters: C1=
C2= 1pf, bias current IB1=IB2=IB3=IB4= 20 A and
IB5=IB6=100uA. The results of low-pass (LP) and
band-pass (BP) are shown in Fig.6. Cutoff frequency of
BP and LP is 12.274MegaHz and cutoff frequency can
changing by IB bias current or gains. Electronic
Tunability of proposed filter circuit shown in Fig- 7 (a),
(b).

(8.b)

It is obvious from (8.b) that quality factor Q has no

sensitivity to passive components, and that gives the
designer a margin of freedom in designing progress.
It is clear from (7) that
and Q can be electronically
tuned by adjusting the bias currents of the VDTA
(changing gm1 and gm2). In addition, it can be seen that
the parameters
and Q are orthogonally controllable
by adjusting the ratio
to
, to or
to
.
Sensitivity analysis of the filter parameters shows that

Fig-6. LP and BP frequency response of TT biquad

circuit

Which all low.

IV.

SIMULATION RESULT

For the simulation TSMC 0.18m CMOS Technology is

used. The aspect ratios of the transistors have shown in
table 1. Supply voltages are taken as VDD = VSS = 0.9
V and IB1 = IB2 = IB3 = IB4=IB5= IB6= 100 A
biasing currents are used. Simulation results show that
this choice yields transconductance values of VDTA as
gm1 = gm2 = 520.868 A/V .The DC transfer
characteristic of Iz+ and Iz- against Vp for output stage
of proposed VDTA is shown in Fig. 5 .

Fig-7(a). Low-pass filter peaking vs. Q by Bias current

varying.

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900

International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 4, Issue 8, August 2015

Fig-7(b). Bandpass filter when IB current varying

V.

CONCLUSION

In this work, a new configuration for realizing TowThomas biquad filter has been proposed. By employing
the VDTA the filter produces simultaneously low-pass
and band-pass responses at high-output impedances,
which makes the filter to be suitable for direct cascading
with other current -mode circuits without additional
buffer circuits. It uses only two grounded capacitors as
passive elements. It permits controlling its quality factor
without affecting the natural frequency. In addition, the
adjustment of the natural frequency and the quality
factor can be performed electronically by the biasing
current of the VDTA and that adds flexibility to the
tuning procedure of the circuit

Telecommunications and Control Systems and

Workshops (ICUMT), 4th International Congress, 35
Oct. 2012, pp.484489.
[8] J. Satansup, W. Tangsrirat, Single VDTA-based
current-mode electronically tunable multifunction filter,
4th International Science, Social Science, Engineering
and Energy Conference (I-SEEC 2012), Petchburi,
Thailand, Dec. 2012.
[9] D. Prasad, D. R. Bhaskar, M. Srivastava, Universal
Current-Mode Biquad Filter Using a VDTA, Circuits
and Systems, 4, 1, pp. 2933, 2013.
[10] J. Satansup, T. Pukkalanun, W. Tangsrirat,
Electronically Tunable Current-Mode Universal Filter
Using VDTAs and Grounded Capacitors, International
MultiConference of Engineers and
Computer Scientists, Vol II, (IMECS 2013), Hong
Kong, March 1315, 2013.
[11] ARBEL, A. F., GOLDMINZ, L. Output stage for
current-mode feedback amplifiers, theory and
applications. Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal
Procesing, 1992, vol.2, no. 3, p. 243 255.

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