Low-Quiescent-Current Fast-Response

Current-Feedback Shunt Regulator

Jiann-Jong Chen, Ming-Shian Lin, Che-Min Kung and Yuh-Shyan Hwang
National Taipei University of Technology
Taipei, Taiwan

Abstract —A low-quiescent-current fast-response current- included in section II, the experimental results of proposed
feedback shunt regulator is presented in this paper. The structure regulator are shown in section III, and the fabrication of
of shunt regulator topology is found superior to series regulator proposed regulator are shown in section IV. Finally, the
topology in terms of radiation tolerance [3]. By utilizing the shunt conclusion is made in section V.
regulator architecture suppress stray effect of power supply.
Current conveyor (CCII) based shunt regulator provides current II. CIRCUIT DESCRIPTIONS
feedback for fast response. A shunt regulator with a CCII based
driving the regulation field-effect transistor is presented. The shunt These regulators use a pass element that behaves
regulator can also be stable even without the output capacitor. The functionally like a variable resistor. The structure of series
maximum output current of the shunt regulator is 180 mA at an topologies is show in figures 1(a), and the series combination
output of 1.8V. When power supply 200mA and output voltage 1.8V, of the load resistance with the pass element forms a voltage
its quiescent current is only 315nA and is able to recover within divider to reduce the unregulated input voltage to a regulated
1μs even under the worst case scenario. The prototype of the shunt output voltage. Figures 1(b) also shows the structure of shunt
regulator is fabricated with TSMC 0.35-μm CMOS processes. The topologies, where the pass transistor is in parallel with the
chip area (include I/O pad) is only 658μm x 554μm. load resistor and functions like a variable current divider to
Index Terms: shunt regulator ; current feedback ; low power
obtain load voltage regulation. The output voltage is sampled,
consumption；Current conveyor (CCII)
scaled, and then compared to an input reference voltage. An
I. INTRODUCTION error amplifier generates an output voltage proportional to the
All regulator topologies studied showed performance difference between these two voltages, which in turn biases
degradation owing to total dose and single event transient the pass transistor through a base driver circuit. The sampling
radiation events. However, there are design choices that can circuit and error amplifier base driver form a negative
be made to minimize some harmful effects. Total dose feedback loop that maintains the regulator output voltage at
exposure has been found to degrade loop gain and affect the desired level. The accuracy of the regulated voltage is
regulation, but choosing a shunt regulator topology can dependent on the performance parameters of the components
considerably improve reliability at higher total doses. Loop in the feedback loop: the gain of the sampling circuit
gain degradation affects line regulation more directly than the (typically a resistive voltage divider), the gain of the error
control-to-output function. Total dose also has the potential to amplifier, and base driver circuits [3].
render regulators unstable by affecting high frequency
performance. Single event transients striking the error
amplifier disrupt the entire regulator, but again the shunt
topology reacts less severely than the equivalent series
topology [3]. Increasing total dose is shown to degrade
converter regulation by degrading the loop gain and phase
response. The structure of shunt regulator topology is found
to be superior to series regulator topologies in terms of
radiation tolerance [3].
By using the shunt regulator topologies to suppress the
radiation tolerance, high reverse-PSRR shunt regulators used to
make noise of the digital blocks usually were used to close
locally the and prevent its coupling to the sensitive analog
blocks, [1]. Circuits as ADC, DAC and PLL usually use shunt
topologies to prevent stray effect of power supply. Because
the proposed shunt regulator is based on CCII, this regulator
has one current feedback path that achieves faster recovery
time in transient response. The shunt regulator has superior
line regulation and load regulation.
In this paper, a description of proposed regulator will be
Figure 1 (a) series topologies (b) shunt topologies

978-1-4244-2342-2/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE. 530

Figure 2 shows the ideal model of CCII, we can see I x = I z . in Figure 3.
Figure 4 shows the schematic of proposed shunt
regulator. A CCII is used as an error amplifier, in order to
improve the transient response of the shunt regulator.
Mp01,Mp02,Mp03,Mn07,Mn08,Mn09,Mn10 compose a unity gain
buffer, with Mp04,Mp05,Mp06,Mn11,Mn12,Mn13 current miller to
enhance loop gain.
Breaking the current feedback loop, in the figure 3, it is
the small-signal model for the open loop of proposed shunt
Figure 2 the ideal model of CCII
regulator. In the equation (1), it is the open loop gain totally,
where Gm1 is the transconductance of the unity gain stage, Ro1
is the output resistance of the unity gain stage, Co1 is the
output resistance of the unity gain stage, Gm2 is the
transconductor of Mp04, Gm3 is the transconductor of Mp06, Ro2
is the output resistance of current miller stage, Ro3 is the
output resistance of current miller stage too. G mn is the
transconductance of power transistor, and Rout is the output
resistance at the terminal of the shunt regulator, respectively.
The Rout is that the R L and rdsn of the power transistor are
parallel. The equation (3) is the dc gain of the open-loop
transfer function, C is the compensated capacitor which is
used to create a new dominant pole w p1 and w z .
Figure 3 the function block of proposed shunt regulator Gm2 Ro2Gm3 Ro3GmnRout (sC - Gm3 ) (1)
T (s) =
(1 + sCo2 Ro2 )(1 + sCL Rout )(1 + sRo3 (C + Co3 ))
In order to fulfill fast transient response, we use CCII to
achieve current feedback to minimize setting time, as shown

Figure 4 the circuit of the proposed shunt regulator

Figure 5 Linear model of the proposed shunt regulator

531
 s
(1 + )
wz (2)
T ( s ) @ AOL ×
s s s
(1 + )(1 + )(1 + )
w p1 wp2 w p3 VOUT =1.8V
AOL = G m 2 Ro 2 G m3 Ro3Gmn Rout (3) 500nsec
Eventually, the transfer function could be simplified and
briefly described the poles and zero from equation (2) .
1 1 1 G
w p1 = ;w p2 = ;w p 3 = ; wz = m 3
Ro3 (C + Co3 ) Ro 2Co 2 Rout CL C
The shunt regulator is capacitor-free, so the output
capacitor is zero, and the pole ωp3 is approaching infinity. IOUT =180mA
Therefore, the closed-loop system of proposed shunt
regulator contains two poles and a zero within the unity-gain
frequency, as a single pole system, and this shunt regulator is
unconditionally stable.

III. EXPERIMENT RESULTS

A current feedback shunt regulator is fabricated with
TSMC 0.35μm CMOS processes. The photography of the
proposed shunt regulator is shown in figure 6, and chip area
is 658μm x 554μm. The maximum output current of proposed
VOUT =1.8V
shunt regulator is designed as 180mA. All measured results
are performed at room temperature. 1μ sec

The dynamic response for light to heavy and heavy to

light loading is shown in the figures 7(a) and (b). In the figure
8, the load regulation is shown for light to heavy loading, and
the load regulation of measured results is 2.83ppm/mA, as IOUT =180mA
input current 190mA. In figures 9, we show the variation of IOUT =0mA
the output voltage for different loading resistors, including
10ohm, and infinite resistors, and the measured results are
3.847μV/mA and 4.4157μV/mA for line regulation. With
250mA supply current, figure 10 shows the effect of the
variation of the output current and the ground current.
Finally, we summarize the specifications of shunt Figure 7 the experimental results of proposed shunt regulator; from top to
regulator in Table I, and compare with the previous shunt bottom, the waveforms are output voltage Vout, and output current Iout (a)
regulators in Table II. from 180mA to 0mA. ( horizontal scale: 1μs/div; vertical scale: 1V/div, and
100mA/div, from top to bottom.) ; (b) from 0mA to 180mA. ( horizontal
scale: 2μs /div; vertical scale: 1V/div, and 100mA/div, from top to bottom.)

1.8000

1.7998 Load Regulation=2.8395(ppm/mA)

1.7996

1.7994
Vout (V)

1.7992

1.7990

1.7988

1.7986

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200

Iout (mA)
Figure 6 The layout of the proposed shunt regulator.

Figure 8 the experimental results of load regulation for Vout=1.8V ,

Iin=190mA

532
 1.8030
1.8025
1.8020 Iout=0mA
1.8015 Iout=180mA
1.8010 Table II: shunt regulator measurement and comparison
1.8005
1.8000 [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] This
1.7995
Vout (V)

1.7990 work
1.7985
1.7980 Year 2002 2005 2005 2007 NA 2008
1.7975
1.7970 V in[V] 2.5 12 37 40 15 10
1.7965
1.7960 Vout[V] 1 3.3 2.5 2 0.5 1.8
1.7955
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 Iout 2000 5000 150 150 10 180
Iin (mA) [mA]
Figure 9 the statistic results of line regulation for (a) Iout=180 mA and T R[μs] 5 10 0.5 7 10 1
RL=10ohm; (b) Iout=0 mA and RL=infinity.
IQ [μA] NA NA 400 NA 10 0.32
480
460 IV. CONCLUSIONS
440 A low-quiescent-current fast-response current-feedback shunt
Ground Current (nA)

420 regulator has been designed with TSMC 0.35um 2P4M CMOS
400
processes. Compared to other designs, the proposed regulator
has high reverse-PSRR used to close locally the noise of the digital
380
blocks and prevent its coupling to the sensitive analog blocks. Due
360 to current feedback, the proposed regulator has fast transient
340 response. Low power consumption is only 567nW with the
320 supply of 200mA. Therefore, low power consumption which is
very important can provide the excellent low power
300
-20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
consumption to prolong battery life of various portable
Iout (mA)
systems.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Figure 10 the experimental results of ground current V.S Iout.
The authors would like to thank National Science
Council for project supporting and Chip Implementation
Table I: Summary of Measured Performance Center for chip fabrication. This work was sponsored by
NSC94-2213-E-027-052.
Specification Measurement
Technology TSMC 0.35μm
REFERENCES
Input Current 180 mA~1A
[1] Austin, TX ,and A. Maxim, “Spur and noise reduction techniques in
315nA@ Iin=200 ring oscillator based frequency synthesizers for broadcast receiver
Quiescent Current SoCs ,” IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium ,pp.383-386, Jan.
mA 2008.
[2] Wonseok Oh, and Bertan Bakkaloglu, “A CMOS Low-Dropout
Power Consumption 567nW@ Iin=200
Regulator With Current-Mode Feedback Buffer Amplifier ,” IEEE
(no Power transistor) mA Trans. Circuits Syst. II, Exp. Briefs, vol. 54, ,pp. 922–926, Oct.
2007.
Output Voltage 1.8V [3] Andrew T. Kelly, Philippe C. Adell, Arthur F. Witulski, W. Timothy
Holman, Ronald D. Schrimpf, and Vincent Pouget, “Total Dose and
Operation Temperature -50 ℃~100 ℃ Single Event Transients in Linear Voltage Regulator,” IEEE
Transactions on nuclear science, vol. 54, no.4, pp. 1327–1334,
Max Output Current 180 mA
August 2007.
Active Area 250μm x 420μm [4] Datasheet of AN1789
[5] www.powerelectronics.com
Load Regulation 2.83 ppm / mA [6] Datasheet of TL431
[7] Datasheet of LM723
Line Regulation 4.145μV/ mA [8] Datasheet of AMS421
Settling Time Iout=180 mA to 0 mA 500ns
(0.5% error) Iout=0 mA to 180 mA 1μs

533