Switched-current circuit design issues

Switched-current (SI) circuits represent a current-mode analog sampled-data signal processing technique realizable in standard digital CMOS technologies. Unlike switched-capacitor (SC) circuits, SI circuits require only a standard digital CMOS process. SI circuits use MOS transistors as the storage elements to provide analog memory capability. Similar to the operation of dynamic logic circuits, a voltage is sampled onto the gate of a MOSFET and held on its noncritical gate capacitance. The held voltage signal on the gate causes a corresponding held current signal in the drain, usually proportional to the square of the gate-to-source voltage. Design issues related to the implementation and performance of SI circuits are presented. SI filters show comparable performance to SC filters except in terms of passband accuracy. The major source of error is nonunity current gain in the SI integrator due to device mismatch and clock-feedthrough effects. For the initial CMOS prototypes, the current track and hold (T/H) gain error was about 2.5%