PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF FILTER

CIRCUITS BASED ON TWO DIFFERENT

CURRENT CONVEYOR TOPOLOGIES
Garima Varshney, Neeta Pandey, Rajeshwari Pandey, Asok Bhattacharyya
Department of Electronics and Communication Engg.
Delhi Technological University
Delhi, India
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract—This paper investigates the effect of two different PSPICE simulations are done using typical BSIM3V3 0.35μm
second generation current conveyor (CCII) topologies on the CMOS process parameters.
behaviour of low pass, high pass and band pass filters. One of the In Section II and III, CMOS inverter based current conveyor
current conveyor topology is based upon CMOS inverters and
and translinear loop based current conveyor topologies [1, 2]
the other realization is based on translinear loop. 3-db
bandwidth, Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) and output noise are reviewed briefly. Section IV presents the High-Pass, Low-
are used as comparison parameters. Simulation results show that Pass and Band-Pass filters design [3]. The simulation results
THD of CMOS inverter’s based filters is lesser than that of the are presented in section V which is followed by conclusion in
translinear loop based CCII filters. The former topology also section VI.
enjoys better noise throughout its bandwidth against the latter
one. All the simulations are done on PSPICE using typical II. CMOS INVERTER BASED CURRENT CONVEYOR
BSIM3V3 0.35μm CMOS process parameters. The positive type second generation current conveyor based
on CMOS inverter topology is shown in Fig. 2 [1]. It employs
Keywords— Second generation current conveyor, CMOS
inverter, translinear loop, filters, transconductance mode. the CMOS inverters in transconductance mode of operation.
A. CMOS Inverter in Tranconductance Mode
I. INTRODUCTION
The transistor sizes WN/LN (nmos transistors) and WP/LP
There has been substantial emphasis on the development of
(pmos transistors) of the CMOS inverters are set in order to
current mode signal processing circuits such as filters and
obtain a voltage transition around VIN = VOUT = (VDD+VSS)/2.
oscillators. This is due to increased bandwidth, simple
This condition leads to a common mode voltage VCM about
circuitry, better linearity, dynamic range performances and
VCM = 0 for VSS= -VDD, for small signal amplitudes about
lower power consumption as compared to their voltage mode
VCM all the inverters behave as a transconductor [4]. In this
counterparts. A variety of current mode building blocks are
mode of operation, the small signal output current (i out) of
developed at the same time to keep the pace with current
inverter is given by iout = −gm vin, where gm is the inverters
mode circuits. The current conveyor (CCII) is one among such
transconductance and vin is the inverter small signal input
blocks which has received significant attention. It is hybrid
voltage. The CMOS inverter I-V characteristics in
block and has basic construction containing a voltage follower
transconductance mode are shown Fig. 1.
(VF) interconnected with either current mirror or current
follower.
The CCII is three-terminal devices with the terminals
designated X, Y and Z. The potential at X follows the voltage
applied to Y. The current flowing into X is copied at Z with
high output impedance. There is no current flow through
terminal Y.
A variety of topologies are proposed for CCII in [1], [2] and
references cited therein. The topology reported in [1] is on
CMOS inverters. In this topology the inverters operate in
transconductance mode. The other current conveyor topology
is translinear loop based [2]. In this paper, a performance
comparison is carried out for CCII based low pass, high pass
and band pass filters constructed with these two topologies.
Fig. 1 CMOS Inverter in transconductance mode of operation
Performance comparison is done using 3-dB bandwidth, THD
and Noise with respect to frequency as parameters. All the

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B. CMOS Inverter Based Current Conveyor conveyor [3]. The cut-off frequency is same for all the filters
Fig. 2 [1] shows positive type second generation current and calculated as
conveyor based upon CMOS inverters only. Consider
transconductance of all the inverters are same in Fig. 2 (g mi of ωo= √ (2)
each Ii = gm). The relationship between voltages of terminals
X and Y is obtained by analysing the path between inverters
A. Low-Pass Filter
I1, I2, I3 and I4 as
A second order low pass filter is shown in Fig. 4.
(1)

Where gm =1/RX. It is clear from Fig. 2 that IZ = I4+I5, and IX

= I2+I3. We have I4 =I2 and I5 =I3, which leads to IZ = IX.

Fig. 4 CCII+ based Low pass filter

The low pass filter is having a voltage transfer function for

G1 = G2 = G as given below

Fig. 2 CMOS Inverter based CCII+ [1] (3)

III. TRANSLINEAR LOOP BASED CURRENT CONVEYOR

An implementation of translinear loop based positive type B. High-Pass Filter
second generation current conveyor is shown in Fig.3 [2].
Fig. 5 shows a second order high pass filter.

Fig. 5 CCII+ based High pass filter

The voltage transfer function of high pass filter for C1=C2 =

C is given as
Fig. 3 Translinear loop based CCII+ [1]

CCII+ shown in Fig. 3 allows the function of voltage (4)

follower between points X and Y due to the translinear loop
formed by M1, M2, M3 and M4 (VX = VY).The transistors M5
and M6 provide the biasing to the loop. The output NMOS and C. Band-Pass Filter
PMOS current mirrors (M7, M8, M9 and M10) duplicate the
The second order band pass filter is shown in Fig. 6. The
current from port X to port Z (IZ = IX).
voltage transfer function of the filter for G1 = G2 = G is given
IV. FILTERS as below
The filter structures used for comparison of current (5)
conveyor topologies, mentioned in section II and III are
shown in below subsections. All the three filters, low pass,
high pass and band pass, consist of two capacitors, two
resistors and one positive type second generation current

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 Fig. 6 CCII+ based Band pass filter

V. SIMULATION RESULTS
The filter structures of Figs. 4 - 6 are simulated to see the
effect of CCII toplogies on filter performance. The typical
BSIM3V3 0.35 μm CMOS process parameters and power Fig. 8 Frequency response of High pass filter
supply of +2.5V are used. The aspect ratios of the transistors
used in CCII+ implementation are given in Table I. The filters
are designed for pole frequency of 15.9MHz and quality factor
of 1. The component values for the resistors (R1, R2) and
capacitors (C1, C2) are taken as 10 KΩ each and 1 pF each
respectively. The filter responses are shown in Figs. 7 - 9
which conform to the transfer functions given by (3) – (5).
The inverter based CCII+ consumes almost half area than its
translinear counterpart.
TABLE I
ASPECT RATIO OF TRANSISTORS

CMOS inverter based CCII+ in Fig. 2

WN , WP 1.5μm, 3 μm
LN = LP 2 μm
Translinear loop based CCII+ in Fig. 3 Fig. 9 Frequency response of Band pass filter
W1 =W2 =W6 =W9 =W10 3 μm
W3 =W4 =W5 =W7 =W8 9 μm The following subsections describe the dynamic range,
L1 =L2 =L3 =L4 = L5 =L6 =L7 =L8 =L9 =L10 2 μm THD and noise with respect to frequency.

A. 3-dB Bandwidth
The bandwidth response for current transfer from x to z
terminal is shown in Fig. 10. The bandwidth for tranlinear
and inverter based CCII are reported as 200 MHz and 400
MHz respectively. The bandwidth for voltage transfer is
found to be high for both the topologies.

Fig. 7 Frequency response of Low pass filter

Fig. 10 Bandwidth response of CCII+

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B. THD
An input sinusoidal excitation of frequency 3MHz is
applied to see the effect of CCII topologies on THD. Fig. 11
shows the THD variations with respect to the input sinusoidal
voltage signal amplitude for low pass filter. It may be noted
that THD is comparable for low signal amplitudes but the
inverter based topology gives better performance for higher
signal amplitudes.

(a) (b)
Fig. 12 Output noise of Low pass filter versus frequency (a) Translinear
loop based (b) CMOS inverter based

Fig. 11 THD variation of Low pass filter versus amplitude of applied

sinusoidal signal

C. Noise Analysis
An input ac excitation having amplitude 200mV is
applied to see the effect of CCII topologies on output
noise. Figures 12 - 14 show the equivalent output noise
against frequency for low pass, high pass and band pass
(a) (b)
filters. A close observation of these curves reveals that Fig. 13 Output noise of High pass filter versus frequency (a) Translinear
inverter based topology gives better performance. Table II loop based (b) CMOS inverter based
shows the output noise value (nV) at 15.9 MHz frequency
for all three filters.

TABLE II
OUTPUT NOISE COMPARISON FOR 15.9MHz FREQUENCY

Filter LPF HPF BPF

Topology
Translinear 26.47 37.78 40.22
loop based

CMOS Inverter 19.67 29.57 19.67

based

(a) (b)
Fig. 14 Output noise of Band pass filter versus frequency (a) Translinear
loop based (b) CMOS inverter based

VI. CONCLUSION
The effect of CCII topologies on the filter performance is
evaluated on the basis of 3-dB bandwidth, THD and output
noise in this paper. Bandwidth response for current transfer is
found to be twice for CMOS inverter based CCII than that of

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translinear loop based CCII. The THD of CMOS inverter’s
based topology is better than that the one based on traditional
translinear loop. The former topology also has lesser noise
against the latter one. The area of silicon required for CMOS
inverter based CCII is approximate half of the silicon area for
translinear loop based CCII, which is a clear advantage of
CMOS inverter based CCII. At low power supply the
traditional CCII deviates from its characteristics while CMOS
inverter based CCII is able to operate under such conditions.
The traditional CCII requires additional biasing circuitry. One
more advantage of CMOS inverter based circuit is that they
can be synthesized using digital inverter ICs.

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[3] J.W. Horng, “Voltage/Current-mode universal
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