GΩ Resistor for AC-coupled Amplifier in Audio Application
J. WANG (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Qinwen Fan – Mentor (TU Delft - Microelectronics)
Frans Widdershoven – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Bio-Electronics)
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Abstract
AC-coupled amplifiers (ACCA) offer lower noise than traditional resistor feedback
amplifiers, which benefits signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for audio applications. Due to the
DC isolation of the capacitor, a feedback resistor is needed to set the virtual ground of
ACCA’s amplifier. However, an external feedback resistor raises system noise and
transforms the ACCA into a high-pass filter, impacting the audio bandwidth signal (20-
20kHz). A GΩ resistor can shift the cut-off frequency outside the audio bandwidth
while reducing noise. Various high-resistance resistor structures have been applied in
biomedical readout integrated circuits (ICs), such as sequence detection, ECG, and EEG
signal readout. However, the achieved signal-to-noise ratio and total harmonic
distortion (THD) are unsuitable for audio applications. This thesis discusses different
methods of making high-resistance resistors, such as duty-cycled resistors, switchedcapacitor resistors, and pseudo resistors, exploring their possibility in audio
applications. This work proposes an active current reducer structure with an
equivalent resistance of 200GΩ (± 20%) and an output RMS noise of 2.1μV for ACCA.
This circuit is built in the 180-nm BCD process achieving -106 dB to -116 dB THD and
96.7 dB SNR. Index Terms – audio amplifier, high-resistance resistors, duty-cycled resistor, switchedcapacitor resistor, pseudo resistor, active current reducers, total harmonic distortion
(THD).