Design of A Low-power Precision Op Amp with Ping-pong Autozero Architecture

Precision op amps are widely used in instrumentation, automotive, and industrial applications. This thesis presents the design and characterization of a low-power precision operational amplifier that uses “ping-pong” autozero architecture for automatic offset correction. The op amp is designed for extreme environment applications, operating across a wide temperature range (minus 180 degree Celsius to plus 120 degree Celsius) with low offset, low drift and low power consumption. This design has been fabricated in a SiGe BiCMOS 0.5-micron process and the measured results demonstrate that the op amp is fully functional and achieves less than 40 microvolt input-referred offset voltage with 0.1 microvolt per degree offset voltage drift and 1 microwatt power consumption.