Trade - offs in the OTA - based analog filter design

Abstract

Operational transconductance amplifiers (OTAs) are widely used in the design of electronically tunable circuits. However, electronic tunability ranges of the OTA based filters are restricted by the limited bandwidth of the transconductance gain of the OTA. Furthermore, stability conditions and the linearity of the OTA which depends on the control current restrict the tunability. In this paper, some trade-offs in the electronically tunable filters are investigated. In addition, the tunability ranges of some first and second order OTA-C and OTA-RC filters are comparatively examined. Moreover, an OTA-C all-pass filter circuit is presented. SPICE simulations are performed and stability analyses are given for both of the OTA-C and OTA-RC filters. Operation of the presented all-pass filter is verified experimentally.