A High Load Current, Low-Noise, Area-Efficient, Full On-Chip Regulator for CMOS Pixel Sensors

In order to solve the power distribution problem of detectors in high energy physics experiments, a full on-chip regulator is presented in this paper. It provides the analog power supply for CMOS pixel sensors. The maximum load current is 200 mA. The proposed regulator is stable in the full range of load current by introducing a zero and adapting the locations of poles and zeros. The compensation capacitance and resistance are significantly decreased to achieve low area. The chip area is only 0.044 mm2 excluding the bias and bandgap circuit, which can be shared with the other blocks in CMOS pixel sensors. The experimental results show that the output noise spectral density is less than 340 n VRMS/√Hz and 62 n VRMS/√Hz at 1 kHz and 100 kHz, respectively. The power consumption is 1.04 mW at the voltage of 3.3 V, when the load current is 200 mA.