A: This paper presents the test results of the second prototype of SAMPA, the ASIC designed for the upgrade of read-out front end electronics of the ALICE Time Projection Chamber (TPC) and Muon Chamber (MCH). SAMPA is made in a 130 nm CMOS technology with 1.25 V nominal voltage supply and provides 32 channels, with selectable input polarity, and three possible combinations of shaping time and sensitivity. Each channel consists of a Charge Sensitive Amplifier, a semi-Gaussian shaper and a 10-bit ADC; a Digital Signal Processor provides digital filtering and compression capability. In the second prototype run both full chip and single test blocks were fabricated, allowing block characterization and full system behaviour studies. Experimental results are here presented showing agreement with requirements for both the blocks and the full chip.

An ultra-low voltage and ultra-low power programmable gain amplifier (PGA) using a closed-loop single-stage operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) and an input negative transconductor is proposed. The circuits are implemented in a 180 nm CMOS process using two stacked transistors and PMOS bulk forward bias to operate well down to 0.36 V, to be robust to PVT variations and to reach the bandwidth of low energy RF receivers. The PGA measured results at 0.36 V show a programmable voltage gain from 0.2 to 18.4 dB, 15.4 μW power dissipation, 0.98 MHz bandwidth and 0.0243 mm 2 area.

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The use of ultra-low-voltage (ULV) analog circuits for IoT applications, in which reduced power consumption is a mandatory specification, is becoming more and morean important design approach. Also, in many IoT applications, power is supplied with energy harvested from environmental sources. It is more efficient for the circuit to operate at a voltage level close to the provided by the energy harvester (between 0.3 and 0.6 V). To deal with this when using low-cost technology process nodes - 180-nm, for example, with |VT| ≈0.5V - it is necessary to apply specific design techniques that take advantage of reverse short channel effect, forward bulk bias-ing (FBB) or bulk-driven circuits. The use of low-VT transistors is also a good alternative when they are available inthe target process node. This paper presents a comprehensive scenery about modern CMOS ULV design techniques from the designer’s point of view, including design trade-offs and comments about design decisions. Four step-by-step design examples of ULV circuits are presented: a cross-coupled negative transconductor, a CMOS inverter as an analog amplifier, a pseudo-differential inverter-based amplifier, and a bulk-driven differential amplifier with active load. All designs require the biasing of transistors in moderate and weak inversion regions.The goal is to demonstrate that it is possible to design ULV analog circuits using standard-VT transistors with a supply voltage much lower than the nominal VDD.