Abstract-This paper presents a low-dropout regulator (LDO) for portable applications with an impedance-attenuated buffer for driving the pass device. Dynamically-biased shunt feedback is proposed in the buffer to lower its output resistance such that the pole at the gate of the pass device is pushed to high frequencies without dissipating large quiescent current. By employing the current-buffer compensation, only a single pole is realized within the regulation loop unity-gain bandwidth and over 65 phase margin is achieved under the full range of the load current in the LDO. The LDO thus achieves stability without using any low-frequency zero. The maximum output-voltage variation can be minimized during load transients even if a small output capacitor is used.The

A fully integrated soft-start circuit for voltage regulators is presented in this brief. A soft-start strategy based on a linearly ramped-up reference is adopted to prevent massive inrush currents through the power device during the start-up phase of the regulator. The strategy is realized by a compact on-chip circuit, which requires no external components and has minimal transistor overhead, thereby minimizing the implementation area and cost of the overall regulator. The proposed soft-start circuit has been implemented in a 0.35-μm high-voltage complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology as part of a linear regulator controller for automotive applications. The proposed soft-start circuit occupies 0.026 mm 2 on silicon, which corresponds to about one fifteenth of the total area of the linear regulator controller.Index Terms-Linear regulator, low-dropout regulator (LDO), power management integrated circuits, soft start, switching regulator, voltage regulators.

Abstract-Bootstrapped switches are used in a variety of applications including DC-DC converters, pipelined analog-to-digital converters and high voltage switches and drivers. Current work on highly integrated power management applications often requires the ability to measure voltage quantities that exceed the supply voltage in magnitude. This is primarily due to a basic need to maximize efficiency by running the power management IC on as low supply voltage as possible, while still maintaining the ability to sample and measure quantities from the surroundings that could well exceed the battery voltage. In this paper, a new bootstrapped switch is presented. The switch enables the precise sampling of input signals well greater than the chip supply voltage with no static power consumption, and without activating on-chip parasitic body diodes. The bootstrapped switch, presented here, is designed to sample an input signal with a 0-5.5-V range at a supply voltage of 2.75 V. Measurement data shows functionality for a 0-6-V input signal range with a supply voltage as low as 1.2 V.

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