Evolution of precision amplifiers Slides

Abstract: Precision amplifiers are essential blocks for many measurement systems, where offset and flicker noise must be significantly suppressed. Dynamic offset cancellation techniques such as chopping, auto-zeroing, and correlated double sampling are often employed to suppress offset and flicker noise. However, these techniques could introduce some "side-effects" such as noise folding, increased input current, decreased input impedance, intermodulation distortion, etc., which should be addressed properly. In this lecture, an overview of dynamic offset cancellation techniques will be given, followed by the techniques to mitigate the non-idealities introduced by dynamic offset cancellation techniques. Examples of application-specific precision amplifiers will be studied as well.

Biography: Qinwen Fan received her Ph.D. degree from the Delft University of Technology in 2013. From October 2012 to May 2015, she worked at Maxim Integrated in Delft, The Netherlands. From June 2015 to January 2017, she worked at Mellanox (currently known as Nvidia) in Delft, the Netherlands. Since 2017, she rejoined the Delft University of Technology and is currently an Assistant professor in the electronics and instrumentation laboratory.
Her current research interests include precision analog, current sensing, class D audio amplifiers, DC-DC converters, and autonomous wireless sensor nodes.
Dr. Fan serves as an associate editor of Open Journal of the Solid-State Circuits Society (OJ-SSCS), a TPC member of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), the VLSI symposium, and the European Solid-state circuits conference (ESSCIRC). She also serves as a distinguished lecturer for the solid-state circuit society.