A novel ultra-high compliance, high output impedance low power very accurate high performance current mirror

In this paper a novel ultra-high compliance, low power, very accurate and high output impedance current mirror/source is proposed. Deliberately composed elements and a good combination (for a mutual auto control action) of negative and positive feedbacks in the proposed circuit made it unique in gathering ultra-high compliances, high output impedance and high accuracy ever demanded merits. The principle of operation of this unique structure is discussed, its most important formulas are derived and its outstanding performance is verified by HSPICE simulation in TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS, BSIM3 and Level49 technology. Simulation results with 1 V power supply and 8 μA input current show an input and output minimum voltages of 0.058 and 0.055 V, respectively, which interestingly provide the highest yet reported compliances for current mirrors implemented by regular CMOS technology. Besides an input resistance of 13.3 Ω, an extremely high output resistance of 34.3 GΩ and −3 dB cutoff frequency of 210 MHz are achieved for the proposed circuit while it consumes only 42.5 μW and its current transfer error (at bias point) is the excellent value of 0.02%.