Multipath recycling method for transconductance enhancement of folded cascade amplifier

A multipath recycling method to enhance transconductance of the folded cascode amplifier is presented in this paper. The proposed method utilizes two idle paths to conduct small signal current, which leads to significant enhancement of transconductance compared to conventional folded cascade structure. Moreover, the improved performance is almost at no expense of power dissipation. The proposed multipath recycling and the conventional amplifiers are all designed in UMC 0.18 μm CMOS technology. Simulation results demonstrate that the transconductance of the proposed amplifier is improved by 450% and dc gain enhances 16 dB when compared with the folded cascode counterpart.