A high-IIP3 third-order elliptic filter with current-efficient feedforward-compensated opamps

A low-distortion active filter is realized using current-efficient feedforward-compensated operational amplifiers in the integrators and feedforward current injection in the summing amplifier. A third-order elliptic low-pass filter with two possible bandwidth settings of 17 and 8.5 MHz consumes 1.8 mW from a 1.8-V supply and occupies 0.17 μm2 in a 0.18- μm CMOS process. The measured maximum signal-to-noise and distortion ratios at the two bandwidth settings are 50.5 and 52.5 dB, respectively. The corresponding third-order intermodulation intercept points (IIP3) are +28.2 and +30.8 dBm. Automatic tuning is used at the startup to counter process variations and set the bandwidth accurately. © 2011 IEEE.