Received December 2, 2019, accepted December 17, 2019, date of publication December 23, 2019,

date of current version December 31, 2019.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2961640

Novel Schmitt Trigger and Square-Wave

Generator Using Single Current Amplifier
HUSSAIN A. ALZAHER
Electrical Engineering Department, KFUPM, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
e-mail: [email protected]
This work was supported by the Saudi ARAMCO Project under Grant EE002446.

ABSTRACT This paper presents an important missing building block for mixed-mode signal processing:
a Schmitt trigger circuit based on the current amplifier. Schmitt trigger is used extensively in both the
analogue and digital areas. The transfer characteristics of the proposed design are independent on the supply
voltage. Unlike Schmitt triggers incorporating other types of amplifiers, the proposed design is totally active.
It does not require passive resistors and hence it shall be more attractive for VLSI implementation. The
proposed circuit is utilized to implement a novel current mode square-wave oscillator using a single current
amplifier that provides differential current signals. The output amplitude can be controlled without additional
circuitry. Current generators are particularly essential for bio-impedance measurement. Comparison with
their counterparts using the operational amplifier, transconductance operational amplifier, transresistance
operational amplifier, and current conveyor demonstrates several advantageous features of the proposed
circuits. The experimental results obtained from primary prototypes fabricated using standard 150 nm CMOS
process are provided. It is shown that the proposed Schmitt trigger and the square wave generator nominally
consume 8 µW and 11 µW while working in the MHz range.

INDEX TERMS Current mode circuits, the current amplifier, schmitt trigger, and square-wave generation.

I. INTRODUCTION such oscillators based on those designs may suffer from

A current amplifier (CA) based Schmitt trigger circuit has not start-up problems at low supply voltages as it is difficult to
been available although its voltage amplifier counterpart has provide sufficient gains to meet the initial oscillation condi-
been known since 1938. Owing to the remarkable boost from tions [3] and [6]. Alternatively, there are numerous Schmitt
applications of current mode processing, which is rapidly trigger versions based on devices such as the operational
superseding their voltage mode counterparts, current mode amplifier (opamp), the operational transconductance ampli-
Schmitt trigger has to be indispensable. Current mode circuits fier (OTA), and the operational transresistance amplifier
typically have the advantages of simple circuit structure, low (OTRA), the second-generation current conveyor (CCII) and
power consumption, and high working frequency [1] as well the current feedback operational amplifier (CFOA). Although
as high common mode rejection ratio (CMRR) [2]. these circuits are more impermeable to process variations,
Schmitt trigger circuit is a comparator with hysteresis. their voltage mode operation inherently results in a supply-
Its importance arises from its wide range of applications, dependent output amplitude and hysteresis. Also, low-voltage
such as memory design, switching power supplies, pulse- rail-to-rail voltage mode comparators such as [7] or circuits in
width modulation, signal conditioning and energy harvesting. general [8] are often achieved using rather exotic bulk-driven
Schmitt triggers are also basic building blocks for relaxation transistors. Analog and mixed-signal circuits, in general, are
oscillators that are essential for wireless systems and biomed- still being designed in classic bulk CMOS technology nodes.
ical applications [3] and are used for instrumentation and The process stability, overall components’ properties, voltage
measurement [4]. Transistor-level Schmitt triggers have mer- headroom, maximum current densities and cost are much
its, such as high speed and low power consumption [5], but more favorable for high performance as well as low-power
the output amplitude and hysteresis are often dependent on analog design [9].
the supply voltage and transistors parameters. Additionally, This paper presents a Schmitt trigger based on a single CA
that is incorporated to achieve a square-wave oscillator. The
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and following section highlights the fundamental advantages of
approving it for publication was Yong Chen . the CA. Sections III and IV presents the proposed circuits

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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 H. A. Alzaher: Novel Schmitt Trigger and Square-Wave Generator Using Single CA

and their CMOS realizations. The experimental results are area [14]. In particular, this work shows that the proposed
provided in Section V. Comparison between the proposed CA-based Schmitt trigger and relaxation oscillator provide
circuits and their counterparts using other analog building output amplitude controls without changing the supply volt-
devices is given in Section VI. age or using additional circuitry. Similarly, it is shown that
differential outputs are attained inherently.
II. ADVANTAGES OF THE CURRENT AMPLIFIER
There are several voltage mode Schmitt triggers commer- III. THE PROPOSED SCHMITT TRIGGER
cially available. In general, however, these circuits suffer Development of CA-based Schmitt trigger and relaxation
from limited bandwidth or the input/output ranges. Several oscillators has been challenging because, different from the
designs are based on switched-capacitor technique wherein opamp, OTA, and CCII, the CA does not have a high-input
the system bandwidth is limited by the clock and sampling impedance terminal. A CA typically has a large open-loop
rate. Schmitt triggers using opamps preserves the input/ gain and is often used with negative feedback to achieve a
output ranges of switched-capacitor technique and slightly certain desired closed-loop gain. In fact, the CA is subpart
improve the system bandwidth. But they still require rela- of a CCII, CFOA, and OTRA; hence, it has the potential to
tively large current consumptions to operate in MHz ranges. provide more power-efficient solutions. Additionally, the CA
Whereas, OTA based Schmitt triggers, which can operate at is better suited for low-power supply voltage and wide-band
higher bandwidths, suffer from limited input/output ranges frequency operation.
particularly at low supply voltages. A CA amplifies an input current signal and conveys it
The most fundamental current mode active elements are to the output without fiddling with the output voltage level.
the second generation current conveyor (CCII) and the current There are different definitions of the CA depending on
feedback operational amplifier (CFOA). However, the main open or closed loop operation. The latter is adopted in this
problem with CCII and CFOA based circuits is the com- work. It is basically a three terminal device with a single input
plexity of their CMOS realizations (multi-input and/or multi- (Ix ) and two complementary outputs (Iop = -Ion ). Ideally,
output devices) that indefinitely suffer from the inclusion the current amplifier should have infinity current gain, zero
of at least one voltage buffer. In particular, the CCII is a input resistance and infinity output resistances. Therefore,
three terminal device that basically consists of a voltage the ideal characteristics of the CA can be expressed mathe-
buffer (between Y and X terminals) whose current is sensed matically as follows:
and convey to high output terminal Z. The CFOA incorpo-     
rates two buffers. The complexity is automatically negatively Vx 0 0 0 Ix
reflected in the power consumption, dynamic range and area  Iop  =  Ai 0 0   Vop  (1)
efficiency. Even more, unlike current followers the voltage Ion −Ai 0 0 Von
buffers usually suffer from limited input/output signal swings
especially for low supply voltages [10]. This will limit the where Vx is the voltage at the input terminal, Ai is the current
dynamic range of circuits based on CCIIs and CFOAs. gain (ideally Ai → ∞), Vop is the voltage at the positive
On the other hand, the current amplifier should have been output terminal; and Von is its counterpart at the negative
the most fundamental current mode building block as it is output terminal.
the only true current mode element. In fact, the CA is a A CA is often used with negative feedback (connection
pure current mode building block wherein the primary signal from output Von to input Iz ) to achieve a certain desired
variables are the currents. Therefore, a high voltage swing closed-loop gain. The use of a CA with negative feedback
in the CA amplifier design is not usually required. Also, to achieve, for example, a unity gain current follower can
the bandwidth and the closed-loop gain of a current amplifier be found in [11] and [15]. The proposed Schmitt trigger
are independent [11]. From a certain point of view, it is the configured using a CA with regenerative positive feedback is
simplest current mode device since it is a subpart of other shown in Fig. 1. In this work, a positive closed-loop feedback
devices such as CCII, CFOA and transresistance amplifier configuration is accomplished by shorting the non-inverting
(TRA) [12]. Consequently, CA based circuits are expected output (Iop ) with the input (IX ). The positive feedback con-
to work at relatively higher frequencies with an improved nection wire is highlighted with red color.
dynamic range, lower power consumption and less area. A real current amplifier typically has a huge current gain,
For some specific applications, the CA is the natural small input equivalent resistance, and a very large output
chose, for example, the realizations of ac current genera- resistance. Its CMOS realization typically consists of two
tors. Such current generators are employed in bio-impedance stages: a current follower cascaded with a current output
measurement. Typical applications include body composition stage. The former is to provide a high transresistance gain
analysis, heart rate extraction, cardiac monitoring, and early while the later is to offer a high differential transconductance
diagnosis of cancer [13]. For the impedance measurement, gain. A negative closed-loop feedback configuration is then
current generator should supply AC current to target tissue. achieved by shorting the inverting output (a negative current
Classical advantages of square-wave generators over their flows into a terminal node) with the input. The remaining
sinusoidal counterparts are low power consumption and low inverting output terminal is used to drive the load.

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H. A. Alzaher: Novel Schmitt Trigger and Square-Wave Generator Using Single CA

FIGURE 1. The proposed Schmitt trigger circuit using a CA and regeneration feedback.

The current follower input stage consists of a common gate becomes less than −L+ at which the input of the CA becomes
amplifier M1-MB and a folded cascode differential amplifier negative and the output will switch to L+ . The threshold cur-
(M2a-M3a and M2b-M3b). The input signal current is almost rents (hysteresis) can be changed using a feedback network
zero because of the high overall open-loop current gain, with a β factor. The hysteresis would become IHL = −βL−
thereby yielding a virtual ground behavior at the amplifier’s and ILH = −βL+ . Combining the two cases results in the
input. Transistors MB and M1 are matched and are biased transfer characteristics shown in Fig. 2.
with the same quiescent currents in order to set the input
bias voltage to DC ground. A local feedback is employed
to obtain a low (open-loop) input resistance with reasonable
low current consumption and small transistor dimension.
This achieved by the negative feedback between the output
of the differential amplifier (drain of M2a) and the input
terminal. Therefore, the input signal current will be drawn
by M2a since the current in M1 is fixed, and thus appears
at the high-resistance node (drain of M2b). The remaining
transistors are DC current generators needed for biasing. FIGURE 2. Transfer characteristics of the proposed Schmitt trigger.

The balanced voltage-to-current converter used as the output

stage is formed mainly by (M4a, M4b, M5a, and M5b) while IV. THE PROPOSED SQUARE WAVE GENERATOR
MB5 and MB6 are for biasing. Unlike ring oscillators, relaxation oscillators based on
Actually, without feedback, the circuit possesses a large Schmitt trigger have less dependency on the transconduc-
open-loop gain due to the gains of the current-to-voltage tance (gm ) variation of the transistors since the output fre-
converter of the input stage and the balanced voltage-to- quency is mainly determined by a tail current and a timing
current converter of the output stage. Therefore, a current
mode comparator with two differential outputs is attained.
In reference to the outward direction, the current from the
drains of M4b-M5b saturates at a positive DC biasing current
of MB6 (L+ = IB ) for a positive input current IX , whereas
the current from drains M4a-M5a saturates at a negative DC
biasing current of MB5 (L− = −IB ).
The operation of the proposed Schmitt trigger in Fig. 1 can
be explained as follows. Assuming the output starts at
Ion = L+ (i.e., Iop = L− and IX < 0), the output current will
remain at this value (L+ ) until the input becomes greater than
−L− where IX becomes positive. Therefore, the output will
change to L-. Conversely, assuming that the Schmitt trigger
is currently in the low state (L− ), which means Iop = L+ ,
IX > 0, the output will remain at that state unless the input FIGURE 3. The proposed square-wave oscillator.

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 H. A. Alzaher: Novel Schmitt Trigger and Square-Wave Generator Using Single CA

FIGURE 4. CMOS realization of the MO-CA used in the square wave oscillator.

capacitor. The proposed square wave oscillator is shown TABLE 1. Transistor sizes for MO-CA.
in Fig. 3. It incorporates a CA with two identical output stages
called multi-output CA (MO-CA). The CMOS realization of
the MO-CA is depicted in Fig. 4.
A closed-loop negative feedback configuration is utilized
to trigger the Schmitt trigger automatically and hence starts
and sustains the oscillation. This is achieved by applying
Ion to a grounded capacitor (C) whose voltage is changed
to current through a feedback resistor (R). A second output
stage, formed by M4c, M4d, M5c, and M5d and its bias-
ing transistors (MCP, MCN, MB10 and MB11), is utilized
to provide differential square-wave currents (Isqp and Isqn ).
The biasing current (IBB ) of this stage can be selected inde-
pendently. Therefore, the magnitude of the oscillation can be
independently adjusted through the bias current IBB .
Observing that during the charging interval Ion = L+ ,
IX > 0, IF = βL− where β = R1 /(R1 + R2 ), expressions
for the capacitor voltage and feedback resistor current (IR )
are determined. These lead to the charging interval given by
the following:
L+ − βL−
 
TCharge = RCln (2)
L+ + βL−
Similarly, the discharging interval can be expressed as
follows:
βL+ − L−
 
TDischarge = RCln (3)
−βL+ − L−
Typically, L+ = −L− ; hence, the frequency of the oscillation
reduces to the following:
1
fosc = h  i (4)
2RCln 1+β
1−β

Clearly, the frequency of the oscillation is impermeable to the

supply voltages and can be controlled via C and/or R.

V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
FIGURE 5. Die photographs of the proposed circuits. a The Schmitt
The proposed Schmitt trigger and oscillator were fabricated trigger. b The oscillator.
in a standard 150 nm CMOS process. The transistor sizes
currents are listed in Table 1. Their die photographs are shown During measurements, supply voltages of ±0.75 V and a
in Fig. 5. Their active areas are approximately 0.02mm2 and nominal biasing currents of 1 µA were used. These lead to
0.05mm2 , respectively. a typical total power of approximately 8 µW and 11 µW for

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H. A. Alzaher: Novel Schmitt Trigger and Square-Wave Generator Using Single CA

the Schmitt trigger and the oscillator, respectively. The design

is optimized to reduce the DC offset currents of both the
input and output stages. The input and output offset currents
was trimmed through adjusting the width of MB2 and MB5,
respectively.
The experimental results showing the responses of the
Schmitt trigger to an input sinusoidal signal of 1 MHz are
shown in Fig. 6. Two sets of measurements are shown for
biasing currents IB of 1 µA and 45 µA. Passive resistors
with appropriate values are used for generating the biasing
current. Resistors of 10 k are used to convert the input
voltage source to a current and the output currents to voltages
during measurements.
FIGURE 7. Frequency of oscillation varied using active resistance R.

FIGURE 6. Experimental results of the proposed Schmitt trigger. a Biasing

current IB of 1 µA. b Biasing current IB of 45 µA.
FIGURE 8. Typical output waveforms with fosc = 7 MHz. a Amplitudes
of 50 µA. b Amplitudes of 25 µA.

The proposed oscillator was designed using

R1 = R2 = 10 k and C = 5 pF, whereas R was
replaced with an NMOS transistor for promoting frequency differential square-wave signals (Isqp and Isqn ) at 7 MHz with
tuning. The experimental results show a tuning range from amplitudes of 50 µA and 25 µA, per the control of IBB .
approximately 1.5 MHz to 7 MHz when varying the gate
voltage of the transistor from 0.75 V to 0.55 V as depicted VI. GENERAL COMPARSION
in Fig. 7. The well-known opamp based Schmitt trigger requires one
Actually, the amplitudes of the output signals can be set active block and two resistors and provides single ended
arbitrarily. Fig. 8 shows two measurement sets for the output voltage mode output signal as shown in Fig. 9. Both the

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TABLE 2. Comparison with other fundamental circuits.

FIGURE 9. The opamp based Schmitt trigger.

output voltage amplitude and hysteresis are interdependent

and they also dependent on the supply voltage. In fact, it is
a general problem often encountered in all voltage mode
Schmitt triggers. Basic Schmitt triggers using OTA [16] and
OTRA [17] requires one active block and a resistor each as
shown in Fig. 10 and Fig. 11, respectively. differential transconductance amplifier (MOCCCDTA), and
current controlled differential difference current conveyor
(CCDDCC) are available [21]–[25]. It can be observed that
these designs may avoid some of the mentioned problems but
they are less attractive for low power applications.
Actually, these active building blocks are formed by
two or more active elements. For example, a CTTA consists
of a CCII and two OTAs. Table 3 compares the performance
of proposed work and several available solutions. It can be
seen that off-the-shelf solutions use very high supply voltages

TABLE 3. Comparison with available solutions.

FIGURE 10. A Schmitt trigger circuit using OTA [16].

FIGURE 11. A Schmitt trigger circuit using OTRA [17].

The design using OTA has input and output voltage sig-
nals and requires a voltage buffer to derive the load. Its
OTRA counterpart has an input current and provides output
voltage and requires an analog switch for its operation. The
basic Schmitt trigger using CCII is again a voltage mode
circuit designed with one active block and two resistors [18].
It has two problems, it requires a voltage buffer to derive the
load and its operation is directly dependent on the parasitic
resistance at its X-terminal designated as rx . Summary of the
main characteristics of these Schmitt triggers along with the
proposed design is given in Table 2.
In fact, there are improved versions such as [16], [19],
and [20] but they would require additional active blocks
and resistors. Also, Schmitt trigger based on more complex
active blocks such as the CFOA, differential voltage cur-
rent conveyor (DVCC), differential difference current con-
veyor (DDCC), multiple output current controlled conveyor

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