Patent attributes
A sample-and-hold circuit is presented that is current driven at the input and current sensed at the output, using two capacitors—one at the input to the ground and second past a pair of complementary CMOS switches at the output to the ground. These capacitors in connection with an input current drive form a highpass noise transfer function that substantially reduces the 1/f noise of the switches and then rolls the transfer function off, further reducing the noise. The overall noise level is significantly lower as compared to a conventional voltage-driven and voltage-sensed sample-and-hold circuit that has a lowpass transfer function which, after integration, demonstrates a noise limit of kT/C. Depending on the circuit parameters the present sample-and-hold circuit shows an integrated noise improvement of between 5 and 10 dB over kT/C limit.
