PRIME 2012, Aachen, Germany Session TG3 – Analog DC

A Low Power Bandgap Voltage Reference Circuit

with PSRR Enhancement
Lei Liao, Lukas Lohaus, Aytac Atac, Sebastian Strache, Ralf Wunderlich, and Stefan Heinen

Chair of Integrated Analog Circuits

RWTH Aachen University
Sommerfeldstrasse 24, D-52074 Aachen, Germany
Email: ias@rwth-aachen.de

Abstract—This paper presents a low power high PSRR VDD

bandgap voltage reference (BGR) circuit. Two concepts for PSRR
enhancement are investigated and evaluated in this work. The
designed BGR circuit operates with 2.7 V and generates a
reference voltage of 1.26 V. The BGR circuit provides -82.6 dB
power supply rejection ratio (PSRR) at 1 MHz and the PSRR
at DC region is also below -80 dB. The PSRR enhancement
is implemented by using a low power low drop out voltage
regulator (LDO) integrated into the BGR circuit. The overall
current consumption of the design is less than 60 µA.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Precise bandgap voltage references (BGR) are widely used
in analog and mixed-signal applications, such as high per-
formance analog-to-digital converters (A/D) and switch-mode
voltage regulators [1]. Especially for battery powered devices,
the demand towards integration of RF, digital-baseband and
power management blocks into a single chip has recently been
increasing [2]. However, different circuit topologies operating
at various frequencies induce significant fluctuations on the
power supply. These variations present a critical challenge,
especially in low power bandgap design. In consequence, it
is required to optimize the conflict of aims between high
PSRR and low power consumption while maintaining high
accuracy. This paper presents a conceptual design of a low
power bandgap voltage reference with high PSRR.
A. Challenges of Low Power Bandgap Design
Fig. 1 shows the proposed topology of a BiCMOS bandgap
reference circuit [3]. By reducing the current consumption
of the bandgap reference circuit, the strong nonlinear effect
of both diodes Q1 and Q2 will be significantly observed
on the generated reference voltage. As shown in Fig. 1,
when the supply voltage of the bandgap reference circuit
has a fluctuation, which can be caused by hard switching
behaviors from other circuit blocks, the current flow through
both diodes Q1 and Q2 will also vary [4]. Due to the strong
nonlinear effect of the diodes, the voltage potentials at the
inputs of the operational amplifier will also have a variation
that will produce a voltage ripple on the generated reference
voltage. When the high frequency supply voltage fluctuation
is strong, it will push both diodes Q1 and Q2 out of their
correct operating points and causes a functional failure of the
bandgap reference voltage.
M1 M2 M3
I1 I2
Vref
R0
Q1 Q2
R1 R2 R3
GND
Fig. 1. Low power bandgap circuit
B. Solutions for PSRR Improvement of Bandgap Reference
Circuit
The main solution for improving the PSRR of a bandgap
reference circuit is to filter out the voltage fluctuations from
the power supply, so that the bandgap reference can get a
relative clean filtered supply voltage. This paper investigates
two concepts for PSRR enhancement of the bandgap reference
circuit. The first concept realizes a low pass effect by using
an integrated RC filter at the supply voltage side of the BGR
circuit, so that the high frequency supply voltage fluctuations
can be filtered out. However, due to the large area demand
of the integrated resistors and capacitors, the pole produced
by the RC element can not be placed in a low frequency
region. Therefore, this concept can only provide a PSRR
enhancement in high frequency region. The second concept
uses a low dropout voltage regulator (LDO) integrated into
the bandgap reference circuit to achieve the rejection of
power supply fluctuations. This concept is able to enhance
the PSRR in high frequency as well as in low frequency
regions. The challenge of this concept is to keep the power
consumption low and to reduce the area demand of the low
dropout voltage regulator.
II. C IRCUIT IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION
Fig. 2 shows the proposed schematic of the bandgap ref-
erence circuit [3]. Inside the circuit, the currents in M1 , M2
and M3 are set to be equal (I1 = I2 = I3 ). The resistors R1

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Paper TG33 PRIME 2012, Aachen, Germany

Start up circuit
is -71 dB. However, due to the limited bandwidth of the
M1 M2 M3
operational amplifier inside the bandgap circuit, the PSRR will
be reduced with increasing the frequency of the power supply
I1 I2 I3
variation. This bandgap circuit provides a PSRR of -30 dB at
Vref
300 kHz and -50 dB at 1 MHz. For integrated switch mode
R0
power supplies and chips with integrated high speed baseband
Q1 Q2
circuits, which induce very strong supply voltage variations at
R1 1 N R2 R3 high frequencies, the PSRR of this designed bandgap circuit
is not sufficient. Therefore an enhancement of the PSRR at
high frequency region is needed.
Fig. 2. Schematic of bandgap voltage reference circuit A. PSRR enhancement by using passive RC low pass filer
In order to filter out the high frequency fluctuations of the
supply voltage, a RC low pass filter is integrated into the
and R2 are also chosen equally. The reference voltage Vref
designed bandgap reference circuit. Fig. 5 shows the modified
of the bandgap reference circuit can be calculated by
   
R3 ln(N ) R3 RC Low Pass BGR circuit
Vref = I1 R3 = VT + VBE (1) Vdropout=0.2V
Start up circuit
R0 R1 VDD VoutRC=2.5V

with R dropout M1 M2 M3

VT ln(N ) VBE
I1 = + . (2) I1 I2 I3 Vref
R0 R1 Cf

By setting the value of N , the temperature effect of the Q1 Q2

R0

generated reference voltage Vref can be compensated [3]. R3

R1 R2
1 N
Fig. 3 shows the simulated bandgap reference voltage Vref

1.27
Fig. 5. Improved BGR circuit with RC low pass filter
Vref [V]

1.265
bandgap reference circuit. The capacitor and resistor values
1.26
should be chosen by considering the circuit area and supply
voltage drop. Especially, the resistor value of Vdropout should
0 20 40 60 80 100
o
Temperature [ C ]
be chosen carefully, that by losing of supply voltage the
bandgap circuit can still keep the correct operating point. The
Fig. 3. Output of Vref after temperature compensation value of the resistor Rdropout is set to be 12 kΩ so that the
voltage drop Vdropout on the resistor is 0.2 V by the 16 µA
as a function of temperature. The bandgap reference voltage current flow through the bandgap reference circuit. The value
is compensated and the variation of the reference voltage is of the used capacitor Cf is 50.4 pF. The pole produced from
less than 0.35 mV/o C. the integrated RC low pass filter is located at 263.15 kHz.
−20

−30

−40 w/o RC filter

/w RC filter 5.6 dB
−50
PSRR [dB]

−60

−70
PSRR [dB]

−80

−90

−100
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
10 10 10 10 10 10 10
Frequency [Hz]

Fig. 4. The simulated PSRR of designed bandgap

The designed bandgap reference circuit consumes 16 µA with

Frequency [Hz]
a supply voltage of 2.7 V. The simulated PSRR of the designed
bandgap circuit is shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen that the Fig. 6. Improvement of the PSRR
PSRR of the designed bandgap circuit in the DC region The simulation results of the comparison between the bandgap

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PRIME 2012, Aachen, Germany Session TG3 – Analog DC

Low dropout voltage regulator BGR circuit

Operational amplifier Vdropout=0.2V Start up circuit
Vdd=2.7V Vout=2.5V

Mpass M1 M2 M3

Cdiv Rdiv

Rm
Vref
Cout
Cm
Rf
Vf
R0
Q1 Q2
Cf Rdiv
R1 R2 R3
1 N

Fig. 7. High PSRR bandgap voltage reference circuit

reference circuit with and without the included RC low pass
filter are shown in Fig. 6. The PSRR at 1 MHz is enhanced
by 5.6 dB and there is no significant PSRR improvement at
300 kHz. This is due to the pole of the RC low pass filter, that
can not be placed at low frequencies since the value of the RC
product is limited by the consumed circuit area. The start up
VDD
Voltage [V]
a pass transistor Mpass and a resistor based voltage divider
with a feed forward capacitor Cdiv . The operational amplifier
is used for controlling the pass device Mpass to stabilize
the output voltage Vout . The feed forward capacitor is used
for improving the phase margin of the low dropout voltage
regulator control loop [5]. This low dropout voltage regulator
operates with 2.7 V and the dropout voltage over the pass
transistor Mpass is set to 0.2 V. Therefore, the voltage supplied
VDD=2.7V±150 mV @1MHz
to the bandgap reference circuit is 2.5 V.
The simulated open loop transfer function of the low dropout

Vout RC

1.26 V

Vref
Vripple=350 uV

Time [us]

Fig. 8. Transient start up simulation

behavior of the bandgap reference circuit with the integrated
RC filter is shown in Fig. 8. In the simulation, a 300 mV
(peak to peak) voltage fluctuation at 1 MHz is injected into
the power supply. Because the pole of the RC filter is placed at
263.15 kHz, which is relatively near to 1 MHz, the suppression
of the supply voltage fluctuation is not very strong. Therefore,
the voltage VoutRC supplied to the bandgap reference circuit
has still a voltage ripple. This causes also a 350 µV voltage
ripple of the generated reference voltage Vref .
B. PSRR enhancement by using low dropout voltage regulator
In order to achieve a better PSRR enhancement and to
reduce the total capacitance used in the circuit, a low dropout
voltage regulator is designed and integrated into the bandgap
reference circuit, so that the bandgap reference circuit is
completely supplied by a regulated voltage. Fig. 7 shows the
schematic of this design. The applied low dropout voltage
regulator consist of a miller compensated operational amplifier,
PM=55°
Frequency [Hz]
Fig. 9. Open loop transfer function of the LDO
voltage regulator is shown in Fig. 9. It can be seen that the
phase margin of the control loop is 55o which is sufficient to
ensure the loop stability.
Fig. 10 gives the simulation results of the improved PSRR. In
the DC region, the improvement of the PSRR is 10.5 dB. Espe-
cially, In the high frequency region due to the poles generated
by low dropout voltage regulator, the improvement increases.
In this case, the improvements of PSRR are 17 dB at 300 kHz
and 32.6 dB at 1 MHz compared to the bandgap reference
circuit without LDO. As a result, a PSRR enhancement at

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TABLE I
T HE VALUE OF USED CAPACITORS
/w LDO
w/o LDO Capacitors used in RC filter
32.6 dB Name of capacitor Value
Cf 50.4 pF
Capacitors used in LDO circuit
17 dB Name of capacitor Value
Cout 5.6 pF
Cf 4 pF
Cm 2.5 pF
10.5 dB Cdiv 0.3 pF
Total C 12.4 pF
TABLE II
T HE ESTIMATED ADDITIONAL AREA
Name of the additional circuit area [WxL]
Passive RC filter 240 µm × 240 µm
LDO circuit 160 µm × 160 µm
Fig. 10. Improvement of the PSRR

all the frequencies is achieved. The start up behavior of the the current consumption of the bandgap reference circuit
improved bandgap reference circuit is shown in Fig. 11. In the increases by 42 µA. The overall current consumption of the
designed bandgap reference circuit is 60 µA. This gives a total
VDD VDD=2.7V±150 mV @1MHz power consumption of 162 µW at 2.7 V.
III. C ONCLUSION
The low power bandgap reference circuit with PSRR en-
Voltage [V]

Vout LDO
hancement is presented in this work. Two concepts for improv-
1.26 V ing the PSRR in the high frequency region are evaluated. Fi-
Vref nally, a significant enhancement of the PSRR at all frequencies
Vripple=30 uV

is achieved by using a low dropout voltage regulator integrated

Time [us]
Fig. 11. Transient start up simulation
start up simulation, after the rise up of the supply voltage, a
300 mV (peak to peak) voltage fluctuation with a frequency of
1 MHz is injected into the power supply. The integrated low
dropout voltage regulator circuit rejects most of the strong
fluctuations that the bandgap reference can be supplied with
a relatively clean voltage of 2.5 V. It can be seen that the
generated reference voltage has a voltage ripple of 30 µV and
the start up time is 28 µs.
C. Discussion
The in subsection II-A introduced concept provides a poor
PSRR enhancement of the bandgap reference circuit and the
circuit area is increased by using a big capacitor. Therefore,
this concept is not used into the implemented bandgap ref-
erence circuit. The concept introduced in subsection II-B has
a well enhanced PSRR at all frequencies and the total used
capacitors, which are dominating the circuit area, is reduced
by a factor of four. The detailed capacitor values of both
introduced concepts are listed in Tab. I.
The estimated area of the additional circuits are given in
Tab. II. The passive RC filter circuit needs an area of
240 × 240 µm2 and the low dropout voltage requires an area
of 160 × 160 µm2 , which is less than half of the required area
of the RC low pass filter.
Due to the active devices of the low dropout voltage regulator,
into the bandgap reference circuit. The designed bandgap
reference provides -81 dB PSRR at DC region and -82.6 dB
PSRR at 1 MHz. The bandgap reference circuit operates with
2.7 V supply voltage and generates a reference voltage of
1.26 V. The overall power consumption of this design is less
than 162 µW, which is sufficient for low power applications.
The circuit implementation is done by using 0.25 µm BiCOMS
Process.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Dirk Bormann, and Tobias
Werth for fruitful discussions. The software support by the Ca-
dence Academic Network (CAN) is gratefully acknowledged.
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