This volume of Analog Circuit Design concentrates on three topics: Operational Amplifiers. A-to-D converters and Analog CAD. The book comprises six papers on each topic written by internationally recognised experts. These papers have a tutorial nature aimed at improving the design of analog circuits. The book is divided into three parts. Part I, Operational Amplifiers, presents new technologies for the design of Op-Amps in both bipolar and CMOS technologies. Two papers demonstrate techniques for improving frequency and gain behavior at high voltage. Low voltage bipolar Op-Amp design is treated in another paper. The realization high-speed and high gain VLSI building blocks in CMOS is demonstrated in two papers. The final paper shows how to provide output power with CMOS buffer amplifiers. Part II, Analog-to-Digital Conversion, presents papers which address very high conversion speeds and very high resolution implementations using sigma-delta modulation architectures. Analog to Digital converters provide the link between the analog world of transducers and the digital world of signal processing and computing. High-performance bipolar and MOS technologies result in high-resolution or high-speed convertors which can be applied in digital audio or video systems. Furthermore, the advanced high-speed bipolar technologies show an increase in conversion speed into the gigahertz range. Part III, Analog Computer Aided Design, presents the latest research towards providing analog circuit designers with the tools needed to automate much of the design process. The techniques and methodologies described demonstrate the advances being made in developing analog design tools comparable with those alreadyavailable for digital design. The papers in this volume are based on those presented at the Workshop on Advances in Analog Circuit Design held in Delft, The Netherlands in 1992. The main intention of the workshop was to brainstorm with a group of about 100 analog design experts on the new possibilities and future developments on the above topics. The result of this brainstorming is contained in Analog Circuit Design, which is thus an important reference for researchers and design engineers working in the forefront of analog circuit design and research.

Many interesting design trends are shown by the six papers on operational amplifiers (Op Amps). Firstly. there is the line of stand-alone Op Amps using a bipolar IC technology which combines high-frequency and high voltage. This line is represented in papers by Bill Gross and Derek Bowers. Bill Gross shows an improved high-frequency compensation technique of a high quality three stage Op Amp. Derek Bowers improves the gain and frequency behaviour of the stages of a two-stage Op Amp. Both papers also present trends in current-mode feedback Op Amps. Low-voltage bipolar Op Amp design is presented by leroen Fonderie. He shows how multipath nested Miller compensation can be applied to turn rail-to-rail input and output stages into high quality low-voltage Op Amps. Two papers on CMOS Op Amps by Michael Steyaert and Klaas Bult show how high speed and high gain VLSI building blocks can be realised. Without departing from a single-stage OT A structure with a folded cascode output, a thorough high frequency design technique and a gain-boosting technique contributed to the high-speed and the high-gain achieved with these Op Amps. . Finally. Rinaldo Castello shows us how to provide output power with CMOS buffer amplifiers. The combination of class A and AB stages in a multipath nested Miller structure provides the required linearity and bandwidth.