Are CMOS Operational Transconductance Amplifiers Old Fashioned? A Systematic Review

Abstract

— Operational Transconductance Amplifiers (OTAs) are essential building blocks in analog circuits. Since the early years of integrated circuit science, OTAs have been used in industry and researched in academia. Over the years, a number of techniques and approaches to OTA design have been observed in the literature. With this systematic review, we aim to provide an overview of top journal papers published from 2017 to 2021 containing OTA design. In our investigation we initially found 128 manuscripts and 24 primary studies of OTA design. A set of 10 different techniques have been found. Furthermore, we also evaluated used technology, inversion level and characterization process. With this study we contribute to highlight recent OTA design innovations.