Dual-mode design of fully differential circuits using fully balanced operational amplifiers

Fully differential (F-D) analogue circuits are usually designed focusing only on their differential-mode (DM) behaviour, without considering common-mode (CM) responses. A technique is presented for the design of both DM and CM circuit responses, using fully balanced operational amplifiers (FBOAs) as analogue building blocks. FBOAs work with CM and DM voltages as a whole, having an ideally infinite gain for both modes. This allows independent design of CM and DM dynamics. Inverting and non-inverting F-D topologies can be implemented in a simple way, similar to the implementation of their single-ended counterparts. Some typical application circuits are analysed and discussed and, as a design example, a ´double-mode oscillator´ (a circuit that has independent CM and DM oscillations) was built and experimentally evaluated.