Design of a pre-amplifier in differential mode continuous comparator

This paper describes how to design a pre-amplifier in differential mode continuous comparator for the driver IC in ATE (automatic test equipment) system with 0.18um BCDMOS technology. While the previous differential mode comparator which compares the differential signals between two DUTs (device under test) needs three pre-amplifiers, the proposed pre-amplifier exploits only one differential difference amplifier (DDA). It shows less power consumption and less chip area. Also, it does not need compensation circuits and compensation capacitors in DDA. It operates up to the frequency range of 800MHz. The chip area is 0.514mm².