Dynamic range optimization of weakly nonlinear, fully balanced, Gm-C filters with power dissipation constraints

This paper presents an analytical algorithm for optimizing the dynamic range of continuous-time active filters under a fixed power dissipation constraint. Assuming weak third-order nonlinearities, we model distortion as a small signal disturbance of the linear solution and use linear techniques in the distortion analysis. Due to the generality of the formulation many important distortion phenomena can be described, e.g., the compression of the desired in-band signal due to large out-of-band interferers, intermodulation distortion, etc. Simple, closed-form expressions are derived for the noise and the distortion of the filter as functions of power dissipation. These expressions are used to optimize the noise, distortion and dynamic range, of the filter. The validity of the proposed algorithm is verified with simulation.