A 50-mA 1-nF Low-Voltage Low-Dropout Voltage Regulator for SoC Applications

In this paper, we present a low-voltage low-dropout voltage regulator (LDO) for a system-on-chip (SoC) application which, exploiting the multiplication of the Miller effect through the use of a current amplifier, is frequency compensated up to 1-nF capacitive load. The topology and the strategy adopted to design the LDO and the related compensation frequency network are described in detail. The LDO works with a supply voltage as low as 1.2 V and provides a maximum load current of 50 mA with a drop-out voltage of 200 mV: the total integrated compensation capacitance is about 40 pF. Measurement results as well as comparison with other SoC LDOs demonstrate the advantage of the proposed topology.