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Design of Analog CMOS
Integrated Circuits
Second Edition

Behzad Razavi

Professor of Electrical Engineering


University of California, Los Angeles
DESIGN OF ANALOG CMOS INTEGRATED CIRCUITS, SECOND EDITION
Published by McGraw-Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121. Copyright  c 2017 by McGraw-Hill
Education. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Previous edition  c 2001. No part of
this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Razavi, Behzad.
Design of analog CMOS integrated circuits / Behzad Razavi, professor of electrical engineering,
University of California, Los Angeles. – Second edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-07-252493-2 (alk. paper) – ISBN 0-07-252493-6 (alk. paper) 1.
Analog CMOS integrated circuits. 2. Linear integrated circuits–Design and
construction. 3. Metal oxide semiconductors, Complementary. I. Title.
TK7874.654.R39 2017
621.3815–dc23 2015035303

The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication. The inclusion of a website does
not indicate an endorsement by the authors or McGraw-Hill Education, and McGraw-Hill Education does not
guarantee the accuracy of the information presented at these sites.

mheducation.com/highered
To the memory of my parents
Preface to the Second Edition

When I submitted proposals to publishers for the first edition of this book, they posed two questions to
me: (1) What is the future demand for analog books in a digital world? and (2) Is it wise to publish a book
dealing solely with CMOS? The words “analog” and “CMOS” in the book’s title were both in question.
Fortunately, the book resonated with students, instructors, and engineers. It has been adopted by
hundreds of universities around the world, translated to five languages, and cited 6,500 times.
While many fundamentals of analog design have not changed since the first edition was introduced,
several factors have called for a second: migration of CMOS technologies to finer geometries and lower
supply voltages, new approaches to analysis and design, and the need for more detailed treatments of
some topics. This edition provides:

• Greater emphasis on modern CMOS technology, culminating in a new chapter, Chapter 11, on
design methodologies and step-by-step op amp design in nanometer processes
• Extensive study of feedback through the approaches by Bode and Middlebrook
• A new section on the analysis of stability using Nyquist’s approach—as the oft-used Bode method
falls short in some common systems
• Study of FinFETs
• Sidebars highlighting important points in nanometer design
• A new section on biasing techniques
• Study of low-voltage bandgap circuits
• More than 100 new examples

Some instructors ask why we begin with square-law devices. This is for two reasons: (1) such a path
serves as an intuitive entry point and provides considerable value in the analysis of amplifiers in terms of
allowable voltage swings, and (2) despite their very short channel lengths, FinFETs—the devices used
in 16-nm nodes and below—exhibit nearly square-law characteristics.
This book is accompanied with a solutions manual and a new set of PowerPoint slides, available at
www.mhhe.com/razavi.

Behzad Razavi
July 2015

iv
Preface to the Second Edition v

Preface to the First Edition


In the past two decades, CMOS technology has rapidly embraced the field of analog integrated circuits,
providing low-cost, high-performance solutions and rising to dominate the market. While silicon bipolar
and III-V devices still find niche applications, only CMOS processes have emerged as a viable choice for
the integration of today’s complex mixed-signal systems. With channel lengths projected to scale down
to 0.05 μm, CMOS technology will continue to serve circuit design for another two decades.
Analog circuit design itself has evolved with the technology as well. High-voltage, high-power analog
circuits containing a few tens of transistors and processing small, continuous-time signals have gradually
been replaced by low-voltage, low-power systems comprising thousands of devices and processing large,
mostly discrete-time signals. For example, many analog techniques used only ten years ago have been
abandoned because they do not lend themselves to low-voltage operation.
This book deals with the analysis and design of analog CMOS integrated circuits, emphasizing fun-
damentals as well as new paradigms that students and practicing engineers need to master in today’s
industry. Since analog design requires both intuition and rigor, each concept is first introduced from an
intuitive perspective and subsequently treated by careful analysis. The objective is to develop both a solid
foundation and methods of analyzing circuits by inspection so that the reader learns what approximations
can be made in which circuits and how much error to expect in each approximation. This approach also
enables the reader to apply the concepts to bipolar circuits with little additional effort.
I have taught most of the material in this book both at UCLA and in industry, polishing the order, the
format, and the content with every offering. As the reader will see throughout the book, I follow four
“golden rules” in writing (and teaching): (1) I explain why the reader needs to know the concept that is
to be studied; (2) I put myself in the reader’s position and predict the questions that he/she may have
while reading the material for the first time; (3) With Rule 2 in mind, I pretend to know only as much
as the (first-time) reader and try to “grow” with him/her, thereby experiencing the same thought process;
(4) I begin with the “core” concept in a simple (even imprecise) language and gradually add necessary
modifications to arrive at the final (precise) idea. The last rule is particularly important in teaching circuits
because it allows the reader to observe the evolution of a topology and hence learn both analysis and
synthesis.
The text comprises 16 chapters whose contents and order are carefully chosen to provide a natural
flow for both self-study and classroom adoption in quarter or semester systems. Unlike some other books
on analog design, we cover only a bare minimum of MOS device physics at the beginning, leaving more
advanced properties and fabrication details for later chapters. To an expert, the elementary device physics
treatment my appear oversimplified, but my experience suggests that (a) first-time readers simply do
not absorb the high-order device effects and fabrication technology before they study circuits because
they do not see the relevance; (b) if properly presented, even the simple treatment proves adequate for a
substantial coverage of basic circuits; (c) readers learn advanced device phenomena and processing steps
much more readily after they have been exposed to a significant amount of circuit analysis and design.
Chapter 1 provides the reader with motivation for learning the material in this book. Chapter 2 describes
basic physics and operation of MOS devices.
Chapters 3 through 5 deal with single-stage and differential amplifiers and current mirrors, respectively,
developing efficient analytical tools for quantifying the behavior of basic circuits by inspection.
Chapters 6 and 7 introduce two imperfections of circuits, namely, frequency response and noise. Noise
is treated at an early stage so that it “sinks in” as the reader accounts for its effects in subsequent circuit
developments.
Chapters 8 through 10 describe feedback, operational amplifiers, and stability in feedback sys-
tems, respectively. With the useful properties of feedback analyzed, the reader is motivated to design
high-performance, stable op amps and understand the trade-offs between speed, precision, and power
dissipation.
vi Preface to the Second Edition

Chapters 11 through 13 deal with more advanced topics: bandgap references, elementary switched-
capacitor circuits, and the effect of nonlinearity and mismatch. These three subjects are included here
because they prove essential in most analog and mixed-signal systems today.
Chapter 14 is concerned with high-order MOS device effects and models, emphasizing the circuit
design implications. If preferred, the chapter can directly follow Chapter 2 as well. Chapter 15 describes
CMOS fabrication technology with a brief overview of layout design rules.
Chapter 16 presents the layout and packaging of analog and mixed-signal circuits. Many practical issues
that directly impact the performance of the circuit are described and various techniques are introduced.
The reader is assumed to have a basic knowledge of electronic circuits and devices, e.g., pn junctions,
the concept of small-signal operation, equivalent circuits, and simple biasing. For a senior-level elective
course, Chapters 1 through 8 can be covered in a quarter and Chapters 1 through 10 in a semester. For a
first-year graduate course, Chapters 1 through 11 plus one of Chapters 12, 13, or 14 can be taught in one
quarter, and almost the entire book in one semester.
The problem sets at the end of each chapter are designed to extend the reader’s understanding of the
material and complement it with additional practical considerations. A solutions manual will be available
for instructors.
Behzad Razavi
July 2000

Acknowledgments for the Second Edition


The second edition was enthusiastically and meticulously reviewed by a large number of individuals in
academia and industry. It is my pleasure to acknowldege their contributions:
Saheed Adeolu Tijani (University of Pavia)
Firooz Aflatouni (University of Pennsylvania)
Pietro Andreani (Lund University)
Emily Allstot (University of Washington)
Tejasvi Anand (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Afshin Babveyh (Stanford)
Nima Baniasadi (UC Berkeley)
Sun Yong Cho (Seoul National University)
Min Sung Chu (Seoul National University)
Yi-Ying Cheng (UCLA)
Jeny Chu (UCLA)
Milad Darvishi (Qualcomm)
Luis Fei (Intel)
Andrea Ghilioni (University of Pavia)
Chengkai Gu (UCLA)
Payam Heydari (UC Irvine)
Cheng-En Hsieh (National Taiwan University)
Po-Chiun Huang (National Tsing-Hua University)
Deog-Kyoon Jeong (Seoul National University)
Nader Kalantari (Broadcom)
Preface to the Second Edition vii

Alireza Karimi (UC Irvine)


Ehsan Kargaran (University of Pavia)
Sotirios Limotyrakis (Qualcomm Atheros)
Xiaodong Liu (Lund University)
Nima Maghari (University of Florida)
Shahriar Mirabbasi (University of British Columbia)
Hossein Mohammadnezhad (UC Irvine)
Amir Nikpaik (University of British Columbia)
Aria Samiei (University of Southern California)
Kia Salimi (IMEC)
Alireza Sharif-Bakhtiar (University of Toronto)
Guanghua Shu (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
David Su (Qualcomm Atheros)
Siyu Tan (Lund University)
Jeffrey Wang (University of Toronto)
Tzu-Chao Yan (National Chiao-Tung University)
Ehzan Zhian Tabasy (University of Texas A&M)

In addition, my colleague Jason Woo explained to me many subtleties of nanometer devices and their
physics. I wish to thank all.
The production of the book has been in the hands of Heather Ervolino and Vincent Bradshaw of
McGraw-Hill, who tirelessly attended to every detail over a six-month period. I would like to thank both.
Finally, I wish to thank my wife, Angelina, for her continual help with typing and organizing the
chapters.

Acknowledgments for the First Edition


Writing a book begins with a great deal of excitement. However, after two years of relentless writing,
drawing, and revising, when the book exceeds 700 pages and it is almost impossible to make the equations
and subscripts and superscripts in the last chapter consisent with those in the first, the author begins to
feel streaks of insanity, realizing that the book will never finish without the support of many other
people.
This book has benefited from the contributions of many individuals. A number of UCLA students read
the first draft and the preview edition sentence by sentence. In particular, Alireza Zolfaghari, Ellie Cijvat,
and Hamid Rafati meticulously read the book and found several hundred errors (some quite subtle).
Also, Emad Hegazi, Dawei Guo, Alireza Razzaghi, Jafar Savoj, and Jing Tian made helpful suggestions
regarding many chapters. I thank all.
Many experts in academia and industry read various parts of the book and provided useful feedback.
Among them are Brian Brandt (National Semiconductor), Matt Corey (National Semiconductor), Terri
Fiez (Oregon State University), Ian Galton (UC San Diego), Ali Hajimiri (Caltech), Stacy Ho (Analog
Devices), Yin Hu (Texas Instruments), Shen-Iuan Liu (National Taiwan University), Joe Lutsky (National
Semiconductor), Amit Mehrotra (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), David Robertson (Analog
Devices), David Su (T-Span), Tao Sun (National Semiconductor), Robert Taft (National Semiconductor),
and Masoud Zargari (T-Span). Jason Woo (UCLA) patiently endured and answered my questions about
device physics. I thank all.
viii Preface to the Second Edition

Ramesh Harjani (University of Minnesota), John Nyenhius (Purdue University), Norman Tien (Cornell
University), and Mahmoud Wagdy (California State University, Long Beach) reviewed the book proposal
and made valuable sugegstions. I thank all.
My wife, Angelina, has made many contributions to this book, from typing chapters to finding nu-
merous errors and raising questions that made me reexamine my own understanding. I am very grateful
to her.
The timely production of the book was made possible by the hard work of the staff at McGraw-Hill,
particularly Catherine Fields, Michelle Flomenhoft, Heather Burbridge, Denise Santor-Mitzit, and Jim
Labeots. I thank all.
I learned analog design from two masters: Mehrdad Sharif-Bakhtiar (Sharif University of Technology)
and Bruce Wooley (Stanford University), and it is only appropriate that I express my gratitude to them
here. What I inherited from them will be inherited by many generations of students.
About the Author

Behzad Razavi received the BSEE degree from Sharif University of Technology in 1985 and the MSEE
and PhDEE degrees from Stanford University in 1988 and 1992, respectively. He was with AT&T Bell
Laboratories and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories until 1996. Since 1996, he has been Associate Professor
and subsequently Professor of Electrical Engineering at University of California, Los Angeles. His current
research includes wireless transceivers, frequency synthesizers, phase-locking and clock recovery for
high-speed data communications, and data converters.
Professor Razavi was an Adjunct Professor at Princeton University from 1992 to 1994, and at Stanford
University in 1995. He served on the Technical Program Committees of the International Solid-State
Circuits Conference (ISSCC) from 1993 to 2002 and VLSI Circuits Symposium from 1998 to 2002. He
has also served as Guest Editor and Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, IEEE
Transactions on Circuits and Systems, and International Journal of High Speed Electronics.
Professor Razavi received the Beatrice Winner Award for Editorial Excellence at the 1994 ISSCC,
the best paper award at the 1994 European Solid-State Circuits Conference, the best panel award at the
1995 and 1997 ISSCC, the TRW Innovative Teaching Award in 1997, the best paper award at the IEEE
Custom Integrated Circuits Conference in 1998, and the McGraw-Hill First Edition of the Year Award in
2001. He was the corecipient of both the Jack Kilby Outstanding Student Paper Award and the Beatrice
Winner Award for Editorial Excellence at the 2001 ISSCC. He received the Lockheed Martin Excellence
in Teaching Award in 2006, the UCLA Faculty Senate Teaching Award in 2007, and the CICC Best
Invited Paper Award in 2009 and in 2012. He was the corecipient of the 2012 VLSI Circuits Symposium
Best Student Paper Award and the 2013 CICC Best Paper Award. He was also recognized as one of the top
10 authors in the 50-year history of ISSCC. He received the 2012 Donald Pederson Award in Solid-State
Circuits and the American Society for Engineering Education PSW Teaching Award in 2014.
Professor Razavi has served as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer and is a Fellow of IEEE. He is the
author of Principles of Data Conversion System Design, RF Microelectronics, Design of Analog CMOS
Integrated Circuits, Design of Integrated Circuits for Optical Communications, and Fundamentals of
Microelectronics, and the editor of Monolithic Phase-Locked Loops and Clock Recovery Circuits and
Phase-Locking in High-Performance Systems.

ix
Brief Contents

1 Introduction to Analog Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1


2 Basic MOS Device Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3 Single-Stage Amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4 Differential Amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
5 Current Mirrors and Biasing Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
6 Frequency Response of Amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
7 Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
8 Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
9 Operational Amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
10 Stability and Frequency Compensation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
11 Nanometer Design Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
12 Bandgap References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
13 Introduction to Switched-Capacitor Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
14 Nonlinearity and Mismatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
15 Oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
16 Phase-Locked Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
17 Short-Channel Effects and Device Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 691
18 CMOS Processing Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 712
19 Layout and Packaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774

x
Contents

Preface to the Second Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv


About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

1 Introduction to Analog Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1


1.1 Why Analog? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Sensing and Processing Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 When Digital Signals Become Analog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.3 Analog Design Is in Great Demand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.4 Analog Design Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 Why Integrated? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Why CMOS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4 Why This Book? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.5 Levels of Abstraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 Basic MOS Device Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7


2.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.1 MOSFET as a Switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.2 MOSFET Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.3 MOS Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 MOS I/V Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.1 Threshold Voltage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.2 Derivation of I/V Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.3 MOS Transconductance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3 Second-Order Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4 MOS Device Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.4.1 MOS Device Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.4.2 MOS Device Capacitances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.4.3 MOS Small-Signal Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.4.4 MOS SPICE models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.4.5 NMOS Versus PMOS Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.4.6 Long-Channel Versus Short-Channel Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.5 Appendix A: FinFETs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.6 Appendix B: Behavior of a MOS Device as a Capacitor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

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3 Single-Stage Amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.1 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.2 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3 Common-Source Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.3.1 Common-Source Stage with Resistive Load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.3.2 CS Stage with Diode-Connected Load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.3.3 CS Stage with Current-Source Load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.3.4 CS Stage with Active Load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.3.5 CS Stage with Triode Load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.3.6 CS Stage with Source Degeneration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.4 Source Follower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.5 Common-Gate Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
3.6 Cascode Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
3.6.1 Folded Cascode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.7 Choice of Device Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

4 Differential Amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100


4.1 Single-Ended and Differential Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.2 Basic Differential Pair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4.2.1 Qualitative Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
4.2.2 Quantitative Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
4.2.3 Degenerated Differential Pair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
4.3 Common-Mode Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
4.4 Differential Pair with MOS Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
4.5 Gilbert Cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

5 Current Mirrors and Biasing Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134


5.1 Basic Current Mirrors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
5.2 Cascode Current Mirrors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
5.3 Active Current Mirrors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5.3.1 Large-Signal Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
5.3.2 Small-Signal Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
5.3.3 Common-Mode Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
5.3.4 Other Properties of Five-Transistor OTA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
5.4 Biasing Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
5.4.1 CS Biasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
5.4.2 CG Biasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
5.4.3 Source Follower Biasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
5.4.4 Differential Pair Biasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

6 Frequency Response of Amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173


6.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
6.1.1 Miller Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
6.1.2 Association of Poles with Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
6.2 Common-Source Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
6.3 Source Followers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
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6.4 Common-Gate Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193


6.5 Cascode Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
6.6 Differential Pair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
6.6.1 Differential Pair with Passive Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
6.6.2 Differential Pair with Active Load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
6.7 Gain-Bandwidth Trade-Offs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
6.7.1 One-Pole Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
6.7.2 Multi-Pole Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
6.8 Appendix A: Extra Element Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
6.9 Appendix B: Zero-Value Time Constant Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
6.10 Appendix C: Dual of Miller’s Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

7 Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
7.1 Statistical Characteristics of Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
7.1.1 Noise Spectrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
7.1.2 Amplitude Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
7.1.3 Correlated and Uncorrelated Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
7.1.4 Signal-to-Noise Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
7.1.5 Noise Analysis Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
7.2 Types of Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
7.2.1 Thermal Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
7.2.2 Flicker Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
7.3 Representation of Noise in Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
7.4 Noise in Single-Stage Amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
7.4.1 Common-Source Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
7.4.2 Common-Gate Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
7.4.3 Source Followers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
7.4.4 Cascode Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
7.5 Noise in Current Mirrors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
7.6 Noise in Differential Pairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
7.7 Noise-Power Trade-Off. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
7.8 Noise Bandwidth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
7.9 Problem of Input Noise Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
7.10 Appendix A: Problem of Noise Correlation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

8 Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
8.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
8.1.1 Properties of Feedback Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
8.1.2 Types of Amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
8.1.3 Sense and Return Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
8.2 Feedback Topologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
8.2.1 Voltage-Voltage Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
8.2.2 Current-Voltage Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
8.2.3 Voltage-Current Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
8.2.4 Current-Current Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
8.3 Effect of Feedback on Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
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8.4 Feedback Analysis Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299


8.5 Effect of Loading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
8.5.1 Two-Port Network Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
8.5.2 Loading in Voltage-Voltage Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
8.5.3 Loading in Current-Voltage Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
8.5.4 Loading in Voltage-Current Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
8.5.5 Loading in Current-Current Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
8.5.6 Summary of Loading Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
8.6 Bode’s Analysis of Feedback Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
8.6.1 Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
8.6.2 Interpretation of Coefficients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
8.6.3 Bode’s Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
8.6.4 Blackman’s Impedance Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
8.7 Middlebrook’s Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
8.8 Loop Gain Calculation Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
8.8.1 Preliminary Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
8.8.2 Difficulties with Return Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
8.9 Alternative Interpretations of Bode’s Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336

9 Operational Amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344


9.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
9.1.1 Performance Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
9.2 One-Stage Op Amps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
9.2.1 Basic Topologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
9.2.2 Design Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
9.2.3 Linear Scaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
9.2.4 Folded-Cascode Op Amps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
9.2.5 Folded-Cascode Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
9.2.6 Design Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
9.3 Two-Stage Op Amps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
9.3.1 Design Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
9.4 Gain Boosting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
9.4.1 Basic Idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
9.4.2 Circuit Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
9.4.3 Frequency Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
9.5 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
9.6 Output Swing Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
9.7 Common-Mode Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
9.7.1 Basic Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
9.7.2 CM Sensing Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
9.7.3 CM Feedback Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
9.7.4 CMFB in Two-Stage Op Amps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
9.8 Input Range Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
9.9 Slew Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
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9.10 High-Slew-Rate Op Amps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397


9.10.1 One-Stage Op Amps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
9.10.2 Two-Stage Op Amps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
9.11 Power Supply Rejection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
9.12 Noise in Op Amps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402

10 Stability and Frequency Compensation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410


10.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
10.2 Multipole Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
10.3 Phase Margin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
10.4 Basic Frequency Compensation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
10.5 Compensation of Two-Stage Op Amps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
10.6 Slewing in Two-Stage Op Amps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
10.7 Other Compensation Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
10.8 Nyquist’s Stability Criterion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
10.8.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
10.8.2 Basic Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
10.8.3 Construction of Polar Plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
10.8.4 Cauchy’s Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
10.8.5 Nyquist’s Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
10.8.6 Systems with Poles at Origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
10.8.7 Systems with Multiple 180◦ Crossings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454

11 Nanometer Design Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459


11.1 Transistor Design Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
11.2 Deep-Submicron Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
11.3 Transconductance Scaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
11.4 Transistor Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466
11.4.1 Design for Given I D and VDS,min . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466
11.4.2 Design for Given gm and I D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
11.4.3 Design for Given gm and VDS,min . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
11.4.4 Design for a Given gm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
11.4.5 Choice of Channel Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
11.5 Op Amp Design Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
11.5.1 Telescopic Op Amp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
11.5.2 Two-Stage Op Amp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
11.6 High-Speed Amplifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
11.6.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496
11.6.2 Op Amp Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
11.6.3 Closed-Loop Small-Signal Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
11.6.4 Op Amp Scaling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
11.6.5 Large-Signal Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
11.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
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12 Bandgap References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509


12.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
12.2 Supply-Independent Biasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
12.3 Temperature-Independent References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
12.3.1 Negative-TC Voltage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
12.3.2 Positive-TC Voltage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
12.3.3 Bandgap Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
12.4 PTAT Current Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523
12.5 Constant-G m Biasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
12.6 Speed and Noise Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525
12.7 Low-Voltage Bandgap References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529
12.8 Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533

13 Introduction to Switched-Capacitor Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539


13.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
13.2 Sampling Switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
13.2.1 MOSFETS as Switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
13.2.2 Speed Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
13.2.3 Precision Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
13.2.4 Charge Injection Cancellation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553
13.3 Switched-Capacitor Amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
13.3.1 Unity-Gain Sampler/Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
13.3.2 Noninverting Amplifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562
13.3.3 Precision Multiply-by-Two Circuit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567
13.4 Switched-Capacitor Integrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
13.5 Switched-Capacitor Common-Mode Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571

14 Nonlinearity and Mismatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576


14.1 Nonlinearity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
14.1.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
14.1.2 Nonlinearity of Differential Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
14.1.3 Effect of Negative Feedback on Nonlinearity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 581
14.1.4 Capacitor Nonlinearity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583
14.1.5 Nonlinearity in Sampling Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
14.1.6 Linearization Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585
14.2 Mismatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591
14.2.1 Effect of Mismatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
14.2.2 Offset Cancellation Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
14.2.3 Reduction of Noise by Offset Cancellation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
14.2.4 Alternative Definition of CMRR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603

15 Oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
15.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
15.2 Ring Oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
15.3 LC Oscillators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618
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15.3.1 Basic Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618


15.3.2 Cross-Coupled Oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621
15.3.3 Colpitts Oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 624
15.3.4 One-Port Oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 626
15.4 Voltage-Controlled Oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630
15.4.1 Tuning in Ring Oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633
15.4.2 Tuning in LC Oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 641
15.5 Mathematical Model of VCOs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 644

16 Phase-Locked Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651


16.1 Simple PLL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
16.1.1 Phase Detector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
16.1.2 Basic PLL Topology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 653
16.1.3 Dynamics of Simple PLL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 660
16.2 Charge-Pump PLLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 666
16.2.1 Problem of Lock Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 666
16.2.2 Phase/Frequency Detector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 667
16.2.3 Charge Pump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669
16.2.4 Basic Charge-Pump PLL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671
16.3 Nonideal Effects in PLLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 677
16.3.1 PFD/CP Nonidealities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 677
16.3.2 Jitter in PLLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681
16.4 Delay-Locked Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683
16.5 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685
16.5.1 Frequency Multiplication and Synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685
16.5.2 Skew Reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 687
16.5.3 Jitter Reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 688

17 Short-Channel Effects and Device Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 691


17.1 Scaling Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 691
17.2 Short-Channel Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 695
17.2.1 Threshold Voltage Variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 695
17.2.2 Mobility Degradation with Vertical Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 697
17.2.3 Velocity Saturation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 698
17.2.4 Hot Carrier Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700
17.2.5 Output Impedance Variation with Drain-Source Voltage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700
17.3 MOS Device Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 701
17.3.1 Level 1 Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 702
17.3.2 Level 2 Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 702
17.3.3 Level 3 Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 704
17.3.4 BSIM Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 706
17.3.5 Other Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707
17.3.6 Charge and Capacitance Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707
17.3.7 Temperature Dependence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 708
17.4 Process Corners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 708
xviii Contents

18 CMOS Processing Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 712


18.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 712
18.2 Wafer Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 713
18.3 Photolithography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714
18.4 Oxidation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 715
18.5 Ion Implantation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 716
18.6 Deposition and Etching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 718
18.7 Device Fabrication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 718
18.7.1 Active Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 718
18.7.2 Passive Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 721
18.7.3 Interconnects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 727
18.8 Latch-Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 730

19 Layout and Packaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733


19.1 General Layout Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733
19.1.1 Design Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 734
19.1.2 Antenna Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 736
19.2 Analog Layout Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 736
19.2.1 Multifinger Transistors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 737
19.2.2 Symmetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 739
19.2.3 Shallow Trench Isolation Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 743
19.2.4 Well Proximity Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 744
19.2.5 Reference Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 744
19.2.6 Passive Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 746
19.2.7 Interconnects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753
19.2.8 Pads and ESD Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 757
19.3 Substrate Coupling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 760
19.4 Packaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 764

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774
CHAPTER

1
Introduction to Analog Design

1.1 Why Analog?

We are surrounded by “digital” devices: digital cameras, digital TVs, digital communications (cell phones
and WiFi), the Internet, etc. Why, then, are we still interested in analog circuits? Isn’t analog design old
and out of fashion? Will there even be jobs for analog designers ten years from now?
Interestingly, these questions have been raised about every five years over the past 50 years, but mostly
by those who either did not understand analog design or did not want to deal with its challenges. In this
section, we learn that analog design is still essential, relevant, and challenging and will remain so for
decades to come.

1.1.1 Sensing and Processing Signals


Many electronic systems perform two principal functions: they sense (receive) a signal and subsequently
process and extract information from it. Your cell phone receives a radio-frequency (RF) signal and, after
processing it, provides voice or data information. Similarly, your digital camera senses the light intensity
emitted from various parts of an object and processes the result to extract an image.
We know intuitively that the complex task of processing is preferably carried out in the digital domain.
In fact, we may wonder whether we can directly digitize the signal and avoid any operations in the analog
domain. Figure 1.1 shows an example where the RF signal received by the antenna is digitized by an
analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and processed entirely in the digital domain. Would this scenario send
analog and RF designers to the unemployment office?

0 1
Antenna 0 0
1 1
0 1
1 0
Analog−to−Digital Digital Signal
Converter Processor

RF Signal
Figure 1.1 Hypothetical RF receiver with direct signal digitization.

1
2 Chap. 1 Introduction to Analog Design

The answer is an emphatic no. An ADC that could digitize the minuscule RF signal1 would consume
much more power than today’s cell phone receivers. Furthermore, even if this approach were seriously
considered, only analog designers would be able to develop the ADC. The key point offered by this
example is that the sensing interface still demands high-performance analog design.

Electronics

Action
Potential Probes

(a) (b)
Amplifier
ADC
Processor
RF
Transmitter
Amplifier
ADC

(c)
Figure 1.2 (a) Voltage waveform generated as a result of neural activity, (b) use of probes to measure action
potentials, and (c) processing and transmission of signals.

Another interesting example of sensing challenges arises in the study of the brain signals. Each time a
neuron in your brain “fires,” it generates an electric pulse with a height of a few millivolts and a duration
of a few hundred microseconds [Fig. 1.2(a)]. To monitor brain activities, a neural recording system may
employ tens of “probes” (electrodes) [Fig. 1.2(b)], each sensing a series of pulses. The signal produced
by each probe must now be amplified, digitized, and transmitted wirelessly so that the patient is free
to move around [Fig. 1.2(c)]. The sensing, processing, and transmission electronics in this environment
must consume a low amount of power for two reasons: (1) to permit the use of a small battery for days or
weeks, and (2) to minimize the rise in the chip’s temperature, which could otherwise damage the patient’s
tissue. Among the functions shown in Fig. 1.2(c), the amplifiers, the ADCs, and the RF transmitter—all
analog circuits—consume most of the power.

1.1.2 When Digital Signals Become Analog


The use of analog circuits is not limited to analog signals. If a digital signal is so small and/or so distorted
that a digital gate cannot interpret it correctly, then the analog designer must step in. For example, consider
a long USB cable carrying data rate of hundreds of megabits per second between two laptops. As shown
in Fig. 1.3, Laptop 1 delivers the data to the cable in the form of a sequence of ONEs and ZERO.

1 And withstand large unwanted signals.


Sec. 1.1 Why Analog? 3

Laptop 2
USB Cable
Laptop 1 Equalizer

1
H H

f f
Figure 1.3 Equalization to compensate for high-frequency attenuation in a USB cable.

Unfortunately, the cable exhibits a finite bandwidth, attenuating high frequencies and distorting the data
as it reaches Laptop 2. This device must now perform sensing and processing, the former requiring an
analog circuit (called an “equalizer”) that corrects the distortion. For example, since the cable attenuates
high frequencies, we may design the equalizer to amplify such frequencies, as shown conceptually by the
1/|H | plot in Fig. 1.3.
The reader may wonder whether the task of equalization in Fig. 1.3 could be performed in the digital
domain. That is, could we directly digitize the received distorted signal, digitally correct for the cable’s
limited bandwidth, and then carry out the standard USB signal processing? Indeed, this is possible if
the ADC required here demands less power and less complexity than the analog equalizer. Following a
detailed analysis, the analog designer decides which approach to adopt, but we intuitively know that at very
high data rates, e.g., tens of gigabits per second, an analog equalizer proves more efficient than an ADC.
The above equalization task exemplifies a general trend in electronics: at lower speeds, it is more
efficient to digitize the signal and perform the required function(s) in the digital domain, whereas at
higher speeds, we implement the function(s) in the analog domain. The speed boundary between these
two paradigms depends on the nature of the problem, but it has risen over time.

1.1.3 Analog Design Is in Great Demand


Despite tremendous advances in semiconductor technology, analog design continues to face new chal-
lenges, thus calling for innovations. As a gauge of the demand for analog circuits, we can consider the
papers published by industry and academia at circuits conferences and see what percentage fall in our
domain. Figure 1.4 plots the number of analog papers published at the International Solid-State Circuits
Number of Analog Papers at ISSCC

225 Total
200 Analog
175
150
125
100
75
50
25

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014


Year
Figure 1.4 Number of analog papers published at the ISSCC in recent years.
4 Chap. 1 Introduction to Analog Design

Conference (ISSCC) in recent years, where “analog” is defined as a paper requiring the knowledge in this
book. We observe that the majority of the papers involve analog design. This is true even though analog
circuits are typically quite a lot less complex than digital circuits; an ADC contains several thousand
transistors whereas a microprocessor employs billions.

1.1.4 Analog Design Challenges


Today’s analog designers must deal with interesting and difficult problems. Our study of devices and
circuits in this book will systematically illustrate various issues, but it is helpful to take a brief look at
what lies ahead.

Transistor Imperfections As a result of scaling, MOS transistors continue to become faster, but at the
cost of their “analog” properties. For example, the maximum voltage gain that a transistor can provide
declines with each new generation of CMOS technology. Moreover, a transistor’s characteristics may
depend on its surroundings, i.e., the size, shape, and distance of other components around it on the chip.

Declining Supply Voltages As a result of device scaling, the supply voltage of CMOS circuits has
inevitably fallen from about 12 V in the 1970s to about 0.9 V today. Many circuit configurations have not
survived this supply reduction and have been discarded. We continue to seek new topologies that operate
well at low voltages.

Power Consumption The semiconductor industry, more than ever, is striving for low-power design.
This effort applies both to portable devices—so as to increase their battery lifetime—and to larger
systems—so as to reduce the cost of heat removal and ease their drag on the earth’s resources. MOS
device scaling directly lowers the power consumption of digital circuits, but its effect on analog circuits
is much more complicated.

Circuit Complexity Today’s analog circuits may contain tens of thousands of transistors, demanding
long and tedious simulations. Indeed, modern analog designers must be as adept at SPICE as at higher-
level simulators such as MATLAB.

PVT Variations Many device and circuit parameters vary with the fabrication process, supply voltage,
and ambient temperature. We denote these effects by PVT and design circuits such that their performance
is acceptable for a specified range of PVT variations. For example, the supply voltage may vary from 1 V
to 0.95 V and the temperature from 0◦ to 80◦ . Robust analog design in CMOS technology is a challenging
task because device parameters vary significantly across PVT.

1.2 Why Integrated?

The idea of placing multiple electronic devices on the same substrate was conceived in the late 1950s. In
60 years, the technology has evolved from producing simple chips containing a handful of components to
fabricating flash drives with one trillion transistors as well as microprocessors comprising several billion
devices. As Gordon Moore (one of the founders of Intel) predicted in the early 1970s, the number of
transistors per chip has continued to double approximately every one and a half years. At the same time,
the minimum dimension of transistors has dropped from about 25 μm in 1960 to about 12 nm in the year
2015, resulting in a tremendous improvement in the speed of integrated circuits.
Driven primarily by the memory and microprocessor market, integrated-circuit technologies have also
embraced analog design, affording a complexity, speed, and precision that would be impossible to achieve
using discrete implementations. We can no longer build a discrete prototype to predict the behavior and
performance of modern analog circuits.
Sec. 1.5 Levels of Abstraction 5

1.3 Why CMOS?

The idea of metal-oxide-silicon field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) was patented by J. E. Lilienfeld in the
early 1930s—well before the invention of the bipolar transistor. Owing to fabrication limitations, however,
MOS technologies became practical only much later, in the early 1960s, with the first several generations
producing only n-type transistors. It was in the mid-1960s that complementary MOS (CMOS) devices
(i.e., with both n-type and p-type transistors) were introduced, initiating a revolution in the semiconductor
industry.
CMOS technologies rapidly captured the digital market: CMOS gates dissipated power only during
switching and required very few devices, two attributes in sharp contrast to their bipolar or GaAs coun-
terparts. It was also soon discovered that the dimensions of MOS devices could be scaled down more
easily than those of other types of transistors.
The next obvious step was to apply CMOS technology to analog design. The low cost of fabrication
and the possibility of placing both analog and digital circuits on the same chip so as to improve the
overall performance and/or reduce the cost of packaging made CMOS technology attractive. However,
MOSFETs were slower and noisier than bipolar transistors, finding limited application.
How did CMOS technology come to dominate the analog market as well? The principal force was
device scaling because it continued to improve the speed of MOSFETs. The intrinsic speed of MOS
transistors has increased by orders of magnitude in the past 60 years, exceeding that of bipolar devices
even though the latter have also been scaled (but not as fast).
Another critical advantage of MOS devices over bipolar transistors is that the former can operate
with lower supply voltages. In today’s technology, CMOS circuits run from supplies around 1 V and
bipolar circuits around 2 V. The lower supplies have permitted a smaller power consumption for complex
integrated circuits.

1.4 Why This Book?

The design of analog circuits itself has evolved together with the technology and the performance re-
quirements. As the device dimensions shrink, the supply voltage of intergrated circuits drops, and analog
and digital circuits are fabricated on one chip, many design issues arise that were previously unimportant.
Such trends demand that the analysis and design of circuits be accompanied by an in-depth understanding
of new technology-imposed limitations.
Good analog design requires intuition, rigor, and creativity. As analog designers, we must wear our
engineer’s hat for a quick and intuitive understanding of a large circuit, our mathematician’s hat for quan-
tifying subtle, yet important effects in a circuit, and our artist’s hat for inventing new circuit topologies.
This book describes modern analog design from both intuitive and rigorous angles. It also fosters the
reader’s creativity by carefully guiding him or her through the evolution of each circuit and presenting
the thought process that occurs during the development of new circuit techniques.

1.5 Levels of Abstraction

Analysis and design of integrated circuits often require thinking at various levels of abstraction. Depending
on the effect or quantity of interest, we may study a complex circuit at device physics level, transistor level,
architecture level, or system level. In other words, we may consider the behavior of individual devices in
terms of their internal electric fields and charge transport [Fig. 1.5(a)], the interaction of a group of devices
according to their electrical characteristics [Fig. 1.5(b)], the function of several building blocks operating
as a unit [Fig. 1.5(c)], or the performance of the system in terms of that of its constituent subsystems
6 Chap. 1 Introduction to Analog Design

[Fig. 1.5(d)]. Switching between levels of abstraction becomes necessary in both understanding the details
of the operation and optimizing the overall performance. In fact, in today’s IC industry, the interaction
among all groups, from device physicists to system designers, is essential to achieving high performance
and low cost. In this book, we begin with device physics and develop increasingly more complex circuit
topologies.

Device Circuit

n+ n+

(a) (b)

Architecture System

AGC Analog−to−Digital
Converter

Amp./Filter
Clock Equalizer
Recovery

(c) (d)
Figure 1.5 Abstraction levels in circuit design: (a) device level, (b) circuit level, (c) architecture level,
(d) system level.
CHAPTER

2
Basic MOS Device Physics

In studying the design of integrated circuits (ICs), one of two extreme approaches can be taken, (1) be-
gin with quantum mechanics and understand solid-state physics, semiconductor device physics, device
modeling, and finally the design of circuits; or (2) treat each semiconductor device as a black box whose
behavior is described in terms of its terminal voltages and currents and design circuits with little attention
to the internal operation of the device. Experience shows that neither approach is optimum. In the first
case, the reader cannot see the relevance of all the physics to designing circuits, and in the second, he or
she is constantly mystified by the contents of the black box.
In today’s IC industry, a solid understanding of semiconductor devices is essential—more so in analog
design than in digital design, because in the former, transistors are not considered to be simple switches,
and many of their second-order effects directly impact the performance. Furthermore, as each new
generation of IC technologies scales the devices, these effects become more significant. Since the designer
must often decide which effects can be neglected in a given circuit, insight into device operation proves
invaluable.
In this chapter, we study the physics of MOSFETs at an elementary level, covering the bare minimum
that is necessary for basic analog design. The ultimate goal is still to develop a circuit model for each device
by formulating its operation, but this is accomplished through a good understanding of the underlying
principles. After studying many analog circuits in Chapters 3 through 14 and gaining motivation for a
deeper understanding of devices, we return to the subject in Chapter 17 and deal with other aspects of
MOS operation.
We begin our study with the structure of MOS transistors and derive their I/V characteristics. Next,
we describe second-order effects such as body effect, channel-length modulation, and subthreshold
conduction. We then identify the parasitic capacitances of MOSFETs, derive a small-signal model, and
present a simple SPICE model. We assume that the reader is familiar with such basic concepts as doping,
mobility, and pn junctions.

2.1 General Considerations

2.1.1 MOSFET as a Switch


Before delving into the actual operation of the MOSFET, we consider a simplistic model of the device so
as to gain a feel for what the transistor is expected to be and which aspects of its behavior are important.
Shown in Fig. 2.1 is the symbol for an n-type MOSFET, revealing three terminals: gate (G), source
(S), and drain (D). The latter two are interchangeable because the device is symmetric. When operating
7
8 Chap. 2 Basic MOS Device Physics

Gate

Figure 2.1 Simple view of a MOS


Source Drain device.

as a switch, the transistor “connects” the source and the drain together if the gate voltage, VG , is “high”
and isolates the source and the drain if VG is “low.”
Even with this simplified view, we must answer several questions. For what value of VG does the
device turn on? In other words, what is the “threshold” voltage? What is the resistance between S and D
when the device is on (or off)? How does this resistance depend on the terminal voltages? Can we always
model the path between S and D by a simple linear resistor? What limits the speed of the device?
While all of these questions arise at the circuit level, they can be answered only by analyzing the
structure and physics of the transistor.

2.1.2 MOSFET Structure


Figure 2.2 shows a simplified structure of an n-type MOS (NMOS) device. Fabricated on a p-type substrate
(also called the “bulk” or the “body”), the device consists of two heavily-doped n regions forming the
source and drain terminals, a heavily-doped (conductive) piece of polysilicon1 (simply called “poly”)
operating as the gate, and a thin layer of silicon dioxide (SiO2 ) (simply called “oxide”) insulating the gate
from the substrate. The useful action of the device occurs in the substrate region under the gate oxide.
Note that the structure is symmetric with respect to S and D.

G Poly D
S Oxide

W
tox

n+ n+
Leff

Ldrawn
p −substrate LD
Figure 2.2 Structure of a MOS device.

The lateral dimension of the gate along the source-drain path is called the length, L, and that perpen-
dicular to the length is called the width, W . Since the S/D junctions “side-diffuse” during fabrication, the
actual distance between the source and the drain is slightly less than L. To avoid confusion, we write,
L eff = L drawn − 2L D , where L eff is the “effective” length, L drawn is the total length,2 and L D is the amount
of side diffusion. As we will see later, L eff and the gate oxide thickness, tox , play an important role in the
performance of MOS circuits. Consequently, the principal thrust in MOS technology development is to
reduce both of these dimensions from one generation to the next without degrading other parameters of

the device. Typical values at the time of this writing are L eff ≈ 10 nm and tox ≈ 15 A. In the remainder of
this book, we denote the effective length by L unless otherwise stated.

1 Polysilicon is silicon in amorphous (non crystal) form. As explained in Chapter 18, when the gate silicon is grown on top of

the oxide, it cannot form a crystal. The gate was originally made of metal [hence the term “metal-oxide-semiconductor” (MOS)]
and is returning to metal in recent generations.
2 The subscript “drawn” is used because this is the dimension that we draw in the layout of the transistor (Sec. 2.4.1).
Sec. 2.1 General Considerations 9

If the MOS structure is symmetric, why do we call one n region the source and the other the drain?
This becomes clear if the source is defined as the terminal that provides the charge carriers (electrons
in the case of NMOS devices) and the drain as the terminal that collects them. Thus, as the voltages at
the three terminals of the device vary, the source and the drain may exchange roles. These concepts are
practiced in the problems at the end of the chapter.
We have thus far ignored the substrate on which the device is fabricated. In reality, the substrate
potential greatly influences the device characteristics. That is, the MOSFET is a four-terminal device.
Since in typical MOS operation, the S/D junction diodes must be reverse-biased, we assume that the
substrate of NMOS transistors is connected to the most negative supply in the system. For example, if
a circuit operates between zero and 1.2 volts, Vsub,NMOS = 0. The actual connection is usually provided
through an ohmic p + region, as depicted in the side view of the device in Fig. 2.3.

G
B S D

p+ n+ n+

p −substrate

Figure 2.3 Substrate connection.

In complementary MOS (CMOS) technologies, both NMOS and PMOS transistors are available. From
a simplistic viewpoint, the PMOS device is obtained by negating all of the doping types (including the
substrate) [Fig. 2.4(a)], but in practice, NMOS and PMOS devices must be fabricated on the same wafer,
i.e., the same substrate. For this reason, one device type can be placed in a “local substrate,” usually called
a “well.” In today’s CMOS processes, the PMOS device is fabricated in an n-well [Fig. 2.4(b)]. Note that
the n-well must be connected to a potential such that the S/D junction diodes of the PMOS transistor
remain reverse-biased under all conditions. In most circuits, the n-well is tied to the most positive supply
voltage. For the sake of brevity, we sometimes call NMOS and PMOS devices “NFETs” and “PFETs,”
respectively.
Figure 2.4(b) indicates an interesting difference between NMOS and PMOS Nanometer Design Notes
transistors: while all NFETs share the same substrate, each PFET can have Some modern CMOS processes offer a
an independent n-well. This flexibility of PFETs is exploited in some analog “deep n-well,” an n-well that contains an
circuits. NMOS device and its p-type bulk. As
shown below, the NMOS transistor’s bulk
is now localized and need not be tied
2.1.3 MOS Symbols to that of other NMOS devices. But the
design incurs substantial area overhead
The circuit symbols used to represent NMOS and PMOS transistors are shown because the deep n-well must extend
in Fig. 2.5. The symbols in Fig. 2.5(a) contain all four terminals, with the sub- beyond the p-well by a certain amount
strate denoted by “B” (bulk) rather than “S” to avoid confusion with the source. and must maintain a certain distance to
The source of the PMOS device is positioned on top as a visual aid because the regular n-well.
it has a higher potential than its gate. Since in most circuits the bulk terminals PMOS NMOS
of NMOS and PMOS devices are tied to ground and VDD , respectively, we
usually omit these connections in drawing [Fig. 2.5(b)]. In digital circuits, it n+ p+ p+ p+ n+ n+ n+
n−well p−well
is customary to use the “switch” symbols depicted in Fig. 2.5(c) for the two
Deep n−well
types, but we prefer those in Fig. 2.5(b) because the visual distinction between p−substrate
S and D proves helpful in understanding the operation of circuits.
10 Chap. 2 Basic MOS Device Physics

G
B S D

n+ p+ p+

n−substrate

(a)
G G
B S D S D B

p+ n+ n+ p+ p+ n+

n −well
p −substrate

(b)
Figure 2.4 (a) Simple PMOS device; (b) PMOS inside an n-well.

NMOS PMOS NMOS PMOS NMOS PMOS


D S D S D D

G B G B G G G G

S D S D S S

(a) (b) (c)


Figure 2.5 MOS symbols.

2.2 MOS I/V Characteristics

In this section, we analyze the generation and transport of charge in MOSFETs as a function of the
terminal voltages. Our objective is to derive equations for the I/V characteristics such that we can elevate
our abstraction from device physics level to circuit level.

2.2.1 Threshold Voltage


Consider an NFET connected to external voltages as shown in Fig. 2.6(a). What happens as the gate
voltage, VG , increases from zero? Since the gate, the dielectric, and the substrate form a capacitor, as VG
becomes more positive, the holes in the p-substrate are repelled from the gate area, leaving negative ions
behind so as to mirror the charge on the gate. In other words, a depletion region is created [Fig. 2.6(b)].
Under this condition, no current flows because no charge carriers are available.
As VG increases, so do the width of the depletion region and the potential at the oxide-silicon interface.
In a sense, the structure resembles a voltage divider consisting of two capacitors in series: the gate-
oxide capacitor and the depletion-region capacitor [Fig. 2.6(c)]. When the interface potential reaches a
sufficiently positive value, electrons flow from the source to the interface and eventually to the drain.
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“No! To see you here, in these barracks where I have spent so
much time thinking about you, I can scarcely believe my eyes. I must
be dreaming. And how are you? Better, I hope. You must tell me all
about yourself presently. We’ll go up to my room; we mustn’t hang
about too long on the square, there’s the devil of a draught; I don’t
feel it now myself, but you aren’t accustomed to it, I’m afraid of your
catching cold. And what about your work; have you started yet? No?
You are a quaint fellow! If I had your talent I’m sure I should be
writing morning, noon and night. It amuses you more to do nothing?
What a pity it is that it’s the useless fellows like me who are always
ready to work, and the ones who could if they wanted to, won’t.
There, and I’ve clean forgotten to ask you how your grandmother is.
Her Proudhons are in safe keeping. I never part from them.”
An officer, tall, handsome, majestic, emerged with slow and
solemn gait from the foot of a staircase. Saint-Loup saluted him and
arrested the perpetual instability of his body for the moment
occupied in holding his hand against the peak of his cap. But he had
flung himself into the action with so much force, straightening himself
with so sharp a movement, and, the salute ended, let his hand fall
with so abrupt a relaxation, altering all the positions of shoulder, leg,
and eyeglass, that this moment was one not so much of immobility
as of a throbbing tension in which were neutralised the excessive
movements which he had just made and those on which he was
about to embark. Meanwhile the officer, without coming any nearer
us, calm, benevolent, dignified, imperial, representing, in short, the
direct opposite of Saint-Loup, himself also, but without haste, raised
his hand to the peak of his cap.
“I must just say a word to the Captain,” whispered Saint-Loup. “Be
a good fellow, and go and wait for me in my room. It’s the second on
the right, on the third floor; I’ll be with you in a minute.”
And setting off at the double, preceded by his eyeglass which
fluttered in every direction, he made straight for the slow and stately
Captain whose horse had just been brought round and who, before
preparing to mount, was giving orders with a studied nobility of
gesture as in some historical painting, and as though he were setting
forth to take part in some battle of the First Empire, whereas he was
simply going to ride home, to the house which he had taken for the
period of his service at Doncières, and which stood in a Square that
was named, as though in an ironical anticipation of the arrival of this
Napoleonid, Place de la République. I started to climb the staircase,
nearly slipping on each of its nail-studded steps, catching glimpses
of barrack-rooms, their bare walls edged with a double line of beds
and kits. I was shewn Saint-Loup’s room. I stood for a moment
outside its closed door, for I could hear some one stirring; he moved
something, let fall something else; I felt that the room was not empty,
that there must be somebody there. But it was only the freshly
lighted fire beginning to burn. It could not keep quiet, it kept shifting
its faggots about, and very clumsily. I entered the room; it let one roll
into the fender and set another smoking. And even when it was not
moving, like an ill-bred person it made noises all the time, which,
from the moment I saw the flames rising, revealed themselves to me
as noises made by a fire, although if I had been on the other side of
a wall I should have thought that they came from some one who was
blowing his nose and walking about. I sat down in the room and
waited. Liberty hangings and old German stuffs of the eighteenth
century managed to rid it of the smell that was exhaled by the rest of
the building, a coarse, insipid, mouldy smell like that of stale toast. It
was here, in this charming room, that I could have dined and slept
with a calm and happy mind. Saint-Loup seemed almost to be
present by reason of the text-books which littered his table, between
his photographs, among which I could make out my own and that of
the Duchesse de Guermantes, by the light of the fire which had at
length grown accustomed to the grate, and, like an animal crouching
in an ardent, noiseless, faithful watchfulness, let fall only now and
then a smouldering log which crumbled into sparks, or licked with a
tongue of flame the sides of the chimney. I heard the tick of Saint-
Loup’s watch, which could not be far away. This tick changed its
place every moment, for I could not see the watch; it seemed to
come from behind, from in front of me, from my right, from my left,
sometimes to die away as though at a great distance. Suddenly I
caught sight of the watch on the table. Then I heard the tick in a fixed
place from which it did not move again. That is to say, I thought I
heard it at this place; I did not hear it there; I saw it there, for sounds
have no position in space. Or rather we associate them with
movements, and in that way they serve the purpose of warning us of
those movements, of appearing to make them necessary and
natural. Certainly it happens commonly enough that a sick man
whose ears have been stopped with cotton-wool ceases to hear the
noise of a fire such as was crackling at that moment in Saint-Loup’s
fireplace, labouring at the formation of brands and cinders, which it
then lets fall into the fender, nor would he hear the passage of the
tramway-cars whose music took its flight, at regular intervals, over
the Grand’place of Doncières. Let the sick man then read a book,
and the pages will turn silently before him, as though they were
moved by the fingers of a god. The dull thunder of a bath which is
being filled becomes thin, faint and distant as the twittering of birds in
the sky. The withdrawal of sound, its dilution, take from it all its
power to hurt us; driven mad a moment ago by hammer-blows which
seemed to be shattering the ceiling above our head, it is with a quiet
delight that we now gather in their sound, light, caressing, distant,
like the murmur of leaves playing by the roadside with the passing
breeze. We play games of patience with cards which we do not hear,
until we imagine that we have not touched them, that they are
moving of their own accord, and, anticipating our desire to play with
them, have begun to play with us. And in this connexion we may ask
ourselves whether, in the case of love (to which indeed we may add
the love of life and the love of fame, since there are, it appears,
persons who are acquainted with these latter sentiments), we ought
not to act like those who, when a noise disturbs them, instead of
praying that it may cease, stop their ears; and, with them for our
pattern, bring our attention, our defensive strength to bear on
ourselves, give ourselves as an objective to capture not the “other
person” with whom we are in love but our capacity for suffering at
that person’s hands.
To return to the problem of sounds, we have only to thicken the
wads which close the aural passages, and they confine to a
pianissimo the girl who has just been playing a boisterous tune
overhead; if we go farther, and steep the wad in grease, at once the
whole household must obey its despotic rule; its laws extend even
beyond our portals. Pianissimo is not enough; the wad instantly
orders the piano to be shut, and the music lesson is abruptly ended;
the gentleman who was walking up and down in the room above
breaks off in the middle of his beat; the movement of carriages and
tramways is interrupted as though a Sovereign were expected to
pass. And indeed this attenuation of sounds sometimes disturbs our
slumbers instead of guarding them. Only yesterday the incessant
noise in our ears, by describing to us in a continuous narrative all
that was happening in the street and in the house, succeeded at
length in making us sleep, like a boring book; to-night, through the
sheet of silence that is spread over our sleep a shock, louder than
the rest, manages to make itself heard, gentle as a sigh, unrelated to
any other sound, mysterious; and the call for an explanation which it
emits is sufficient to awaken us. Take away for a moment from the
sick man the cotton-wool that has been stopping his ears and in a
flash the full daylight, the sun of sound dawns afresh, dazzling him,
is born again in his universe; in all haste returns the multitude of
exiled sounds; we are present, as though it were the chanting of
choirs of angels, at the resurrection of the voice. The empty streets
are filled for a moment with the whirr of the swift, consecutive wings
of the singing tramway-cars. In the bedroom itself, the sick man has
created, not, like Prometheus, fire, but the sound of fire. And when
we increase or reduce the wads of cotton-wool, it is as though we
were pressing alternately one and the other of the two pedals with
which we have extended the resonant compass of the outer world.
Only there are also suppressions of sound which are not
temporary. The man who has grown completely deaf cannot even
heat a pan of milk by his bedside, but he must keep an eye open to
watch, on the tilted lid, for the white, arctic reflexion, like that of a
coming snow-storm, which is the warning sign which he is wise to
obey, by cutting off (as Our Lord bade the waves be still) the electric
current; for already the swelling, jerkily climbing egg of boiling milk-
film is reaching its climax in a series of sidelong movements, has
filled and set bellying the drooping sails with which the cream has
skimmed its surface, sends in a sudden storm a scud of pearly
substance flying overboard—sails which the cutting off of the current,
if the electric storm is hushed in time, will fold back upon themselves
and let fall with the ebbing tide, changed now to magnolia petals. But
if the sick man should not be quick enough in taking the necessary
precautions, presently, when his drowned books and watch are seen
barely emerging from the milky tide, he will be obliged to call the old
nurse who, though he be himself an eminent statesman or a famous
writer, will tell him that he has no more sense than a child of five. At
other times in the magic chamber, between us and the closed door, a
person who was not there a moment ago makes his appearance; it is
a visitor whom we did not hear coming in, and who merely
gesticulates, like a figure in one of those little puppet theatres, so
restful for those who have taken a dislike to the spoken tongue. And
for this totally deaf man, since the loss of a sense adds as much
beauty to the world as its acquisition, it is with ecstasy that he walks
now upon an earth grown almost an Eden, in which sound has not
yet been created. The highest waterfalls unfold for his eyes alone
their ribbons of crystal, stiller than the glassy sea, like the cascades
of Paradise. As sound was for him before his deafness the
perceptible form in which the cause of a movement was draped,
objects moved without sound seemed to be being moved also
without cause; deprived of all resonant quality, they shew a
spontaneous activity, seem to be alive. They move, halt, become
alight of their own accord. Of their own accord they vanish in the air
like the winged monsters of prehistoric days. In the solitary and
unneighboured home of the deaf man the service which, before his
infirmity was complete, was already shewing an increased discretion,
was being carried on in silence, is now assured him with a sort of
surreptitious deftness, by mutes, as at the court of a fairy-tale king.
And, as upon the stage, the building on which the deaf man looks
from his window—be it barracks, church, or town hall—is only so
much scenery. If one day it should fall to the ground, it may emit a
cloud of dust and leave visible ruins; but, less material even than a
palace on the stage, though it has not the same exiguity, it will
subside in the magic universe without letting the fall of its heavy
blocks of stone tarnish, with anything so vulgar as sound, the
chastity of the prevailing silence.
The silence, though only relative, which reigned in the little
barrack-room where I sat waiting was now broken. The door opened
and Saint-Loup, dropping his eyeglass, dashed in.
“Ah, my dear Robert, you make yourself very comfortable here;” I
said to him; “how jolly it would be if one were allowed to dine and
sleep here.”
And to be sure, had it not been against the regulations, what
repose untinged by sadness I could have tasted there, guarded by
that atmosphere of tranquillity, vigilance and gaiety which was
maintained by a thousand wills controlled and free from care, a
thousand heedless spirits, in that great community called a barracks
where, time having taken the form of action, the sad bell that tolled
the hours outside was replaced by the same joyous clarion of those
martial calls, the ringing memory of which was kept perpetually alive
in the paved streets of the town, like the dust that floats in a
sunbeam;—a voice sure of being heard, and musical because it was
the command not only of authority to obedience but of wisdom to
happiness.
“So you’ld rather stay with me and sleep here, would you, than go
to the hotel by yourself?” Saint-Loup asked me, smiling.
“Oh, Robert, it is cruel of you to be sarcastic about it,” I pleaded;
“you know it’s not possible, and you know how wretched I shall be
over there.”
“Good! You flatter me!” he replied. “It occurred to me just now that
you would rather stay here to-night. And that is precisely what I
stopped to ask the Captain.”
“And he has given you leave?” I cried.
“He hadn’t the slightest objection.”
“Oh! I adore him!”
“No; that would be going too far. But now, let me just get hold of
my batman and tell him to see about our dinner,” he went on, while I
turned away so as to hide my tears.
We were several times interrupted by one or other of Saint-Loup’s
friends’ coming in. He drove them all out again.
“Get out of here. Buzz off!”
I begged him to let them stay.
“No, really; they would bore you stiff; they are absolutely
uncultured; all they can talk about is racing, or stables shop.
Besides, I don’t want them here either; they would spoil these
precious moments I’ve been looking forward to. But you mustn’t
think, when I tell you that these fellows are brainless, that everything
military is devoid of intellectuality. Far from it. We have a major here
who is a splendid chap. He’s given us a course in which military
history is treated like a demonstration, like a problem in algebra.
Even from the aesthetic point of view there is a curious beauty,
alternately inductive and deductive, about it which you couldn’t fail to
appreciate.”
“That’s not the officer who’s given me leave to stay here to-night?”
“No; thank God! The man you ‘adore’ for so very trifling a service
is the biggest fool that ever walked the face of the earth. He is
perfect at looking after messing, and at kit inspections; he spends
hours with the serjeant major and the master tailor. There you have
his mentality. Apart from that he has a vast contempt, like everyone
here, for the excellent major I was telling you about. No one will
speak to him because he’s a free-mason and doesn’t go to
confession. The Prince de Borodino would never have an outsider
like that in his house. Which is pretty fair cheek, when all’s said and
done, from a man whose great-grandfather was a small farmer, and
who would probably be a small farmer himself if it hadn’t been for the
Napoleonic wars. Not that he hasn’t a lurking sense of his own rather
ambiguous position in society, where he’s neither flesh nor fowl. He
hardly ever shews his face at the Jockey, it makes him feel so
deuced awkward, this so-called Prince,” added Robert, who, having
been led by the same spirit of imitation to adopt the social theories of
his teachers and the worldly prejudices of his relatives, had
unconsciously wedded the democratic love of humanity to a
contempt for the nobility of the Empire.
I was looking at the photograph of his aunt, and the thought that,
since Saint-Loup had this photograph in his possession, he might
perhaps give it to me, made me feel all the fonder of him and hope to
do him a thousand services, which seemed to me a very small
exchange for it. For this photograph was like one encounter more,
added to all those that I had already had, with Mme. de Guermantes;
better still, a prolonged encounter, as if, by some sudden stride
forward in our relations, she had stopped beside me, in a garden hat,
and had allowed me for the first time to gaze at my leisure at that
plump cheek, that arched neck, that tapering eyebrow (veiled from
me hitherto by the swiftness of her passage, the bewilderment of my
impressions, the imperfection of memory); and the contemplation of
them, as well as of the bare bosom and arms of a woman whom I
had never seen save in a high-necked and long-sleeved bodice, was
to me a voluptuous discovery, a priceless favour. Those lines, which
had seemed to me almost a forbidden spectacle, I could study there,
as in a text-book of the only geometry that had any value for me.
Later on, when I looked at Robert, I noticed that he too was a little
like the photograph of his aunt, and by a mysterious process which I
found almost as moving, since, if his face had not been directly
created by hers, the two had nevertheless a common origin. The
features of the Duchesse de Guermantes, which were pinned to my
vision of Combray, the nose like a falcon’s beak, the piercing eyes,
seemed to have served also as a pattern for the cutting out—in
another copy analogous and slender, with too delicate a skin—of
Robert’s face, which might almost be superimposed upon his aunt’s.
I saw in him, with a keen longing, those features characteristic of the
Guermantes, of that race which had remained so individual in the
midst of a world with which it was not confounded, in which it
remained isolated in the glory of an ornithomorphic divinity, for it
seemed to have been the issue, in the age of mythology, of the union
of a goddess with a bird.
Robert, without being aware of its cause, was touched by my
evident affection. This was moreover increased by the sense of
comfort inspired in me by the heat of the fire and by the champagne
which bedewed at the same time my brow with beads of sweat and
my cheeks with tears; it washed down the partridges; I ate mine with
the dumb wonder of a profane mortal of any sort when he finds in a
form of life with which he is not familiar what he has supposed that
form of life to exclude—the wonder, for instance, of an atheist who
sits down to an exquisitely cooked dinner in a presbytery. And next
morning, when I awoke, I rose and went to cast from Saint-Loup’s
window, which being at a great height overlooked the whole
countryside, a curious scrutiny to make the acquaintance of my new
neighbour, the landscape which I had not been able to distinguish
the day before, having arrived too late, at an hour when it was
already sleeping beneath the outspread cloak of night. And yet, early
as it had awoken from its sleep, I could see the ground, when I
opened the window and looked out, only as one sees it from the
window of a country house, overlooking the lake, shrouded still in its
soft white morning gown of mist which scarcely allowed me to make
out anything at all. But I knew that, before the troopers who were
busy with their horses in the square had finished grooming them, it
would have cast its gown aside. In the meantime, I could see only a
meagre hill, rearing close up against the side of the barracks a back
already swept clear of darkness, rough and wrinkled. Through the
transparent curtain of frost I could not take my eyes from this
stranger who, too, was looking at me for the first time. But when I
had formed the habit of coming to the barracks, my consciousness
that the hill was there, more real, consequently, even when I did not
see it, than the hotel at Balbec, than our house in Paris, of which I
thought as of absent—or dead—friends, that is to say without any
strong belief in their existence, brought it about that, even although I
was not aware of it myself, its reflected shape outlined itself on the
slightest impressions that I formed at Doncières, and among them, to
begin with this first morning, on the pleasing impression of warmth
given me by the cup of chocolate prepared by Saint-Loup’s batman
in this comfortable room, which had the effect of being an optical
centre from which to look out at the hill—the idea of there being
anything else to do but just gaze at it, the idea of actually climbing it
being rendered impossible by this same mist. Imbibing the shape of
the hill, associated with the taste of hot chocolate and with the whole
web of my fancies at that particular time, this mist, without my having
thought at all about it, succeeded in moistening all my subsequent
thoughts about that period, just as a massive and unmelting lump of
gold had remained allied to my impressions of Balbec, or as the
proximity of the outside stairs of blackish sandstone gave a grey
background to my impressions of Combray. It did not, however,
persist late into the day; the sun began by hurling at it, in vain, a few
darts which sprinkled it with brilliants before they finally overcame it.
The hill might expose its grizzled rump to the sun’s rays, which, an
hour later, when I went down to the town, gave to the russet tints of
the autumn leaves, to the reds and blues of the election posters
pasted on the walls an exaltation which raised my spirits also and
made me stamp, singing as I went, on the pavements from which I
could hardly keep myself from jumping in the air for joy.
But after that first night I had to sleep at the hotel. And I knew
beforehand that I was doomed to find there sorrow. It was like an
unbreathable aroma which all my life long had been exhaled for me
by every new bedroom, that is to say by every bedroom; in the one
which I usually occupied I was not present, my mind remained
elsewhere, and in its place sent only the sense of familiarity. But I
could not employ this servant, less sensitive than myself, to look
after things for me in a new place, where I preceded him, where I
arrived by myself, where I must bring into contact with its
environment that “Self” which I rediscovered only at year-long
intervals, but always the same, having not grown at all since
Combray, since my first arrival at Balbec, weeping, without any
possibility of consolation, on the edge of an unpacked trunk.
As it happened, I was mistaken. I had no time to be sad, for I was
not left alone for an instant. The fact of the matter was that there
remained of the old palace a superfluous refinement of structure and
decoration, out of place in a modern hotel, which, released from the
service of any practical purpose, had in its long spell of leisure
acquired a sort of life: passages winding about in all directions,
which one was continually crossing in their aimless wanderings,
lobbies as long as corridors and as ornate as drawing-rooms, which
had the air rather of being dwellers there themselves than of forming
part of a dwelling, which could not be induced to enter and settle
down in any of the rooms but wandered about outside mine and
came up at once to offer me their company—neighbours of a sort,
idle but never noisy, menial ghosts of the past who had been granted
the privilege of staying, provided they kept quiet, by the doors of the
rooms which were let to visitors; and who, every time that I came
across them, greeted me with a silent deference. In short, the idea of
a lodging, of simply a case for our existence from day to day which
shields us only from the cold and from being overlooked by other
people, was absolutely inapplicable to this house, an assembly of
rooms as real as a colony of people, living, it was true, in silence, but
things which one was obliged to meet, to avoid, to appreciate, as
one came in. One tried not to disturb them, and one could not look
without respect at the great drawing-room which had formed, far
back in the eighteenth century, the habit of stretching itself at its
ease, among its hangings of old gold and beneath the clouds of its
painted ceiling. And one was seized with a more personal curiosity
as to the smaller rooms which, without any regard for symmetry, ran
all round it, innumerable, startled, fleeing in disorder as far as the
garden, to which they had so easy an access down three broken
steps.
If I wished to go out or to come in without taking the lift or being
seen from the main staircase, a smaller private staircase, no longer
in use, offered me its steps so skilfully arranged, one close above
another, that there seemed to exist in their gradation a perfect
proportion of the same kind as those which, in colours, scents,
savours, often arouse in us a peculiar, sensuous pleasure. But the
pleasure to be found in going up and downstairs I had had to come
here to learn, as once before to a health resort in the Alps to find that
the act—as a rule not noticed—of drawing breath could be a
perpetual delight. I received that dispensation from effort which is
granted to us only by the things to which long use has accustomed
us, when I set my feet for the first time on those steps, familiar
before ever I knew them, as if they possessed, deposited on them,
perhaps, embodied in them by the masters of long ago whom they
used to welcome every day, the prospective charm of habits which I
had not yet contracted and which indeed could only grow weaker
once they had become my own. I looked into a room; the double
doors closed themselves behind me, the hangings let in a silence in
which I felt myself invested with a sort of exhilarating royalty; a
marble mantelpiece with ornaments of wrought brass—of which one
would have been wrong to think that its sole idea was to represent
the art of the Directory—offered me a fire, and a little easy chair on
short legs helped me to warm myself as comfortably as if I had been
sitting on the hearthrug. The walls held the room in a close embrace,
separating it from the rest of the world and, to let in, to enclose what
made it complete, parted to make way for the bookcase, reserved a
place for the bed, on either side of which a column airily upheld the
raised ceiling of the alcove. And the room was prolonged in depth by
two closets as large as itself, the latter of which had hanging from its
wall, to scent the occasion on which one had recourse to it, a
voluptuous rosary of orris-roots; the doors, if I left them open when I
withdrew into this innermost retreat, were not content with tripling its
dimensions without its ceasing to be well-proportioned, and not only
allowed my eyes to enjoy the delights of extension after those of
concentration, but added further to the pleasure of my solitude,
which, while still inviolable, was no longer shut in, the sense of
liberty. This closet looked out upon a courtyard, a fair solitary
stranger whom I was glad to have for a neighbour when next
morning my eyes fell on her, a captive between her high walls in
which no other window opened, with nothing but two yellowing trees
which were enough, to give a pinkish softness to the pure sky above.
Before going to bed I decided to leave the room in order to explore
the whole of my fairy kingdom. I walked down a long gallery which
did me homage successively with all that it had to offer me if I could
not sleep, an armchair placed waiting in a corner, a spinet, on a table
against the wall, a bowl of blue crockery filled with cinerarias, and, in
an old frame, the phantom of a lady of long ago whose powdered
hair was starred with blue flowers, holding in her hand a bunch of
carnations. When I came to the end, the bare wall in which no door
opened said to me simply: “Now you must turn and go back, but, you
see, you are at home here, the house is yours,” while the soft carpet,
not to be left out, added that if I did not sleep that night I could easily
come in barefoot, and the unshuttered windows, looking out over the
open country, assured me that they would hold a sleepless vigil and
that, at whatever hour I chose to come in, I need not be afraid of
disturbing anyone. And behind a hanging curtain I surprised only a
little closet which, stopped by the wall and unable to escape any
farther, had hidden itself there with a guilty conscience and gave me
a frightened stare from its little round window, glowing blue in the
moonlight. I went to bed, but the presence of the eiderdown quilt, of
the pillars, of the neat fireplace, by straining my attention to a pitch
beyond that of Paris, prevented me from letting myself go upon my
habitual train of fancies. And as it is this particular state of strained
attention that enfolds our slumbers, acts upon them, modifies them,
brings them into line with this or that series of past impressions, the
images that filled my dreams that first night were borrowed from a
memory entirely distinct from that on which I was in the habit of
drawing. If I had been tempted while asleep to let myself be swept
back upon my ordinary current of remembrance, the bed to which I
was not accustomed, the comfortable attention which I was obliged
to pay to the position of my various limbs when I turned over were
sufficient to correct my error, to disentangle and to keep running the
new thread of my dreams. It is the same with sleep as with our
perception of the external world. It needs only a modification in our
habits to make it poetic, it is enough that while undressing we should
have dozed off unconsciously upon the bed, for the dimensions of
our dream-world to be altered and its beauty felt. We awake, look at
our watch, see “four o’clock”; it is only four o’clock in the morning,
but we imagine that the whole day has gone by, so vividly does this
nap of a few minutes, unsought by us, appear to have come down to
us from the skies, by virtue of some divine right, full-bodied, vast, like
an Emperor’s orb of gold. In the morning, while worrying over the
thought that my grandfather was ready, and was waiting for me to
start on our walk along the Méséglise way, I was awakened by the
blare of a regimental band which passed every day beneath my
windows. But on several occasions—and I mention these because
one cannot properly describe human life unless one shews it soaked
in the sleep in which it plunges, which, night after night, sweeps
round it as a promontory is encircled by the sea—the intervening
layer of sleep was strong enough to bear the shock of the music and
I heard nothing. On the other mornings it gave way for a moment;
but, still velvety with the refreshment of having slept, my
consciousness (like those organs by which, after a local anaesthetic,
a cauterisation, not perceived at first, is felt only at the very end and
then as a faint burning smart) was touched only gently by the shrill
points of the fifes which caressed it with a vague, cool, matutinal
warbling; and after this brief interruption in which the silence had
turned to music it relapsed into my slumber before even the
dragoons had finished passing, depriving me of the latest opening
buds of the sparkling clangorous nosegay. And the zone of my
consciousness which its springing stems had brushed was so
narrow, so circumscribed with sleep that later on, when Saint-Loup
asked me whether I had heard the band, I was no longer certain that
the sound of its brasses had not been as imaginary as that which I
heard during the day echo, after the slightest noise, from the paved
streets of the town. Perhaps I had heard it only in a dream, prompted
by my fear of being awakened, or else of not being awakened and so
not seeing the regiment march past. For often, when I was still
asleep at the moment when, on the contrary, I had supposed that the
noise would awaken me, for the next hour I imagined that I was
awake, while still drowsing, and I enacted to myself with tenuous
shadow-shapes on the screen of my slumber the various scenes of
which it deprived me but at which I had the illusion of looking on.
What one has meant to do during the day, as it turns out, sleep
intervening, one accomplishes only in one’s dreams, that is to say
after it has been distorted by sleep into following another line than
one would have chosen when awake. The same story branches off
and has a different ending. When all is said, the world in which we
live when we are asleep is so different that people who have
difficulty in going to sleep seek first of all to escape from the waking
world. After having desperately, for hours on end, with shut eyes,
revolved in their minds thoughts similar to those which they would
have had with their eyes open, they take heart again on noticing that
the last minute has been crawling under the weight of an argument
in formal contradiction of the laws of thought, and their realisation of
this, and the brief “absence” to which it points, indicate that the door
is now open through which they will perhaps be able, presently, to
escape from the perception of the real, to advance to a resting-place
more or less remote on the other side, which will mean their having a
more or less “good” night. But already a great stride has been made
when we turn our back on the real, when we reach the cave in which
“auto-suggestions” prepare—like witches—the hell-broth of
imaginary maladies or of the recurrence of nervous disorders, and
watch for the hour at which the storm that has been gathering during
our unconscious sleep will break with sufficient force to make sleep
cease.
Not far thence is the secret garden in which grow like strange
flowers the kinds of sleep, so different one from another, the sleep
induced by datura, by the multiple extracts of ether, the sleep of
belladonna, of opium, of valerian, flowers whose petals remain shut
until the day when the predestined visitor shall come and, touching
them, bid them open, and for long hours inhale the aroma of their
peculiar dreams into a marvelling and bewildered being. At the end
of the garden stands the convent with open windows through which
we hear voices repeating the lessons learned before we went to
sleep, which we shall know only at the moment of awakening; while,
a presage of that moment, sounds the resonant tick of that inward
alarum which our preoccupation has so effectively regulated that
when our housekeeper comes in with the warning: “It is seven
o’clock,” she will find us awake and ready. On the dim walls of that
chamber which opens upon our dreams, within which toils without
ceasing that oblivion of the sorrows of love whose task, interrupted
and brought to nought at times by a nightmare big with
reminiscence, is ever speedily resumed, hang, even after we are
awake, the memories of our dreams, but so overshadowed that often
we catch sight of them for the first time only in the broad light of the
afternoon when the ray of a similar idea happens by chance to strike
them; some of them brilliant and harmonious while we slept, but
already so distorted that, having failed to recognise them, we can but
hasten to lay them in the earth like dead bodies too quickly
decomposed or relics so seriously damaged, so nearly crumbling
into dust that the most skilful restorer could not bring them back to
their true form or make anything of them. Near the gate is the quarry
to which our heavier slumbers repair in search of substances which
coat the brain with so unbreakable a glaze that, to awaken the
sleeper, his own will is obliged, even on a golden morning, to smite
him with mighty blows, like a young Siegfried. Beyond this, again,
are the nightmares of which the doctors foolishly assert that they tire
us more than does insomnia, whereas on the contrary they enable
the thinker to escape from the strain of thought; those nightmares
with their fantastic picture-books in which our relatives who are dead
are shewn meeting with a serious accident which at the same time
does not preclude their speedy recovery. Until then we keep them in
a little rat-cage, in which they are smaller than white mice and,
covered with big red spots, out of each of which a feather sprouts,
engage us in Ciceronian dialogues. Next to this picture-book is the
revolving disc of awakening, by virtue of which we submit for a
moment to the tedium of having to return at once to a house which
was pulled down fifty years ago, the memory of which is gradually
effaced as sleep grows more distant by a number of others, until we
arrive at that memory which the disc presents only when it has
ceased to revolve and which coincides with what we shall see with
opened eyes.
Sometimes I had heard nothing, being in one of those slumbers
into which we fall as into a pit from which we are heartily glad to be
drawn up a little later, heavy, overfed, digesting all that has been
brought to us (as by the nymphs who fed the infant Hercules) by
those agile, vegetative powers whose activity is doubled while we
sleep.
That kind of sleep is called “sleeping like lead”, and it seems as
though one has become, oneself, and remains for a few moments
after such a sleep is ended, simply a leaden image. One is no longer
a person. How then, seeking for one’s mind, one’s personality, as
one seeks for a thing that is lost, does one recover one’s own self
rather than any other? Why, when one begins again to think, is it not
another personality than yesterday’s that is incarnate in one? One
fails to see what can dictate the choice, or why, among the millions
of human beings any one of whom one might be, it is on him who
one was overnight that unerringly one lays one’s hand? What is it
that guides us, when there has been an actual interruption—whether
it be that our unconsciousness has been complete or our dreams
entirely different from ourself? There has indeed been death, as
when the heart has ceased to beat and a rhythmical friction of the
tongue revives us. No doubt the room, even if we have seen it only
once before, awakens memories to which other, older memories
cling. Or were some memories also asleep in us of which we now
become conscious? The resurrection at our awakening—after that
healing attack of mental alienation which is sleep—must after all be
similar to what occurs when we recapture a name, a line, a refrain
that we had forgotten. And perhaps the resurrection of the soul after
death is to be conceived as a phenomenon of memory.
When I had finished sleeping, tempted by the sunlit sky—but
discouraged by the chill—of those last autumn mornings, so
luminous and so cold, in which winter begins, to get up and look at
the trees on which the leaves were indicated now only by a few
strokes, golden or rosy, which seemed to have been left in the air, on
an invisible web, I raised my head from the pillow and stretched my
neck, keeping my body still hidden beneath the bedclothes; like a
chrysalis in the process of change I was a dual creature, with the
different parts of which a single environment did not agree; for my
eyes colour was sufficient, without warmth; my chest on the other
hand was anxious for warmth and not for colour. I rose only after my
fire had been lighted, and studied the picture, so delicate and
transparent, of the pink and golden morning, to which I had now
added by artificial means the element of warmth that it lacked,
poking my fire which burned and smoked like a good pipe and gave
me, as a pipe would have given me, a pleasure at once coarse
because it was based upon a material comfort and delicate because
beyond it was printed a pure vision. The walls of my dressing-room
were covered with a paper on which a violent red background was
patterned with black and white flowers, to which it seemed that I
should have some difficulty in growing accustomed. But they
succeeded only in striking me as novel, in forcing me to enter not
into conflict but into contact with them, in modulating the gaiety, the
songs of my morning toilet, they succeeded only in imprisoning me in
the heart of a sort of poppy, out of which to look at a world which I
saw quite differently from in Paris, from the gay screen which was
this new dwelling-place, of a different aspect from the house of my
parents, and into which flowed a purer air. On certain days, I was
agitated by the desire to see my grandmother again, or by the fear
that she might be ill, or else it was the memory of some undertaking
which I had left half-finished in Paris, and which seemed to have
made no progress; sometimes again it was some difficulty in which,
even here, I had managed to become involved. One or other of
these anxieties had kept me from sleeping, and I was without
strength to face my sorrow which in a moment grew to fill the whole
of my existence. Then from the hotel I sent a messenger to the
barracks, with a line to Saint-Loup: I told him that, should it be
materially possible—I knew that it was extremely difficult for him—I
should be most grateful if he would look in for a minute. An hour later
he arrived; and on hearing his ring at the door I felt myself liberated
from my obsessions. I knew that, if they were stronger than I, he was
stronger than they, and my attention was diverted from them and
concentrated on him who would have to settle them. He had come
into the room, and already he had enveloped me in the gust of fresh
air in which from before dawn he had been displaying so much
activity, a vital atmosphere very different from that of my room, to
which I at once adapted myself by appropriate reactions.
“I hope you weren’t angry with me for bothering you; there is
something that is worrying me, as you probably guessed.”
“Not at all; I just supposed you wanted to see me, and I thought it
very nice of you. I was delighted that you should have sent for me.
But what is the trouble? Things not going well? What can I do to
help?”
He listened to my explanations, and gave careful answers; but
before he had uttered a word he had transformed me to his own
likeness; compared with the important occupations which kept him
so busy, so alert, so happy, the worries which, a moment ago, I had
been unable to endure for another instant seemed to me as to him
negligible; I was like a man who, not having been able to open his
eyes for some days, sends for a doctor, who neatly and gently raises
his eyelid, removes from beneath it and shews him a grain of sand;
the sufferer is healed and comforted. All my cares resolved
themselves into a telegram which Saint-Loup undertook to dispatch.
Life seemed to me so different, so delightful; I was flooded with such
a surfeit of strength that I longed for action.
“What are you doing now?” I asked him.
“I must leave you, I’m afraid; we’re going on a route march in three
quarters of an hour, and I have to be on parade.”
“Then it’s been a great bother to you, coming here?”
“No, no bother at all, the Captain was very good about it; he told
me that if it was for you I must go at once; but you understand, I
don’t like to seem to be abusing the privilege.”
“But if I got up and dressed quickly and went by myself to the
place where you’ll be training, it would interest me immensely, and I
could perhaps talk to you during the breaks.”
“I shouldn’t advise you to do that; you have been lying awake,
racking your brains over a thing which, I assure you, is not of the
slightest importance, but now that it has ceased to worry you, lay
your head down on the pillow and go to sleep, which you will find an
excellent antidote to the demineralisation of your nerve-cells; only
you mustn’t go to sleep too soon, because our band-boys will be
coming along under your windows; but as soon as they’ve passed I
think you’ll be left in peace, and we shall meet again this evening, at
dinner.”
But soon I was constantly going to see the regiment being trained
in field operations, when I began to take an interest in the military
theories which Saint-Loup’s friends used to expound over the dinner-
table, and when it had become the chief desire of my life to see at
close quarters their various leaders, just as a person who makes
music his principal study and spends his life in the concert halls finds
pleasure in frequenting the cafés in which one mingles with the life of
the members of the orchestra. To reach the training ground I used to
have to take tremendously long walks. In the evening after dinner the
longing for sleep made my head drop every now and then as in a
swoon. Next morning I realised that I had no more heard the band
than, at Balbec, after the evenings on which Saint-Loup had taken
me to dinner at Rivebelle, I used to hear the concert on the beach.
And at the moment when I wished to rise I had a delicious feeling of
incapacity; I felt myself fastened to a deep, invisible ground by the
articulations (of which my tiredness made me conscious) of muscular
and nutritious roots. I felt myself full of strength; life seemed to
extend more amply before me; this was because I had reverted to
the good tiredness of my childhood at Combray on the mornings
following days on which we had taken the Guermantes walk. Poets
make out that we recapture for a moment the self that we were long
ago when we enter some house or garden in which we used to live
in our youth. But these are most hazardous pilgrimages, which end
as often in disappointment as in success. The fixed places,
contemporary with different years, it is in ourselves that we should
rather seek to find them. This is where the advantage comes in, to a
certain extent, of great exhaustion followed by a good night’s rest.
Good nights, to make us descend into the most subterranean
galleries of sleep, where no reflexion from overnight, no gleam of
memory comes to lighten the inward monologue (if so be that it
cease not also), turn so effectively the soil and break through the
surface stone of our body that we discover there, where our muscles
dive down and throw out their twisted roots and breathe the air of the
new life, the garden in which as a child we used to play. There is no
need to travel in order to see it again; we must dig down inwardly to
discover it. What once covered the earth is no longer upon it but
beneath; a mere excursion does not suffice for a visit to the dead
city, excavation is necessary also. But we shall see how certain
impressions, fugitive and fortuitous, carry us back even more
effectively to the past, with a more delicate precision, with a flight
more light-winged, more immaterial, more headlong, more unerring,
more immortal than these organic dislocations.
Sometimes my exhaustion was greater still; I had, without any
opportunity of going to bed, been following the operations for several
days on end. How blessed then was my return to the hotel! As I got
into bed I seemed to have escaped at last from the hands of
enchanters, sorcerers like those who people the “romances” beloved
of our forebears in the seventeenth century. My sleep that night and
the lazy morning that followed it were no more than a charming fairy
tale. Charming; beneficent perhaps also. I reminded myself that the
keenest sufferings have their place of sanctuary, that one can
always, when all else fails, find repose. These thoughts carried me
far.
On days when, although there was no parade, Saint-Loup had to
stay in barracks, I used often to go and visit him there. It was a long
way; I had to leave the town and cross the viaduct, from either side
of which I had an immense view. A strong breeze blew almost
always over this high ground, and filled all the buildings erected on
three sides of the barrack-square, which howled incessantly like a
cave of the winds. While I waited for Robert—he being engaged on
some duty or other—outside the door of his room or in the mess,
talking to some of his friends to whom he had introduced me (and
whom later on I came now and then to see, even when he was not to
be there), looking down from the window three hundred feet to the
country below, bare now except where recently sown fields, often still
soaked with rain and glittering in the sun, shewed a few stripes of
green, of the brilliance and translucent limpidity of enamel, I could

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