Design Issues in Cross-Coupled Inverter Sense Amplifier

A. Hajimiri and R. Heald

This paper presents an analytical approach to the design of CMOS cross-coupled inverter sense amplifiers. The effects of the equilibrating transistors and the tail current source on the speed of the sense amplifier are analyzed. An analysis of the offset due to mismatch in various parameters is performed, showing that a complete offset analysis has to account for the cell and bitline structure. A new figure of merit for the offset in the sense amplifier and several new design insights are introduced.