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Why ‘Current Mode’ Does Not Guarantee Good Performance

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Abstract

It is often said that there is a fundamental difference between current-mode and voltage-mode circuits. This conjecture is discussed in technical and philosophical terms, and it is shown that there is no such performance difference to be found, and that it is not possible to make a clear divide between ‘voltage mode’ and ‘current mode.’

And yet performance differences appear in the literature. It is shown that they come from the different design practices of the current-mode and the voltage-mode research groups. The conclusion of this paper is that the practical knowledge of the current-mode research groups should be re-integrated into main-stream IC design, and that all propaganda of the type ‘current-mode is better than voltage-mode’ should be stopped immediately.

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Schmid, H. Why ‘Current Mode’ Does Not Guarantee Good Performance. Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing 35, 79–90 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023477605076

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