A CMOS low quiescent current low dropout regulator (LDR) with high power supply rejection (PSR) and without large output capacitor is proposed for system-on-chip (SoC) power management applications. By cascoding a power NMOS with the PMOS pass transistor, high PSR over a wide frequency range is achieved. The gate-drive of the cascode NMOS is controlled by an auxiliary LDR that draws only 1 μA from a small charge pump, thus helping in reducing the quiescent current. Adaptive biasing is employed for the multi-stage error amplifier of the core LDR to achieve high loop gain hence high PSR at low frequency, low quiescent current at light load and high bandwidth at heavy load. A prototype of the proposed high-PSR LDR is fabricated using a standard 0.35 μm CMOS process, occupying an active area of 0.066 mm2. The lowest supply voltage is 1.6 V and the preset output voltage is 1.2 V. The maximum load current is 10 mA. The measured worst-case PSR at full load without using large output capacitor is -22.7 dB up to 60 MHz. The line and load regulations are 0.25 mV/V and 0.32 mV/mA, respectively.
