RB-Compensated Current Mirror
by Dennis L. Feucht
Innovatia Laboratories


An inverting current amplifier, or current mirror, is shown below. Input current, II, is amplified and is output as IO. This current mirror topology has been used in IC design to improve two-transistor current-mirror accuracy by adding a base resistor, RB, usually implemented monolithically as a pinch resistor. More applicable to discrete designs using a matched pair of transistors and accurate emitter resistors, one additional non-accurate resistor of the right value can improve mirror accuracy by over an order of magnitude.

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