Information Capacity and Power Efficiency in Operational Transconductance Amplifiers

Abstract

Information capacity is a fundamental and quantitative bound on the ability of a physical system to communicate information. The capacity depends only on the physical properties of the channel, such as bandwidth, noise, and constraints on the signal values; it does not depend on specific tasks for which the channel may be used. Real analog systems possess intrinsic physical noise such as thermal noise and flicker noise and inevitably suffer degradation of information content. We investigate the information transmission and information-power efficiency of an Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA). We present empirical results for the information capacity of an integrated OTA and compare these results with our theoretical model. We notice a significant increase in information content if the system is operated in spectral regions with higher frequency and lower noise level.