This article presents the conception, design, and realization of a fully differential two-stage CMOS amplifier, that is, unconditionally stable for any value of the capacitive load. This is simply achieved by sending a scaled replica of the output stage current to the amplifier virtual ground in order to create a left half-plane (LHP) zero in the loop gain that either cancels or tracks the output pole in all process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) conditions. Consequently, from a stability point of view, the amplifier behavior resembles that of a single-pole OTA. Starting from an existing two-stage gain-programmable amplifier, designed in a 0.18-$\mu $m bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) process that was able to drive only 10 pF without encountering into stability issues, a simple circuit has been added to extend the stability to any capacitive load value. An interesting and unusual method, based on the frequency behavior of the unloaded closed-loop amplifier output impedance, has been introduced to further verify the unconditional stability of this solution. Measurements show a high degree of stability in any load conditions. In the used 0.18-$\mu $m BCD technology, silicon area and current consumption of the extra circuit are only 0.0004 mm2 and$2~\mu $A, respectively, with a 5-V power supply.

This paper presents the conception, design and realization of a fully-differential two-stage CMOS amplifier that is unconditionally stable for any value of the capacitive load. This is simply achieved by sending a scaled replica of the output stage current to the amplifier virtual ground such as to create a Left Half-Plane (LHP) zero in the loop-gain that either cancels or tracks the output pole in all process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) conditions. Consequently, from a stability point of view the amplifier behavior resembles that of a single-pole OTA. Starting from an existing two-stage gain-programmable amplifier, designed in a 0.18μm Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) process, that was able to drive only 10pF without incurring into stability issues, a simple circuit has been added to extend the stability to any capacitive load value. Measurements, given with loads ranging from 0pF to 100nF, show high degree of stability in any load conditions. In the used 0.18μm BCD technology, silicon area and current consumption of the extra circuit are only 0.0004mm2and 2μA, respectively, with a 5 V power supply.

This paper presents a 0.2V VCO-based OTA (VCO-OTA) for low-voltage, low-power applications. The VCO-OTA processes information in the time domain, which makes it possible to scale down supply to really low voltages. The proposed architecture eliminates current sources used in the charge pump to design a 0.2V VCO-OTA. Simulations show that in unity gain configuration, the proposed architecture achieves 60kHz unity gain bandwidth and 207μVRMs input referred noise while consuming 492nW.

We describe the tools of the Haruspex suite to manage the risk due to intelligent agents. The suite applies a Monte Carlo method and it return a statistical samples on the attacks these agents implement. Some tools of the suite analyzes these samples to select the countermeasures to deploy. The tools work in an iterative way that alternates the selection of countermeasures and the application of the Monte Carlo method. This takes into account that an intelligent agent may select distinct attacks to replace those affected by the countermeasures. Lastly, we apply the tools to three industrial control systems.

A new class of very low noise low-frequency force-balance accelerometers is presented. The device has been designed for advanced mirror isolation systems of interferometric gravitational wave detectors. The accelerometer consists of a small monolithic folded pendulum with 2 s of natural period and an in-vacuum mechanical quality factor of 3000. The folded pendulum geometry, combined with the monolithic design, allows a unique 0.01% cross-axis residual coupling. Equipped with a high-resolution capacitance position sensor, it is capable of a noise-equivalent inertial displacement of 1-nm root mean square integrated over all the frequencies above 0.01 Hz. The main features of this new accelerometer are here reviewed. New possible applications of monolithic folded pendula in geophysical instrumentation are discussed.