Following our study of basic bipolar and MOS amplifiers in previous chapters, we deal
with two other important building blocks in this chapter. The “cascode”1 stage is a
modified version of common-emitter or common-source topologies and proves useful in
high-performance circuit design, and the “current mirror” is an interesting and versatile
technique employed extensively in integrated circuits. Our study includes both bipolar
and MOS implementations of each building block. Shown below is the outline of the
chapter.