A 2.5-V 10-b 120-MSample/s CMOS Pipelined ADC Based on Merged-Capacitor Switching

Abstract—This work describes a 10-b multibit-per-stage pipelined CMOS analog-to-digital converter (ADC) incorporating the merged-capacitor switching (MCS) technique. The proposed MCS technique improves the signal processing speed and resolution of the ADC by reducing the required number of unit capacitors by half in comparison to a conventional ADC. The ADC resolution based on the proposed MCS technique can be extended further by employing a commutated feedback-capacitor switching (CFCS) technique. The prototype ADC achieves better than 53-dB signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) at 120 MSample/s and 54-dB SNDR and 68-dB spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) for input frequencies up to Nyquist at 100 MSample/s. The measured differential and integral nonlinearities of the prototype are within H RH LSB and H RV LSB, respectively. The ADC fabricated in a 0.25- m CMOS occupies 3.6 mmP of active die area and consumes 208 mW under a 2.5-V power supply. Index Terms—Analog-to-digital converter (ADC), mergedcapacitor switching (MCS), multiplying ADC (MADC), pipeline

Low power design techniques for analog-to-digital converters in submicron CMOS

Advances in process technologies have led to the development of low-power high speed digital signal processing blocks that occupy small areas. These advances are critical in the development of portable electronic devices with small feature size and long battery life. However, the design of analog and mixed-signal building blocks, especially analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), becomes complex and power-inefficient with each advance in process node. This is because of decreased headroom and low intrinsic gain. In this thesis, circuit techniques that enable the design of low-complexity power-efficient ADCs in submicron CMOS are introduced. The techniques include improved correlated level shifting that allow the use of simple low gain amplifiers to realize high performance pipelined and delta-sigma ADCs. Also included is an investigation of the possibility of replacing the power-hungry amplifier in integrators, used in delta-sigma modulators, with low power zero-crossing-based ones. Simulation results of a correlated level shifting pipelined ADC and measurement results of a fabricated prototype of a zero-crossing-based delta-sigma ADC are employed to discuss the effectiveness of the techniques in achieving compact low-power designs

Design techniques for low noise and high speed A/D converters

Analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion is a process that bridges the real analog world to digital signal processing. It takes a continuous-time, continuous amplitude signal as its input and outputs a discrete-time, discrete-amplitude signal. The resolution and sampling rate of an A/D converter vary depending on the application. Recently, there has been a growing demand for broadband (>1 MHz), high-resolution (>14bits) A/D converters. Applications that demand such converters include asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) modems, cellular systems, high accuracy instrumentation, and medical imaging systems. This thesis suggests some design techniques for such high resolution and high sampling rate A/D converters. As the A/D converter performance keeps on increasing it becomes increasingly difficult for the input driver to settle to required accuracy within the sampling time. This is because of the use of larger sampling capacitor (increased resolution) and a decrease in sampling time (higher speed). So there is an increasing trend to have a driver integrated onchip along with A/D converter. The first contribution of this thesis is to present a new precharge scheme which enables integrating the input buffer with A/D converter in standard CMOS process. The buffer also uses a novel multi-path common mode feedback scheme to stabilize the common mode loop at high speeds. Another major problem in achieving very high Signal to Noise and Distortion Ratio (SNDR) is the capacitor mismatch in Digital to Analog Converters (DAC) inherent in the A/D converters. The mismatch between the capacitor causes harmonic distortion, which may not be acceptable. The analysis of Dynamic Element Matching (DEM) technique as applicable to broadband data-converters is presented and a novel second order notch-DEM is introduced. In this thesis we present a method to calibrate the DAC. We also show that a combination of digital error correction and dynamic element matching is optimal in terms of test time or calibration time. Even if we are using dynamic element matching techniques, it is still critical to get the best matching of unit elements possible in a given technology. The matching obtained may be limited either by random variations in the unit capacitor or by gradient effects. In this thesis we present layout techniques for capacitor arrays, and the matching results obtained in measurement from a test-chip are presented. Thus we present various design techniques for high speed and low noise A/D converters in this thesis. The techniques described are quite general and can be applied to most of the types of A/D converters