High speed – energy efficient successive approximation analog to digital converter using tri-level switching

This thesis reports issues and design methods used to achieve high-speed and high-resolution Successive Approximation Register analog to digital converters (SAR ADCs). A major drawback of this technique relates to the mismatch in the binary ratios of capacitors which causes nonlinearity. Another issue is the use of large capacitors due to nonlinear effect of parasitic capacitance. Nonlinear effect of capacitor mismatch is investigated in this thesis. Based on the analysis, a new Tri-level switching algorithm is proposed to reduce the matching requirement for capacitors in SAR ADCs. The integral non-linearity (INL) and the differential non-linearity (DNL) of the proposed scheme are reduced by factor of two over conventional SAR ADC, which is the lowest compared to the previously reported schemes. In addition, the switching energy of the proposed scheme is reduced by 98.02% compared with the conventional SAR architecture. A new correction method to solve metastability error of comparator based on a novel design approach is proposed which reduces the required settling time about 1.1τ for each conversion cycle. Based on the above proposed methods two SAR ADCs: an 8-bit SAR ADC with 50MS/sec sampling rate, and a 10-bit SAR split ADC with 70 MS/sec sampling rate have been designed in 0.18μm Silterra complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology process which works at 1.2V supply voltage and input voltage of 2.4Vp-p. The 8-bit ADC digitizes 25MHz input signal with 48.16dB signal to noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) and 52.41dB spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) while consuming about 589μW. The figure of merit (FOM) of this ADC is 56.65 fJ/conv-step. The post layout of the 10-bit ADC with 1MHz input frequency produces SNDR, SFDR and effective number of bits (ENOB) of 57.1dB, 64.05dB and 9.17Bit, respectively, while its DNL and INL are -0.9/+2.8 least significant bit (LSB) and -2.5/+2.7 LSB, respectively. The total power consumption, including digital, analog and reference power, is 1.6mW. The FOM is 71.75fJ/conv. step

Novel techniques for the design and practical realization of switched-capacitor circuits in deep-submicron CMOS technologies

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e TecnologiaSwitches presenting high linearity are more and more required in switched-capacitor circuits,namely in 12 to 16 bits resolution analog-to-digital converters. The CMOS technology evolves continuously towards lower supply voltages and, simultaneously, new design techniques are necessary to fulfill the realization of switches exhibiting a high dynamic range and a distortion compatible with referred resolutions. Moreover, with the continuously downing of the sizes, the physic constraints of the technology must be considered to avoid the excessive stress of the devices when relatively high voltages are applied to the gates. New switch-linearization techniques, with high reliability, must be necessarily developed and demonstrated in CMOS integrated circuits. Also, the research of new structures of circuits with switched-capacitor is permanent. Simplified and efficient structures are mandatory, adequate to the new demands emerging from the proliferation of portable equipments, necessarily with low energy consumption while assuring high performance and multiple functions. The work reported in this Thesis comprises these two areas. The behavior of the switches under these new constraints is analyzed, being a new and original solution proposed, in order to maintain the performance. Also, proposals for the application of simpler clock and control schemes are presented, and for the use of open-loop structures and amplifiers with localfeedback. The results, obtained in laboratory or by simulation, assess the feasibility of the presented proposals

Durcissement par conception d'ASIC analogiques

The purpose of this thesis work is to investigate circuit design techniques to improve the robustness to Total Ionizing Dose (TID) of analog circuits within electronic systems embedded in space probes, satellites and vehicles. Such circuits often contain bipolartransistor components which are quite sensitive to cumulated radiation dose. However highly integrated CMOS technology has been shown to exhibit better natural TDI hardening.The approach proposed here is a hardening by design using a full CMOS semiconductor technology commercially available from ST Microelectronics calledHCMOS9A. The proposed generic hardening design methods will be seen to be compatibleand applicable to other existing or future process technologies. Furthermore this approach addresses the issue of ever-increasing development cost and access to hardened technologies.The first TID hardening technique proposed is applied to a full-CMOS voltage reference. This technique does not involve p-n junctions nor any particular layout precaution but instead is based on the subtraction of two different threshold voltages which allows the cancellation of TDI effects. While the use of advanced commercial CMOS technologies for specific radiation hardened applications is becoming more common, these technologies suffer from larger inputoffs et voltage drift than their bipolar transistor counterparts, which can impact system performance. The second technique studied is that of auto-zeroing, which is an efficient method to reduce the complex offset voltage drift mechanisms of operational amplifiers due to temperature. The purpose here is to prove that this technique can also cancel input offset voltage drift due to TID.Index term : hardening, cumulated dose, CMOS technology, voltage reference,operational amplifier.Les travaux de cette thèse sont axés sur le durcissement à la dose cumulée des circuits analogiques associés aux systèmes électroniques embarqués sur des véhicules spatiaux, satellites ou sondes. Ces types de circuits sont réputés pour être relativement sensibles à la dose cumulée, parfois dès quelques krad, souvent en raison de l’intégration d’éléments bipolaires. Les nouvelles technologies CMOS montrent par leur intégration de plus en plus poussée, un durcissement naturel à cette dose. L’approche de durcissement proposée ici, repose sur un durcissement par la conception d’une technologie commerciale « full CMOS » du fondeur ST Microelectronics, appelée HCMOS9A. Cette approche permet d’assurer la portabilité des méthodes de durcissement proposées d’une technologie à une autre et de rendre ainsi accessible les nouvelles technologies aux systèmes spatiaux. De plus, cette approche de durcissement permet de faire face aux coûts croissants de développement et d’accès aux technologies durcies. Une première technique de durcissement à la dose cumulée est appliquée à une tension de référence « full CMOS ». Elle ne fait intervenir ni jonction p-n parasites ni précautions delay out particulières mais la soustraction de deux tensions de seuil qui annulent leurs effets à la dose cumulée entre elles. Si les technologies commerciales avancées sont de plus en plus utilisées pour des applications spécialement durcies, ces dernières exhibent en contrepartie de plus grands offsets que les technologies bipolaires. Cela peut affecter les performances des systèmes. La seconde technique étudiée : l’auto zéro, est une solution efficace pour réduire les dérives complexes dues entre autres à la température, de l’offset d’entrée des amplificateurs opérationnels. Le but ici est de prouver que cette technique peut tout aussi bien contrebalancer les dérives de l’offset dues à la dose cumulée

Conception de Convertisseurs Analogique-Numérique en technologie CMOS basse tension pour chaînes Vidéo CCD Spatiales

Dans le cadre des Instruments d'Observation de la Terre, les technologies microélectroniques sur lesquelles sont basés les systèmes spatiaux embarqués, ont tendance à être de moins en moins basées sur les technologies dites durcies aux radiations au profit de technologies CMOS sub-microniques basse-tension dédiées principalement aux circuits numériques. Aussi, dans un premier temps, des méthodes de durcissement aux radiations présentes dans l'espace ont dû être analysées tant au niveau système qu'au niveau circuit et layout pour améliorer la fiabilité des Convertisseurs Analogique-Numérique (CAN) utilisés dans les chaînes Video CCD. Pour atteindre les performances des futurs imageurs CCD (12 bits à 20 Méchantillons/s), les CAN à architecture pipeline apparaissent comme les plus adaptés. Pour anticiper l'évolution des technologies vers les très basses tensions, les méthodes de conception en courant et en tension ont toutes deux été analysées. Dans ce cadre, l'approche originale en courant a aussi été abordée de par ses propriétés d'auto-calibrage (température, vieillissement). Afin de démontrer la faisabilité de CAN de haute résolution en courant, une mémoire de courant, cellule fondamentale d'un CAN en courant, a été implémentée en technologie CMOS 0.35μm. Le prototype de cette mémoire atteint une résolution supérieure à 13bits à 10Méchantillons/s. Toutefois, les performances en bruit de cette mémoire de courant (¼ 65dB) ne satisfont pas les critères en bruit d'un CAN 12bits. Aussi, une analyse comparative en bruit entre les circuits à capacités commutées en tension et à courants commutés a été effectuée afin de caractériser chacune des approches en bruit et de déterminer l'approche la moins pénalisante. Elle a permis de mettre en évidence un gain de 17dB environ des structures en tension sur celles en courant. C'est pourquoi, une approche en tension dont une méthode de conception optimisée a été développée, apparaît comme nécessaire pour les premiers étages de haute résolution au moins. Contrairement à l'approche en courant qui ne requiert pas de commutateurs analogiques performants et qui par là-même est plus adaptée au contexte spatial, l'approche en tension nécessite des commutateurs fonctionnant sur une large plage de tension. En général, les méthodes de conception basse-tension reposent sur une architecture dite “bootstrappée” pour améliorer leurs caractéristiques. Toutefois, non applicables directement de par les contraintes de l'environnement spatial, une autre architecture basée sur des transistors PMOS a été proposée. Enfin, pour pouvoir relaxer les contraintes sur la conception des circuits analogiques, une nouvelle méthode de calibrage et de correction numérique adaptable à la fois aux CAN en tension et en courant est proposée. Elle permet de corriger les erreurs de gain, d'offsets, et des niveaux de référence utilisés. Elle améliore aussi la linéarité du convertisseur, sa précision absolue, sa consommation et sa robustesse vis-à-vis des radiations. Pour le cas des structures en courant, la méthode proposée permet de doubler la vitesse d'échantillonnage du CAN. ABSTRACT : Over the last few years, circuit technologies used in space embedded systems have evolved from radiation-hardened technologies to more conventional CMOS/BiCMOS ones for three main reasons : cost effectiveness, wide availability of these technologies and greater integration. In fact, full monolithic CMOS Analogue-Front-Ends (AFEs) are required for low-power consumption and higher-level integration purposes. Therefore, radiation hardening methods have been firstly studied to improve the reliability of both Analogue-to-Digital Converter design and layout dedicated to space CCD processors. Instead of flash, successive approximation or sigma-delta converters, pipelined ADCs are employed to achieve the required performances of future CCD processors (12bits, 20MSamples/s) because both high-speed and high-resolution can be obtained simultaneously. Moreover, since CMOS technologies are scaling toward smaller device sizes and lower supply voltage, both voltage and current mode approaches have been analysed. Indeed, the current mode approach has self-calibrating characteristics (for example : temperature, ageing and process) as well as low-voltage low-power architectures, which can be useful for designing low-power ADCs in such a harsh environment. Consequently, to verify that current pipelined ADCs can reach high-resolutions, a current memory cell, which is the fundamental structure of such ADCs, has been designed and implemented in 0.35μm CMOS technology. Although this current memory cell can fulfill such high performances (14bits, 10MSamples/s), its noise characteristics are not suitable for 12bits ADCs. Actually, noise is a key parameter which has a large influence on both power consumption and bandwidth. A comparative noise analysis between switched-capacitor and switched-current structures indicates that voltage mode structures are less noisy relative to current mode ones by more than 17dB. Therefore, the voltage mode approach is required for the first few ADC stages. Contrary to the current mode approach which does not require any high-swing analogue switches, thereby, suiting better space conditions, the voltage mode approach needs such switches to improve their noise performances. Bootstrapped switch structures are usually used to improve their characteristics in low-voltage designs. Since space radiations can damage these switch architectures, another switch design based on the bootstrapped principle and PMOS devices has been proposed to improve their reliability. In addition, to relax the analogue design requirements, a new digital calibration method has been proposed to correct gain, voltage references and offset errors occurring in both voltage and current ADCs. It is shown that this calibration algorithm significantly improves the linearity, precision, power consumption and radiation robustness of pipelined ADCs. Finally, as far as current pipelined ADCs are concerned, such a calibration method can enhance the sampling frequency by a factor of two