Wideband discrete-time delta-sigma analog-to-digital converters with shifted loop delays

Low-distortion architecture is widely used in wideband discrete-time switched-capacitor delta-sigma ADC design. However, it suffers from the power-hungry active adder and critical timing for quantization and dynamic element matching (DEM). To solve this problem, this dissertation presents a delta-sigma modulator architecture with shifted loop delays. In this project, shifted loop delays (SLD) technique can relax the speed requirements of the quantizer and the dynamic element matching (DEM) block, and eliminate the active adder. An implemented 0.18 um CMOS prototype with the proposed architecture provided 81.6 dB SNDR, 81.8 dB dynamic range, and -95.6 dB THD in a signal bandwidth of 4 MHz. It dissipates 19.2 mW with a 1.6 V power supply. The conventional low-distortion ADC was also implemented on the same chip for comparison. The new circuit has superior performance, and dissipates 25% less power (19.2 mW vs. 24.9 mW) than the conventional one. The figure-of-merit for the ADC with SLD is among the best reported for wideband discrete-time ADCs, and is almost 40% better than that of the conventional ADC. The second project describes two techniques to enhance the noise shaping function in the proposed low-distortion ΔΣ modulator with shifted loop delays. One is self-noise coupling based on low-distortion ΔΣ structure; the other is noise-coupled time-interleaved ΔΣ modulator. Both architectures use shifted loop delays to relax the critical timing constraints in the modulator feedback path, then to save power consumption of each block in the modulators. Two ΔΣ ADCs were analyzed and simulated in a 0.18um CMOS technology. The simulation results highly verify the effectiveness of the proposed structure. The third system describes the design technique for double-sampled wideband ΔΣ ADCs with shifted loop delays (SLD). The added loop delay in the feedback branch relaxes the critical timing for DEM logic. Delay shifting can be combined with such useful techniques as low-distortion circuitry and noise coupling for wideband ΔΣ modulators. The presented techniques relax the timing for inherent quantization delay, reduce the speed requirements for the critical circuit blocks, and achieve power efficiency by replacing the power-hungry blocks normally used in the modulators. Analysis of all architectures allows the choice of the most power-efficient topology for a wideband ΔΣ modulator. The proposed second-order and third-order ΔΣ modulators were designed and simulated to verify the effectiveness of the shifted loop delays techniques.Keywords: Noise-shaping, Shifted Loop Delays, Delta-Sigma Modulator, Low-distortion, AD

A 28mW 320MHz 3rd–Order Continuous-Time Time-Interleaved Delta-Sigma Modulator with 10MHz Bandwidth and 12 Bits of Resolution

this paper presents a 3rd-order two-path Continuous-Time Time-Interleaved (CTTI) delta-sigma modulator which is implemented in standard 90nm CMOS technology. The architecture uses a novel method to solve the delayless feedback path issue arising from the sharing of integrators between paths. The clock frequency of the modulator is 320MHz but integrators, quantizers and DACs operate at 160MHz. The modulator achieves a dynamic range of 12 bits over a bandwidth of 10MHz and dissipates only 28mW of power from a 1.8-V supply

Analysis and design of ΣΔ Modulators for Radio Frequency Switchmode Power Amplifiers

Power amplifiers are an integral part of every basestation, macrocell, microcell and mobile phone, enabling data to be sent over the distances needed to reach the receiver’s antenna. While linear operation is needed for transmitting WCDMA and OFDM signals, linear operation of a power amplifier is characterized by low power efficiency, and contributes to unwanted power dissipation in a transmitter. Recently, a switchmode power amplifier operation was considered for reducing power losses in a RF transmitter. A linear and efficient operation of a PA can be achieved when the transmitted RF signal is ΣΔ modu- lated, and subsequently amplified by a nonlinear device. Although in theory this approach offers linearity and efficiency reaching 100%, the use of ΣΔ modulation for transmitting wideband signals causes problems in practical implementation: it requires high sampling rate by the digital hardware, which is needed for shaping large contents of a quantization noise induced by the modulator but also, the binary output from the modulator needs an RF power amplifier operating over very wide frequency band. This thesis addresses the problem of noise shaping in a ΣΔ modulator and nonlinear distortion caused by broadband operation in switchmode power amplifier driven by a ΣΔ modulated waveform. The problem of sampling rate increase in a ΣΔ modulator is solved by optimizing structure of the modulator, and subsequent processing of an input signal’s samples in parallel. Independent from the above, a novel technique for reducing quan- tization noise in a bandpass ΣΔ modulator using single bit quantizer is presented. The technique combines error pulse shaping and 3-level quantization for improving signal to noise ratio in a 2-level output. The improvement is achieved without the increase of a digital hardware’s sampling rate, which is advantageous also from the perspective of power consumption. The new method is explored in the course of analysis, and verified by simulated and experimental results. The process of RF signal conversion from the Cartesian to polar form is analyzed, and a signal modulator for a polar transmitter with a ΣΔ-digitized envelope signal is designed and implemented. The new modulator takes an advantage of bandpass digital to analog conversion for simplifying the analog part of the modulator. A deformation of the pulsed RF signal in the experimental modulator is demonstrated to have an effect primarily on amplitude of the RF signal, which is correctable with simple predistortion

Techniques for Wideband All Digital Polar Transmission

abstract: Modern Communication systems are progressively moving towards all-digital transmitters (ADTs) due to their high efficiency and potentially large frequency range. While significant work has been done on individual blocks within the ADT, there are few to no full systems designs at this point in time. The goal of this work is to provide a set of multiple novel block architectures which will allow for greater cohesion between the various ADT blocks. Furthermore, the design of these architectures are expected to focus on the practicalities of system design, such as regulatory compliance, which here to date has largely been neglected by the academic community. Amongst these techniques are a novel upconverted phase modulation, polyphase harmonic cancellation, and process voltage and temperature (PVT) invariant Delta Sigma phase interpolation. It will be shown in this work that the implementation of the aforementioned architectures allows ADTs to be designed with state of the art size, power, and accuracy levels, all while maintaining PVT insensitivity. Due to the significant performance enhancement over previously published works, this work presents the first feasible ADT architecture suitable for widespread commercial deployment.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 201

Successive-approximation-register based quantizer design for high-speed delta-sigma modulators

High-speed delta-sigma modulators are in high demand for applications such as wire-line and wireless communications, medical imaging, RF receivers and high-definition video processing. A high-speed delta-sigma modulator requires that all components of the delta-sigma loop operate at the desired high frequency. For this reason, it is essential that the quantizer used in the delta-sigma loop operate at a high sampling frequency. This thesis focuses on the design of high-speed time-interleaved multi-bit successive-approximation-register (SAR) quantizers. Design techniques for high-speed medium-resolution SAR analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) using synchronous SAR logic are proposed. Four-bit and 8-bit 5 GS/s SAR ADCs have been implemented in 65 nm CMOS using 8-channel and 16-channel time-interleaving respectively. The 4-bit SAR ADC achieves SNR of 24.3 dB, figure-of-merit (FoM) of 638 fJ/conversion-step and 42.6 mW power consumption, while the 8-bit SAR ADC achieves SNR of 41.5 dB, FoM of 191 fJ/conversion-step and 92.8 mW power consumption. High-speed operation is achieved by optimizing the critical path in the SAR ADC loop. A sampling network with a split-array with unit bridge capacitor topology is used to reduce the area of the sampling network and switch drivers

Design of a wideband low-power continuous-time sigma-delta (ΣΔ) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) in 90nm CMOS technology

The growing trend in VLSI systems is to shift more signal processing functionality from analog to digital domain to reduce manufacturing cost and improve reliability. It has resulted in the demand for wideband high-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). There are many different techniques for doing analog-to-digital conversions. Oversampling ADC based on sigma-delta (ΣΔ) modulation is receiving a lot of attention due to its significantly relaxed matching requirements on analog components. Moreover, it does not need a steep roll-off anti-aliasing filter. A ΣΔ ADC can be implemented either as a discrete time system or a continuous time one. Nowadays growing interest is focused on the continuous-time ΣΔ ADC for its use in the wideband and low-power applications, such as medical imaging, portable ultrasound systems, wireless receivers, and test equipments. A continuous-time ΣΔ ADC offers some important advantages over its discrete-time counterpart, including higher sampling frequency, intrinsic anti-alias filtering, much relaxed sampling network requirements, and low-voltage implementation. Especially it has the potential in achieving low power consumption. This dissertation presents a novel fifth-order continuous-time ΣΔ ADC which is implemented in a 90nm CMOS technology with single 1.0-V power supply. To speed up design process, an improved direct design method is proposed and used to design the loop filter transfer function. To maximize the in-band gain provided by the loop filter, thus maximizing in-band noise suppression, the excess loop delay must be kept minimum. In this design, a very low latency 4-bit flash quantizer with digital-to-analog (DAC) trimming is utilized. DAC trimming technique is used to correct the quantizer offset error, which allows minimum-sized transistors to be used for fast and low-power operation. The modulator has sampling clock of 800MHz. It achieves a dynamic range (DR) of 75dB and a signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) of 70dB over 25MHz input signal bandwidth with 16.4mW power dissipation. Our work is among the most improved published to date. It uses the lowest supply voltage and has the highest input signal bandwidth while dissipating the lowest power among the bandwidths exceeding 15MHz