Smart and high-performance digital-to-analog converters with dynamic-mismatch mapping

The trends of advanced communication systems, such as the high data rate in multi-channel base-stations and digital IF conversion in software-defined radios, have caused a continuously increasing demand for high performance interface circuits between the analog and the digital domain. A Digital-to-Analog converter (DAC) is such an interface circuit in the transmitter path. High bandwidth, high linearity and low noise are the main design challenges in high performance DACs. Current-steering is the most suitable architecture to meet these performance requirements. The aim of this thesis is to develop design techniques for high-speed high-performance Nyquist current-steering DACs, especially for the design of DACs with high dynamic performance, e.g. high linearity and low noise. The thesis starts with an introduction to DACs in chapter 2. The function in time/frequency domain, performance specifications, architectures and physical implementations of DACs are brie y discussed. Benchmarks of state-of-the-art published Nyquist DACs are also given. Chapter 3 analyzes performance limitations by various error sources in Nyquist current-steering DACs. The outcome shows that in the frequency range of DC to hundreds of MHz, mismatch errors, i.e. amplitude and timing errors, dominate the DAC linearity. Moreover, as frequencies increase, the effect of timing errors becomes more and more dominant over that of amplitude errors. Two new parameters, i.e. dynamic-INL and dynamic-DNL, are proposed to evaluate the matching of current cells. Compared to the traditional static-INL/DNL, the dynamic-INL/DNL can describe the matching between current cells more accurately and completely. By reducing the dynamic-INL/DNL, the non-linearities caused by all mismatch errors can be reduced. Therefore, both the DAC static and dynamic performance can be improved. The dynamic-INL/DNL are frequency-dependent parameters based on the measurement modulation frequency fm. This fm determines the weight between amplitude and timing errors in the dynamic-INL/DNL. Actually, this gives a freedom to optimize the DAC performance for different applications, e.g. low fm for low frequency applications and high fm for high frequency applications. Chapter 4 summarizes the existing design techniques for intrinsic and smart DACs. Due to technology limitations, it is diffcult to reduce the mismatch errors just by intrinsic DAC design with reasonable chip area and power consumption. Therefore, calibration techniques are required. An intrinsic DAC with calibration is called a smart DAC. Existing analog calibration techniques mainly focus on current source calibration, so that the amplitude error can be reduced. Dynamic element matching is a kind of digital calibration technique. It can reduce the non-linearities caused by all mismatch errors, but at the cost of an increased noise oor. Mapping is another kind of digital calibration technique and will not increase the noise. Mapping, as a highly digitized calibration technique, has many advantages. Since it corrects the error effects in the digital domain, the DAC analog core can be made clean and compact, which reduces the parasitics and the interference generated in the analog part. Traditional mapping is static-mismatch mapping, i.e. mapping only for amplitude errors, which many publications have already addressed on. Several concepts have also been proposed on mapping for timing errors. However, just mapping for amplitude or timing error is not enough to guarantee a good performance. This work focuses on developing mapping techniques which can correct both amplitude and timing errors at the same time. Chapter 5 introduces a novel mapping technique, called dynamic-mismatch mapping (DMM). By modulating current cells as square-wave outputs and measuring the dynamic-mismatch errors as vectors, DMM optimizes the switching sequence of current cells based on dynamic-mismatch error cancelation such that the dynamic-INL can be reduced. After reducing the dynamic-INL, the non-linearities caused by both amplitude and timing errors can be significantly reduced in the whole Nyquist band, which is confirmed by Matlab behavioral-level Monte-Carlo simulations. Compared to traditional static-mismatch mapping (SMM), DMM can reduce the non-linearities caused by both amplitude and timing errors. Compared to dynamic element matching (DEM), DMM does not increase the noise floor. The dynamic-mismatch error has to be accurately measured in order to gain the maximal benefit from DMM. An on-chip dynamic-mismatch error sensor based on a zero-IF receiver is proposed in chapter 6. This sensor is especially designed for low 1/f noise since the signal is directly down-converted to DC. Its signal transfer function and noise analysis are also given and con??rmed by transistor-level simulations. Chapter 7 gives a design example of a 14-bit current-steering DAC in 0.14mum CMOS technology. The DAC can be configured in an intrinsic-DAC mode or a smart-DAC mode. In the intrinsic-DAC mode, the 14-bit 650MS/s intrinsic DAC core achieves a performance of SFDR>65dBc across the whole 325MHz Nyquist band. In the smart-DAC mode, compared to the intrinsic DAC performance, DMM improves the DAC performance in the whole Nyquist band, providing at least 5dB linearity improvement at 200MS/s and without increasing the noise oor. This 14-bit 200MS/s smart DAC with DMM achieves a performance of SFDR>78dBc, IM

Digital enhancement techniques for data converters in scaled CMOS technologies

This thesis presents digital enhancement techniques for data converters in advanced technology nodes. With technology scaling, traditional voltage-domain (VD) analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) face two major challenges: (1) reduction of dynamic range due to supply voltage scaling, and (2) decrease in intrinsic gain of transistors which makes high gain amplifier design tough. To address these challenges, a two-stage ADC architecture is presented which uses time-domain quantization to exploit the advantages of technology scaling. The architecture, consisting of a first stage successive approximation register (SAR) and a second stage ring oscillator, is highly digital and scaling friendly. Two prototypes have been developed to validate the proposed architecture. The 40nm CMOS prototype achieves 75.7 dB dynamic range at an excellent Schreier figure-of-merit of 172.2 dB. The proposed architecture has been extended to a capacitance-to-digital converter and a prototype has been developed in 40nm CMOS. The prototype can sense capacitances with a resolution of 1.3fF and has a Walden figure-of-merit of 60 fJ/step which is more than two times better than the current state-of-the-art. This thesis also presents digital techniques to improve performance of continuous-time(CT), delta-sigma digital-to-analog converters (DACs). Recently, CT delta-sigma DACs have received more attention than their discrete, switched-capacitor counterpart mainly because of low power and/or higher speed of operation. However, a critical disadvantage of CT, delta-sigma DACs is their greatly increased sensitivity to inter-symbol interference (ISI) error. To address this shortcoming of CT DACs, this thesis presents several algorithms that can mitigate ISI error simultaneously with static mismatch error. Further, the proposed algorithms are fully digital in nature and as such, are best poised to take maximum advantage of technology scaling. Thus, the techniques presented in this thesis will be important enabling factors in raising the envelope of performance of CT delta-sigma DACs in advanced technology nodes.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Low harmonic distortion flash A/D converters incorporating dynamic element matching techniques

New dynamic element matching techniques are shown to reduce the harmonic distortion and improve the spurious-free dynamic range of flash ADCs. Resistor chain mismatch errors are negated by randomly rearranging the resistors each sample by utilizing 5(2{dollar}\sp{b}{dollar}-1) digital switches and b + 1 random control signals for a b-bit flash ADC. The integral and differential nonlinearity of a non-ideal flash ADC are derived for three common resistor chain mismatch errors; namely, geometric mismatches, linear gradient mismatches, and dynamic mismatches. The transfer function of a non-ideal flash ADC is also derived and the converter output is shown to consist of a scaled copy of the input, a DC gain, and conversion noise that is a function of the resistor mismatches. A comprehensive summary of dynamic element matching techniques given in literature is provided. In addition, the DEM network introduced by Galton and Jensen is shown to be equivalent to the generalized-cube network used in parallel processing architectures. An alternative version of this network that uses logic gates is also proposed

Integrated Circuit Blocks for High Performance Baseband and RF Analog-to-Digital Converters

Nowadays, the multi-standard wireless receivers and multi-format video processors have created a great demand for integrating multiple standards into a single chip. The multiple standards usually require several Analog to Digital Converters (ADCs) with different specifications. A promising solution is adopting a power and area efficient reconfigurable ADC with tunable bandwidth and dynamic range. The advantage of the reconfigurable ADC over customized ADCs is that its power consumption can be scaled at different specifications, enabling optimized power consumption over a wide range of sampling rates and resulting in a more power efficient design. Moreover, the reconfigurable ADC provides IP reuse, which reduces design efforts, development costs and time to market. On the other hand, software radio transceiver has been introduced to minimize RF blocks and support multiple standards in the same chip. The basic idea is to perform the analog to digital (A/D) and digital to analog (D/A) conversion as close to the antenna as possible. Then the backend digital signal processor (DSP) can be programmed to deal with the digital data. The continuous time (CT) bandpass (BP) sigma-delta ADC with good SNR and low power consumption is a good choice for the software radio transceiver. In this work, a proposed 10-bit reconfigurable ADC is presented and the non-overlapping clock generator and state machine are implemented in UMC 90nm CMOS technology. The state machine generates control signals for each MDAC stage so that the speed can be reconfigured, while the power consumption can be scaled. The measurement results show that the reconfigurable ADC achieved 0.6-200 MSPS speed with 1.9-27 mW power consumption. The ENOB is about 8 bit over the whole speed range. In the second part, a 2-bit quantizer with tunable delay circuit and 2-bit DACs are implemented in TSMC 0.13um CMOS technology for the 4th order CT BP sigma-delta ADC. The 2-bit quantizer and 2-bit DACs have 6dB SNR improvement and better stability over the single bit quantizer and DACs. The penalty is that the linearity of the feedback DACs should be considered carefully so that the nonlinearity doesn't deteriorate the ADC performance. The tunable delay circuit in the quantizer is designed to adjust the excess loop delay up to +/- 10% to achieve stability and optimal performance

Design and implementation of a wideband sigma delta ADC

Abstract. High-speed and wideband ADCs have become increasingly important in response to the growing demand for high-speed wireless communication services. Continuous time sigma delta modulators (CTƩ∆M), well-known for their oversampling and noise shaping properties, offer a promising solution for low-power and high-speed design in wireless applications. The objective of this thesis is to design and implement a wideband CTƩ∆M for a global navigation satellite system(GNSS) receiver. The targeted modulator architecture is a 3rdorder single-bit CTƩ∆M, specifically designed to operate within a 15 MHz signal bandwidth. With an oversampling ratio of 25, the ADC’s sampling frequency is set at 768 MHz. The design goal is to achieve a theoretical signal to noise ratio (SNR) of 55 dB. This thesis focuses on the design and implementation of the CTƩ∆M, building upon the principles of a discrete time Ʃ∆ modulator, and leveraging system-level simulation and formulations. A detailed explanation of the coefficient calculation procedure specific to CTƩ∆ modulators is provided, along with a "top-down" design approach that ensures the specified requirements are met. MATLAB scripts for coefficient calculation are also included. To overcome the challenges associated with the implementation of CTƩ∆ modulators, particularly excess loop delay and clock jitter sensitivity, this thesis explores two key strategies: the introduction of a delay compensation path and the utilization of a finite impulse response (FIR) feedback DAC. By incorporating a delay compensation path, the stability of the modulator can be ensured and its noise transfer function (NTF) can be restored. Additionally, the integration of an FIR feedback DAC addresses the issue of clock jitter sensitivity, enhancing the overall performance and robustness of the CTƩ∆M. The CTƩ∆Ms employ the cascade of integrators with feed forward (CIFF) and cascade of integrators with feedforward and feedback (CIFF-B) topologies, with a particular emphasis on the CIFF-B configuration using 22nm CMOS technology node and a supply voltage of 0.8 V. Various simulations are performed to validate the modulator’s performance. The simulation results demonstrate an achievable SNR of 55 dB with a power consumption of 1.36 mW. Furthermore, the adoption of NTF zero optimization techniques enhances the SNR to 62 dB.Laajakaistaisen jatkuva-aikaisen sigma delta-AD-muuntimen suunnittelu ja toteutus. Tiivistelmä. Nopeat ja laajakaistaiset AD-muuntimet ovat tulleet entistä tärkeämmiksi nopeiden langattomien kommunikaatiopalvelujen kysynnän kasvaessa. Jatkuva-aikaiset sigma delta -modulaattorit (CTƩ∆M), joissa käytetään ylinäytteistystä ja kohinanmuokkausta, tarjoavat lupaavan ratkaisun matalan tehonkulutuksen ja nopeiden langattomien sovellusten suunnitteluun. Tämän työn tarkoituksena on suunnitella ja toteuttaa laajakaistainen jatkuva -aikainen sigma delta -modulaattori satelliittipaikannusjärjestelmien (GNSS) vastaanottimeen. Arkkitehtuuriltaan modulaattori on kolmannen asteen 1-bittinen CTƩ∆M, jolla on 15MHz:n signaalikaistanleveys. Ylinäytteistyssuhde on 25 ja AD muuntimen näytteistystaajuus 768 MHz. Tavoitteena on saavuttaa teoreettinen 55 dB signaalikohinasuhde (SNR). Tämä työ keskittyy jatkuva-aikaisen sigma delta -modulaattorin suunnitteluun ja toteutukseen, perustuen diskreettiaikaisen Ʃ∆-modulaattorin periaatteisiin ja systeemitason simulointiin ja mallitukseen. Jatkuva-aikaisen sigma delta -modulaattorin kertoimien laskentamenetelmä esitetään yksityiskohtaisesti, ja vaatimusten täyttyminen varmistetaan “top-down” -suunnitteluperiaatteella. Liitteenä on kertoimien laskemiseen käytetty MATLAB-koodi. Jatkuva-aikaisten sigma delta -modulaattoreiden erityishaasteiden, liian pitkän silmukkaviiveen ja kellojitterin herkkyyden, voittamiseksi tutkitaan kahta strategiaa, viiveen kompensointipolkua ja FIR takaisinkytkentä -DA muunninta. Viivekompensointipolkua käyttämällä modulaattorin stabiilisuus ja kohinansuodatusfunktio saadaan varmistettua ja korjattua. Lisäksi FIR takaisinkytkentä -DA-muuntimen käyttö pienentää kellojitteriherkkyyttä, parantaen jatkuva aikaisen sigma delta -modulaattorin kokonaissuorituskykyä ja luotettavuutta. Toteutetuissa jatkuva-aikaisissa sigma delta -modulaattoreissa on kytketty peräkkäin integraattoreita myötäkytkentärakenteella (CIFF) ja toisessa sekä myötä- että takaisinkytkentärakenteella (CIFF-B). Päähuomio on CIFF-B rakenteessa, joka toteutetaan 22nm CMOS prosessissa käyttäen 0.8 voltin käyttöjännitettä. Suorityskyky varmistetaan erilaisilla simuloinneilla, joiden perusteella 55 dB SNR saavutetaan 1.36 mW tehonkulutuksella. Lisäksi kohinanmuokkausfunktion optimoinnilla SNR saadaan nostettua 62 desibeliin

Calibrated Continuous-Time Sigma-Delta Modulators

To provide more information mobility, many wireless communication systems such as WCDMA and EDGE in phone systems, bluetooth and WIMAX in communication networks have been recently developed. Recent efforts have been made to build the allin- one next generation device which integrates a large number of wireless services into a single receiving path in order to raise the competitiveness of the device. Among all the receiver architectures, the high-IF receiver presents several unique properties for the next generation receiver by digitalizing the signal at the intermediate frequency around a few hundred MHz. In this architecture, the modulation/demodulation schemes, protocols, equalization, etc., are all determined in a software platform that runs in the digital signal processor (DSP) or FPGA. The specifications for most of front-end building blocks are relaxed, except the analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The requirements of large bandwidth, high operational frequency and high resolution make the design of the ADC very challenging. Solving the bottleneck associated with the high-IF receiver architecture is a major focus of many ongoing research efforts. In this work, a 6th-order bandpass continuous time sigma-delta ADC with measured 68.4dB SNDR at 10MHz bandwidth to accommodate video applications is proposed. Tuned at 200 MHz, the fs/4 architecture employs an 800 MHz clock frequency. By making use of a unique software-based calibration scheme together with the tuning properties of the bandpass filters developed under the umbrella of this project, the ADC performance is optimized automatically to fulfill all requirements for the high-IF architecture. In a separate project, other critical design issues for continuous-time sigma-delta ADCs are addressed, especially the issues related to unit current source mismatches in multi-level DACs as well as excess loop delays that may cause loop instability. The reported solutions are revisited to find more efficient architectures. The aforementioned techniques are used for the design of a 25MHz bandwidth lowpass continuous-time sigma-delta modulator with time-domain two-step 3-bit quantizer and DAC for WiMAX applications. The prototype is designed by employing a level-to-pulse-width modulation (PWM) converter followed by a single-level DAC in the feedback path to translate the typical digital codes into PWM signals with the proposed pulse arrangement. Therefore, the non-linearity issue from current source mismatch in multi-level DACs is prevented. The jitter behavior and timing mismatch issue of the proposed time-based methods are fully analyzed. The measurement results of a chip prototype achieving 67.7dB peak SNDR and 78dB SFDR in 25MHz bandwidth properly demonstrate the design concepts and effectiveness of time-based quantization and feedback. Both continuous-time sigma-delta ADCs were fabricated in mainstream CMOS 0.18um technologies, which are the most popular in today?s consumer electronics industry

Low-power ADC designs in scaled CMOS process

This thesis presents advanced design techniques for successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), continuous-time ∆Σ ADCs, and single-slope (SS) ADCs in nano-scale CMOS technologies. (1) In high-speed SAR ADCs, metastability of the comparator limits the performance, which even results in the sparkle code errors. Proposed background calibration utilizing the comparator decision time detector removes the metastability-induced sparkle code errors by controlling the metastability detection window. At the same time, 1-bit resolution increase is gained from the proposed technique, which results in the fewer comparison cycles. Along with the relaxed requirement on the comparator, this cycle reduction helps to achieve the good power efficiency in high-speed SAR design. A prototype ADC in 40nm CMOS achieves 35.3dB SNDR and consumes 0.81mW while sampling at 700MS/s. (2) In the proposed continuous-time ∆Σ ADCs, conventional power-hungry opamp is replaced by voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs) that perform the data conversion in the phase domain instead of the voltage domain. In contrary to the opamp which is difficult to achieve good performance in the advanced CMOS process, VCOs have many advantages in the phase domain. To solve the nonlinear gain of VCOs, dual VCO-based integrator is used to suppress the dominant second-order distortion. To address the distortion from the DAC, a novel DAC calibration technique that both digitally senses and removes DAC mismatch errors is proposed. It has low hardware complexity by taking advantage of the intrinsic clocked level averaging (CLA) capability of dual-VCO-based integrator. It ensures high linearity regardless of the VCO center frequency. By lowering the VCO center frequency, power consumption is reduced. A prototype ADC designed in 130nm occupies an area of only 0.04mm² . It achieves 71dB SNDR over 1.7MHz bandwidth (BW) while sampling at 250MS/s and consuming only 0.9mW from a 1.2V power supply. The corresponding figure-of-merit (FOM) is 98 fJ/conversion-step. (3) A SS ADC has advantages of high linearity and a simple architecture. Thus, it is well suited for the column-parallel architecture for the CMOS image sensors. However, conversion speed is severely limited in high-bit resolution since more than 2 [superscript N] cycles are required for a N-bit resolution. To tackle this limitation, a two-step approach becomes popular. In this thesis, a two-step SAR/SS architecture is presented. In addition to reducing the conversion time, analog correlated double sampling (CDS) can cancel kT/C noise, which enables capacitor area reduction. A prototype ADC in 180nm CMOS occupies only 9.3µm x 830µm. It achieves 60.5dB SNR after CDS while sampling at 256kHz and consuming 91µWElectrical and Computer Engineerin

A survey on continuous-time modulators : theory, designs and implementations

Recently, delta-sigma modulation has become a widely applied technique for high-performance analog-to-digital conversion of narrow-band signals. Most of the early designs used discrete-time structure for good accuracy and good linearity. The transfer functions are independent of the clock frequency. However, high unity-gain bandwidths of the opamps are required to satisfy the settling accuracy required in the discrete-time designs. Continuous-time structure can potentially achieve higher clock frequency with less power consumption. the anti-aliasing filter can also be eliminated due to the anti-aliasing property of CT modulators. On the other hand, CT ADC have their own problems, such as jitter sensitivity and excess loop delay. In this thesis, the state-of-the-art of CT modulator is reviewed. The problems in the design of CT ADCs are analyzed and solutions to them are described. The theory, design and implementations of CT modulator will also be reviewed.Keywords: Continuous-Time, Delta-Sigm

Noise shaping techniques for analog and time to digital converters using voltage controlled oscillators

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-181).Advanced CMOS processes offer very fast switching speed and high transistor density that can be utilized to implement analog signal processing functions in interesting and unconventional ways, for example by leveraging time as a signal domain. In this context, voltage controlled ring oscillators are circuit elements that are not only very attractive due to their highly digital implementation which takes advantage of scaling, but also due to their ability to amplify or integrate conventional voltage signals into the time domain. In this work, we take advantage of voltage controlled oscillators to implement analog- and time-to-digital converters with first-order quantization and mismatch noise-shaping. To implement a time-to-digital converter (TDC) with noise-shaping, we present a oscillator that is enabled during the measurement of an input, and then disabled in between measurements. By holding the state of the oscillator in between samples, the quantization error is saved and transferred to the following sample, which can be seen as first-order noise-shaping in the frequency domain. In order to achieve good noise shaping performance, we also present key details of a multi-path oscillator topology that is able to reduce the effective delay per stage by a factor of 5 and accurately preserve the quantization error from measurement to measurement. An 11-bit, 50Msps prototype time-to-digital converter (TDC) using a multi-path gated ring oscillator with 6ps of delay per stage demonstrates over 20dB of ist-order noise shaping. At frequencies below 1MHz, the TDC error integrates to 80fsrms for a dynamic range of 95dB with no calibration of differential non-linearity required. The 157x258pm TDC is realized in 0.13ipm CMOS and operates from a 1.5V supply.(cont.) The use of VCO-based quantization within continuous-time (CT) [Epsilon] [Delta] ADC structures is also explored, with a custom prototype in 0.13pm CMOS showing measured performance of 86/72dB SNR/SNDR with 10MHz bandwidth while consuming 40mW from a 1.2V supply and occupying an active area of 640pm X 660pm. A key element of the ADC structure is a 5-bit VCO-based quantizer clocked at 950 MHz which we show achieves first-order noise-shaping of its quantization noise. The quantizer structure allows the second order CT Epsilon] [Delta] ADC topology to achieve third order noise shaping, and direct connection of the VCO-based quantizer to the internal DACs of the ADC provides intrinsic dynamic element matching (DEM) of the DAC elements.by Matthew A. Z. Straayer.Ph.D