This thesis focuses on low power and high speed design techniques for successive
approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) in nanoscale
CMOS technologies. SAR ADCs’ speed is limited by the number of bits of
resolution. An N-bit conventional SAR ADC takes N conversion cycles. To speed
up the conversion process, we introduce a radix-3 SAR ADC which can compute
1:6 bits per cycle. To our knowledge, it is the first fully programmable and efficiently
hardware controlled radix-3 SAR ADC. We had to use two comparators per
cycle due to ADC architecture and we proposed a simple calibration scheme for
the comparators. Also, as the architecture of the DAC array is completely different
from the architecture of conventional radix-2 SAR ADC’s DAC arrays, we came up
with an algorithm for calibration of capacitors of the DAC.
Low power SAR ADCs face two major challenges especially at high resolutions:
(1) increased comparator power to suppress the noise, and (2) increased
DAC switching energy due to the large DAC size. Due to our proposed architecture,the radix-3 SAR ADC uses two comparators per cycle and two differential DACs.
To improve the comparator’s power efficiency, an efficient and low cost calibration
technique has been introduced. It allows a low power and noisy comparator to
achieve high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
To improve the DAC switching energy, we introduced a radix-3/radix-2
based novel hybrid SAR ADC. We use two single ended DACs for radix-3 SAR
ADC and these two single ended DACs can be used as one differential DAC for
radix-2 SAR ADC. So, overall, we only have a single DAC as conventional radix-
2 SAR ADC. In addition, a monotonic switching technique is adopted for radix-2
search to reduce the DAC capacitor size and hence, to reduce switching power. It
can reduce the total number of unit capacitors by four times. Our proposed hybrid
SAR ADC can achieve less DAC energy compared to radix-3 and radix-2 SAR
ADCs. Also, to utilize technology scaling, we used the minimum capacitor size
allowed by thermal noise limitations. To achieve high resolution, we introduced
calibration algorithm for the DAC array.
As mentioned earlier, the radix-3 SAR ADC offers higher power than conventional
radix-2 SAR ADC because of simultaneous use of two comparators. In
the proposed hybrid SAR ADC, we will be using radix-3 search for first few MSB
bits. So, the resolution required for radix-3 comparators are much larger than the
LSB value of 10-bit ADC. By implementing calibration of comparators, we can
use low power, high input referred offset and high speed comparators for radix-3
search. Radix-2 search will be used for rest of the bits and the resolution of the
radix-2 comparator has to be less than the required LSB value. So, a high power, low input referred offset and high speed comparator is used for radix-2 search.
Also, we introduced clock gating for comparators. So, radix-3 comparators will not
toggle during radix-2 search and the radix-2 comparators will be inactive during
radix-3 search. By using the aforementioned techniques, the overall comparator
power is definitely less than a radix-3 SAR ADC and comparable to a conventional
radix-2 SAR ADC.
A prototype radix-3/radix-2 based hybrid SAR ADC with the proposed
technique is designed and fabricated in 40nm CMOS technology. It achieves an
SNDR of 56.9 dB and consumes only 0.38 mW power at 30MS/s, leading to a
Walden figure of merit of 21.5 fJ/conv-step.Electrical and Computer Engineerin