A 20-MHz bandwidth, 75-dB dynamic range,continuous-time delta-sigma modulator with reduced nonidealities

This letter presents a 4-bit continuous-time delta-sigma modulator (CT-DSM) fabricated using a 65-nm CMOS process. The circuit is designed for wide-bandwidth applications, such as those related to wireless communications. This CT-DSM has an oversampling ratio of 16 with a 640-MHz sampling frequency. To reduce the clock jitter sensitivity and excess loop delay effect, the first DAC pulse is a nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ)–type pulse, whereas the second DAC pulse is a return-to-zero (RZ)–type pulse; this is accomplished using a current-steering DAC. In order to reduce mismatch without using a data-weighted averaging circuit, the size and layout of the unit current source in the current-steering DAC are considered carefully. The CT-DSM achieves a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 67.3 dB, a signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) of 63.4 dB, and a dynamic range of 75 dB for a 20-MHz signal bandwidth.     

Non‐idealities in linear CDR phase detectors

The effects of circuit non‐idealities in a “Hogge”‐type phase detector are examined. Using a behavioral model for each circuit block, it is shown that various circuit non‐idealities introduce static phase offset in the phase detector, reduce the monotonic range of its transfer characteristics and eventually degrade the capture range and jitter tolerance of the clock and data recovery (CDR) loop. Lower bounds on the bandwidths of the various blocks in the CDR are also established in order to avoid variations of the transfer characteristics. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A 15-MHz bandwidth double sampling MASH25b-15b sigma-delta modulator with DEM for multibit DACs

A high SNDR discrete-time (DT) 2-1 MASH sigma-delta modulator (SDM) for 15-MHz bandwidth was presented. Cascade of integrators with feedforward (CIFF) scheme, combined with the optimized gain coefficients, was adopted to avoid of the integrators. Double sampling technique was employed to relax the OPA settling requirements by halving the clock frequency and therefore reduce the power consumption. Five-bit flash quantizer was adopted in both stages to improve the overall signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) performance, and third-order dynamic element matching (DEM) was analyzed and applied for the multibit DACs to suppress the element mismatch noise. Fabricated in a mature 0.18-μm CMOS technology, the occupied area of the modulator was 0.24 mm² and dissipation power 25.4 mW from a 1.8-V voltage supply. As a sampling rate of 240 MHz for the input sampling and DAC and 480 MHz for the flash ADC, a SNDR of 90.2 dB over 15-MHz signal bandwidth and the corresponding effective number of bits (ENOB) of 14.69 bit were achieved. The spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) was 98 dB with DEM turned on for a 3.75 MHz at −2.5-dBFS input signal, and the figure of merit (FOM) was 30.7 fJ/conv. for 15-MHz bandwidth. A 15-MHz bandwidth multibit MASH2-1 discrete-time sigma-delta modulator was proposed. Double sampling technique was employed to relax the OPA settling requirements by halving the clock frequency and therefore reduce the power consumption. High-order DEM was analyzed and applied for the multibit DACs to suppress the element mismatch noise. Fabricated by a 0.18-μm CMOS process, the modulator achieved a SNDR of 90.2 dB and the corresponding ENOB 14.69 bit over 15-MHz signal bandwidth. The proposed modulator was very suitable for wideband applications including wireless communication systems, high-frequency biomedical imaging or sensing systems, and so on.     

A 7.5‐μW 0.08‐mm2 single‐ended SC delta‐sigma ADC for acoustic sensor applications

This study presents an ultra‐low‐power, small‐size, 1‐bit, single‐ended, and switched‐capacitor (SC) delta‐sigma analog‐to‐digital converter (ADC) for wireless acoustic sensor nodes. This wireless sensor node has a delta‐sigma ADC that converts the sensed signal to a digital signal for convenient data processing and emphasizes the features of small size and low‐power consumption. The chip area of the delta‐sigma ADC is dominated by the capacitor; therefore, a novel common‐mode (CM) controlling technique with only transistors is proposed. This ADC achieves an extremely small size of 0.08 mm² in a 130‐nm CMOS process. The conventional operational transconductance amplifiers (OTAs) are replaced by inverters in the weak inversion region to achieve high power efficiency. At 4‐MHz sampling frequency and 0.7‐V power supply voltage, the delta‐sigma ADC achieves a 55.8‐dB signal‐to‐noise‐plus‐distortion ratio (SNDR) and a 298‐fJ/step figure‐of‐merit (FOM) in a signal bandwidth of 25 kHz, while consuming only 7.5 μW of power. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intersegment mismatch mitigation with multidimensional dynamic element matching digital to analog converters

In this paper, a two‐dimensional dynamic element matching digital to analog converter (2D DEM DAC) is proposed having less design complexity compared to the conventional 2D DEM DAC. A novel unit element selection algorithm is presented in order to alleviate the need for consecutive elements selection that is mandatory in the conventional 2D DEM DAC. The flexibility of this algorithm leads to the introduction of a generalized multidimensional DEM DAC applicable to any resolutions. The multidimensional structure mitigates intersegment mismatch error and improves the spurious‐free dynamic range (SFDR) and intermodulation distortion (IMD). A 12‐bit 2D DEM DAC is simulated in 65‐nm CMOS process using the digital return‐to‐zero (DRZ) technique with 1.2 V of supply voltage and power dissipation of 26 mW. The simulation results show 63.4‐ and 60.71‐dB SFDR at near DC and Nyquist frequency, respectively, and <?61‐dB IMD with 1.25‐GHz sampling frequency.     

A 6th‐order 75 dB‐DR 10.7 MHz 3.3 V CMOS bandpass ΣΔ modulator sampled at 37.05 MHz

This paper describes the design and the implementation of a 6th‐order bandpass ΣΔ modulator to be used for IF digitizing at 10.7 MHz of a broadcasting FM radio signal. The modulator is sampled at 37.05 MHz. This sampling frequency value allows to optimize both modulator and overall receiver channel performance. The modulator has been implemented in a standard double‐poly 0.35 µm CMOS technology using switched capacitor (SC) technique and consumes 116 mW from a single 3.3 V power supply. The modulator features 75 dB dynamic range and 66 dB peak‐SNR within a 200 kHz bandwidth (FM bandwidth). Third‐order intermodulation products are suppressed by –78dBc. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A small fully digital open‐loop clock and data recovery circuit for wired BANs

This paper proposes a new open‐loop and low complexity (small size) fast‐lock synchronization circuit for clock and data recovery in wearable systems. The system includes sensors embedded in textile and connected by conductive yarns. Synchronization is based on the open‐loop selection of the correct phase of the receiver clock synchronously with the incoming signal. The clock generator of the receiver is an autonomous oscillator set to operate at the same nominal frequency. The circuit lock time is at most one clock cycle, faster than all methods based on phase‐locked loops or delay‐locked loops. The circuit can be used for baseband communication independently of the signal coding method used in the physical layer, making it suitable for many applications. The fully digital circuit (including non‐return‐to‐zero inverted decoder) occupies 0.0022 in a 0.35 complementary metal‐oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process, a smaller implementation than many existing circuits, and supports a maximum system clock frequency of 70 for a 35‐data rate. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed circuit robustly generates a synchronous clock for data recovery. The circuit is suitable for systems that tolerate some jitter but requires fast lock time, small size, and low energy consumption. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A 1‐Gbps reference‐less burst‐mode CDR with embedded TDC in a 65‐nm CMOS process

A reference‐less all‐digital burst‐mode clock and data recovery circuit (CDR) is proposed in the paper. The burst‐mode CDR includes a coarse and a fine time‐to‐digital converter (TDC) with embedded phase generator. A low‐power current‐starved inverter is employed as the delay unit of the fine TDC to acquire the high measurement resolution. A calibration method to diminish the inherent delay is used to reduce the quantization error of the recovery clock. The proposed CDR is fabricated in a 65‐nm CMOS process. Experiment results show that the CDR operates from 0.9 to 1.1 Gbps and have a 13‐bit consecutive identical digits (CIDs) tolerance.     

A 13 bit 10 MHz bandwidth MASH 3–2 Σ∆ modulator in 90 nm CMOS

In this paper, a new multi loop sigma‐delta (ΣΔ) modulator is proposed which employs one order redundant noise shaping in the first stage so the effect of the quantization noise leakage is minimized. Thus, analog circuit requirements are considerably relaxed compared to the conventional Multi‐stAge‐noise‐SHaping (MASH) structures. This enhancement makes the structure appropriate for low voltage and broadband applications. The proposed architecture is compared with traditional high‐order structures, and the advantages are demonstrated by both the analysis and behavioral system level simulations. As a prototype, the proposed MASH 3–2 sigma‐delta modulator is designed, and the detailed design procedure is presented from the system level to the circuit level in a 90 nm CMOS technology. Circuit level simulation results show that the modulator achieves a peak signal‐to‐noise and distortion ratio of 79.4 dB and 79 dB dynamic range over a 10 MHz bandwidth with a sampling frequency of 160 MHz. It consumes 35.4 mW power from a single 1 V supply. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A 0.5‐V 5.9‐fJ/conversion‐step SAR ADC in 0.18‐μm CMOS

In this paper, we present a 434‐nW 8‐bit successive approximation register analog‐to‐digital converter (SAR ADC). We mainly consider the optimization of power consumption. A modified split‐capacitor array involving a novel switching scheme is proposed, which reduces the switching power consumption to just 13.8 for the single‐ended scheme without any losses in performance. Based on the SMIC CMOS 0.1 μm EEPROM 2P4M process, the simulation results show that at 0.5 V supply voltage, 300 kS/s sample frequency, and 4.98 kHz input frequency, the ADC achieves an signal‐to‐noise‐plus‐distortion ratio (SNDR) of 49.58 dB and effective number of bits (ENOB) of 7.94, and consumes 434 nW, resulting in a figure of merit of 5.9 fJ/conversion step. © 2016 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Wide‐band aperture array using a four‐channel manifold‐type planar multiplexer and digital 2‐D IIR filterbank

Emerging wide‐band communications and spectrum‐sensing systems demand support for multiple electronically scanned beams while maintaining a frequency independent, constant far‐field beam width. Realizing existing phased‐array technology on a digital scale is computationally intensive. Moreover, digitizing wide‐band signals at Nyquist rate requires complex high‐speed analog‐to‐digital converters (ADCs), which is challenging for real developments driven by the current ADC technology. A low‐complexity alternative proposed in this paper is the use of radio‐frequency (RF) channelizers for spectrum division followed by sub‐sampling of the RF sub‐bands, which results in extensive reduction of the necessary ADC operative frequency. The RF‐channelized array signals are directionally filtered using 2‐D digital filterbanks. This mixed‐domain RF/digital aperture array allows sub‐sampling, without utilizing multi‐rate 2‐D systolic arrays, which are difficult to realize in practice. Simulated examples showing 14–19 dB of rejection of wide‐band interference and noise for a processed bandwidth of 1.6 GHz are demonstrated. The sampling rate is 400 MHz. The proposed VLSI hardware uses a single‐phase clock signal of 400 MHz. Prototype hardware realizations and measurement using 65‐nm Xilinx field‐programmable gate arrays, as well as Cadence RTL synthesis results including gate counts, area‐time complexity, and dynamic power consumption for a 45‐nm CMOS circuit operating at B _DC = 1.1 V, are presented. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A 0.008‐mm2, 35‐μW, 8.87‐ps‐resolution CMOS time‐to‐digital converter using dual‐slope architecture

This paper presents a high resolution time‐to‐digital converter (TDC) for low‐area applications. To achieve both high resolution and low circuit area, we propose a dual‐slope voltage‐domain TDC, which is composed of a time‐to‐voltage converter (TVC) and an analog‐to‐digital converter (ADC). In the TVC, a current source and a capacitor are used to make the circuit as simple as possible. For the same reason, a single‐slope ADC, which is commonly used for compact area ADC applications, is adapted and optimized. Because the main non‐linearity occurs in the current source of the TVC and the ramp generator of the ADC, a double gain‐boosting current source is applied to overcome the low output impedance of the current source in the sub‐100‐nm CMOS process. The prototype TDC is implemented using a 65‐nm CMOS process, and occupies only 0.008 mm². The measurement result shows a dynamic range with an 8‐bit 8.86‐ps resolution and an integrated non‐linearity of ±1.25 LSB. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A 12‐bit 10‐MS/s SAR ADC with a binary‐window DAC switching scheme in 180‐nm CMOS

This paper presents an energy‐efficient 12‐bit successive approximation‐register A/D converter (ADC). The D/A converter (DAC) plays a crucial role in ADC linearity, which can be enhanced by using larger capacitor arrays. The binary‐window DAC switching scheme proposed in this paper effectively reduces DAC nonlinearity and switching errors to improve both the spurious‐free dynamic range and signal‐to‐noise‐and‐distortion ratio. The ADC prototype occupies an active area of 0.12 mm² in the 0.18‐μm CMOS process and consumes a total power of 0.6 mW from a 1.5‐V supply. The measured peak differential nonlinearity and integral nonlinearity are 0.57 and 0.73 least significant bit, respectively. The ADC achieves a 64.7‐dB signal‐to‐noise‐and‐distortion ratio and 83‐dB spurious‐free dynamic range at a sampling rate of 10 MS/s, corresponding to a peak figure‐of‐merit of 43 fJ/conversion‐step.     

A wideband time‐based continuous‐time sigma‐delta modulator with 2nd order noise‐coupling based on passive elements

Embedding the time encoding approach inside the loop of the sigma‐delta modulators has been shown as a promising alternative to overcome the resolution problems of analog‐to‐digital converters in low‐voltage complementary metal‐oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuits. In this paper, a wideband noise‐transfer‐function (NTF)‐enhanced time‐based continuous‐time sigma‐delta modulator (TCSDM) with a second‐order noise‐coupling is presented. The proposed structure benefits from the combination of an asynchronous pulse width modulator as the voltage‐to‐time converter and a time‐to‐digital converter as the sampler to realize the time quantization. By using a novel implementation of the analog‐based noise‐coupling technique, the modulator's noise‐shaping order is improved by two. The concept is elaborated for an NTF‐enhanced second‐order TCSDM, and the comparative analytical calculations and behavioral simulation results are presented to verify the performance of the proposed structure. To further confirm the effectiveness of the presented structure, the circuit‐level implementation of the modulator is provided in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) 90 nm CMOS technology. The simulation results show that the proposed modulator achieves a dynamic range of 84 dB over 30 MHz bandwidth while consuming less than 25 mW power from a single 1 V power supply. With the proposed time‐based noise‐coupling structure, both the order and bandwidth requirements of the loop filter are relaxed, and as a result, the analog complexity of the modulator is significantly reduced. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A 6‐Gbps/lane receiver for a clock‐forwarded link in 65‐nm CMOS process

For a 6‐Gbps/lane clock‐forwarded link, a wireline receiver has been developed. The phases of the sampling clocks are aligned to the center of the input data eye by a clock and data recovery (CDR) circuit. In the CDR circuit, the sampling clock phases are rotated by a phase rotating phase locked loop (PLL). A three‐tap decision feedback equalizer (DFE) compensates for the loss of cable together with a continuous‐time linear equalizer (CTLE) to ensure sufficient eye opening for the CDR circuit to find the optimum sampling phase. The DFE coefficients are adaptively calculated based on the data and edge samples. Implemented in a 65‐nm CMOS process, the three‐lane 6‐Gbps/lane receiver for a clock‐forwarded link occupies 0.63 mm² including pads and consumes 288 mA from a 1.2‐V supply. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bang‐bang cycle‐slip detector improves jitter‐tolerance in SONET PLL/DLL CDR

The phase‐locked loop circuit (PLL) cycle‐slips (CS) phenomenon is a problem in two‐level baseband clock and data recovery (CDR) data‐synchronization. A singular example is that of a CDR synchronizer that uses a PLL in cascaded with delay‐lock‐loop (P/DLL) architecture. The CS issue is most evident when testing jitter‐tolerance to sine‐modulated jitter, particularly for sine‐modulated jitter‐frequencies near the PLL bandwidth. Reuse of a bang‐bang frequency‐detector, already on board of reference‐less CDRs, does CS detection and provides for suppression producing a clean demodulation. In the cascaded‐DLL of Rhee's P/DLL [1], this CS‐suppressed PLL‐clock assures proper DLL operation to broadband the jitter‐tolerance recommendation of the synchronous optical network (SONET). Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Redundancy‐bandwidth scalable techniques for signal‐independent element transition rates in high‐speed current‐steering DACs

This paper presents redundancy‐bandwidth scalable techniques to deal with the intersymbol interference distortions for current‐steering digital‐to‐analog converters in high‐speed applications. A switching strategy that explores the use of redundant current sources is proposed to realize a signal‐independent element transition rate, ie, the number of switching activities during the transition of successive sampling clock cycles. With a certain number of redundant current sources, this strategy significantly reduces the intersymbol interference distortions without oversampling operation or causing signal attenuation, which makes it appealing for high‐speed applications. As analyzed in this paper, the number of required redundant current sources is scalable for different bandwidth requirement in specific applications, leading to 3 redundancy‐bandwidth scalable trade‐offs between the cost from redundant current sources and the high‐dynamic‐range bandwidth. In implementation, we propose a custom‐designed decoder, named as the overlap‐controlled data‐weighted averaging (OC‐DWA). Compared with the existing similar‐purpose designs, the proposed OC‐DWA decoder realizes the current sources selection with a simple barrel rotator, which is of much lower hardware complexity and energy consumption. Simulations of a digital‐to‐analog converter with this decoder exhibit an enhanced dynamic range over the entire Nyquist band, which verifies the redundancy‐bandwidth scalability of the proposed techniques.     

A 1.2 V 83 dB DR single‐ended input SC ΔΣ modulator including a large‐swing analog buffer for portable ECG applications

This study proposes a subsystem consisting of an analog buffer and a single‐ended input to a fully differential ΔΣ modulator to obtain low‐power consumption for portable electrocardiogram applications. With the proposed subsystem, the need for an inverting amplifier is avoided, and low‐power consumption is achieved. The ΔΣ modulator with a second order, 1 bit, and cascade of integrators feedforward structure consumes a low power, in which an inverting and a non‐inverting path implement a single‐ended input to fully‐differential signals. A double sampling technique is proposed for a digital‐to‐analog converter feedback circuit to reduce the effect of the reference voltage, reduce the amplifier requirements, and obtain low‐power consumption. Input‐bias and output‐bias transistors working in the weak‐inversion region are implemented to obtain an extremely large swing for the analog buffer. At a supply voltage of 1.2 V, signal bandwidth of 250 Hz, and sampling frequency of 128 kHz, the measurement results show that the modulator with a buffer achieves a 77 dB peak signal‐to‐noise‐distortion ratio, an effective‐number‐of‐bits of 12.5 bits, an 83 dB dynamic range, and a figure‐of‐merit of 156 dB. The total chip size is approximately 0.28 mm² with a standard 0.13 µm Complementary Metal‐Oxide‐Silicon (CMOS) process. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A simulation study of high‐order CMOS hyperbolic‐sine filters

This paper advances the field of externally linear–internally nonlinear (ELIN) filters by introducing a synthesis method that enables the design of high‐order class‐AB sinh filters by means of complementary metal–oxide semiconductor (CMOS) weak‐inversion sinh integrators comprising only one type of devices in their translinear loops. The proposed transistor‐level synthesis approach is demonstrated through the examples of (1) a biquadratic and (2) a fifth‐order filter, and their simulated performance is studied. The biquadratic filter achieves a dynamic range of 94 dB and has a tunable quality factor Q up to the value of 8, whereas its natural frequency can be tuned for four orders of magnitude. Its static power consumption amounts to 6.2 μW for Q = 1 and f_o = 2 kHz. The fifth‐order Chebyshev sinh CMOS filter with a cut‐off frequency of 100 Hz, a pass band ripple of 1 dB, and a power consumption of ~300 nW is compared head‐to‐head with its pseudo‐differential class‐AB CMOS log domain counterpart. The sinh filter achieves similar or better signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) and signal‐to‐noise‐plus‐distortion ratio (SNDR) performances with half the capacitor area but at the expense of higher power consumption from the same power supply level. All three presented filter topologies are novel. Cadence design framework simulations have been performed using the commercially available 0.35 µm AMS (austriamicrosystems) process parameters. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design considerations for low power time‐mode SAR ADC

This paper describes circuit design considerations for realization of low power dissipation successive approximation register (SAR) analog‐to‐digital converter (ADC) with a time‐mode comparator. A number of design issues related to time‐mode SAR ADC are discussed. Also, noise and offset models describing the impact of the noise and offset on the timing error of time‐domain comparator are presented. The results are verified by comparison to simulations. The design considerations mentioned in this paper are useful for the initial design and the improvements of time‐mode SAR ADC. Then, a number of practical design aspects are illustrated with discussion of an experimental 12‐bit SAR ADC that incorporates a highly dynamic voltage‐to‐time converter and a symmetrical input time‐to‐digital converter. Prototyped in a 0.18‐µm six‐metal one‐polysilicon Complementary Metal‐Oxide‐Semiconductor (CMOS) process, the ADC, at 12 bit, 500 kS/s, achieves a Nyquist signal‐to‐noise‐and‐distortion ratio of 53.24 dB (8.55 effective number of bits) and a spurious‐free dynamic range of 70.73 dB, while dissipating 27.17 μW from a 1.3‐V supply, giving a figure of merit of 145 fJ/conversion‐step. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.