A 14-bit 125 MS/s IF/RF Sampling Pipelined ADC With 100 dB SFDR and 50 fs Jitter

This paper describes a 14-bit, 125 MS/s IF/RF sampling pipelined A/D converter (ADC) that is implemented in a 0.35$muhbox m$BiCMOS process. The ADC has a sample-and-hold circuit that is integrated in the first pipeline stage, which removes the need for a dedicated sample-and-hold amplifier (i.e., “SHA-less”). It also has a sampling buffer that is turned off during the hold clock phases to save power. To accurately estimate and minimize the clock jitter, a new jitter simulation technique was used whose results were verified on silicon. The measured silicon results indicate the highest published IF sampling performance to date and prove the viability of the “SHA-less” architecture for IF/RF sampling ADCs. The ADC is calibration-free and achieves a DNL of less than 0.2 LSB and INL of 0.8 LSB. The SNR is 75 dB below Nyquist, and stays above 71 dB up to 500 MHz. The low-frequency SFDR is about 100 dB, and stays above 90 dB up to about 300 MHz. This is also the first ADC to achieve 14-bit level performance for input signal frequencies up to 500 MHz and to have a total RMS jitter of only 50 fs.