A Floating-Point ADC with Variable Gain Pipeline Stages

Typically an automatic gain control (AGC) amplifier is needed in a receiver to control the amplitude of the signal at the input of the ADC. To get rid of the AGC, a floating-point pipelined analog-to-digital converter (FP-ADC), which consists of variable gain stages, is presented. The frontend pipeline stages of the ADC use a larger gain if the value of the signal is small. If the value of the signal is large, they act as typical pipeline stages. Thus, the small values of the signal are converted using higher resolution than larger values. The dynamic range of the ADC is increased and a separate AGC is not needed.