A 0.6 V 100 KS/s 8–10 b resolution configurable SAR ADC in 0.18 μm CMOS

A resolution configurable ultra-low power SAR ADC in 0.18 μm CMOS process is presented. The proposed ADC has maximum sampling rate of 100 KS/s with configurable resolution from 8 to 10 b and operates at a supply of 0.6 V. Two-stage bootstrapped switch and voltage boosting techniques are introduced to improve the performance of the ADC at low voltage. To reduce the power consumption of the analog components of the ADC, monotonic capacitor switching procedure and fully dynamic comparator are utilized. The implementation of dynamic logic further reduces the power of the digital circuits. Post-layout simulation results show that the proposed SAR ADC consumes 521 nW and achieves an SNDR of 60.54 dB at 10 b mode, resulting in an ultra-low figure-of-merit of 6.0 fJ/conversion-step. The ADC core occupies an active area of only 350 × 280 μm².     

L, C and X band integrated synthetic aperture radar (SAR) receiver

An integrated receiver consisting of RF front ends, analog baseband (BB) chain with an analog to digital converter (ADC) for a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) implemented in 130 nm CMOS technology is presented in this paper. The circuits are integrated on a single chip with a size of 10.88 mm². The RF front end consists of three parallel signal channel intended for L, C and X-band of the SAR receiver. The BB is selectable between 50 and 160 MHz bandwidths through switches. The ADC has selectable modes of 5, 6, 7 and 8 bits via control switches. The receiver has a nominal gain of 40 and 37 dB and noise figure of 11 and 13.5 dB for 160 MHz BB filter at room temperature for L-band and C-band, respectively. The circuits, which use a 1.2 V supply voltage, dissipate maximum power of 650 mW with 50 MHz BB and 8 bit mode ADC, and maximum power of 800 mW with 160 MHz BB and 8 bit mode ADC.     

A 10-bit 50 MS/s SAR ADC in 65 nm CMOS with on-chip reference voltage buffer

This paper presents the design of a 10-bit, 50 MS/s successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with an on-chip reference voltage buffer implemented in 65 nm CMOS process. The speed limitation on SAR ADCs with off-chip reference voltage and the necessity of a fast-settling reference voltage buffer are elaborated. Design details of a high-speed reference voltage buffer which ensures precise settling of the DAC output voltage in the presence of bondwire inductances are provided. The ADC uses bootstrapped switches for input sampling, a double-tail high-speed dynamic comparator and split binary-weighted capacitive array charge redistribution DACs. The split binary-weighted array DAC topology helps us to achieve low area and less capacitive load and thus enhances power efficiency. Top-plate sampling is utilized in the DAC to reduce the number of switches. In post-layout simulation which includes the entire pad frame and associated parasitics, the ADC achieves an ENOB of 9.25 bits at a supply voltage of 1.2 V, typical process corner and sampling frequency of 50 MS/s for near-Nyquist input. Excluding the reference voltage buffer, the ADC consumes 697 μW and achieves an energy efficiency of 25 fJ/conversion-step while occupying a core area of 0.055 mm².     

A 1.0-V 6-b 40 MS/s time-domain flash ADC in 0.18 μm CMOS

This paper presents a 6-bit low power low supply voltage time-domain comparator. The conventional voltage comparison is moved to time-domain so as to remove pre-amplifier and latch, which enables its feasibility to low supply voltage. The voltage-to-time converter is realized by the proposed linear pulse-width-modulation. The set-up time of the D flip-flop determines the sampling rate of the converter. The resistive averaging relaxes the matching requirement of the parallel comparison cells. The total input capacitance is decreased to less than 40fF in this architecture. The above digital-intensive setting makes the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) benefit from technology scaling in both power consumption and sampling rate. The prototype ADC is fabricated in SMIC 0.18 μm CMOS process. At 40 MS/s and 1.0-V supply, it consumes 540 μW and achieves an effective-number-of-bit of 5.43, resulting in a figure-of-merit of 0.31 pJ/conversion-step and active area of 0.1 mm².     

一种10bit双通道流水线SAR ADC设计

为了提高模数转换器的采样频率并降低其功耗,提出一种10 bit双通道流水线逐次逼近型（SAR）模数转换器（ADC）。提出的ADC包括两个高速通道,每个通道都采用流水线SAR结构以便低功率和减小面积。考虑到芯片面积、运行速度以及电路复杂性,提出的处于第二阶段的SAR ADC由1 bit FLASH ADC和6 bit SAR ADC组成。提出的ADC由45 nm CMOS工艺制作而成,面积为0.16 mm2。ADC的微分非线性和积分非线性分别小于0.36 最低有效位（LSB）和0.67 LSB。当电源为1.1 V时,ADC的最大运行频率为260 MS/s。运行频率为230 MS/s和260 MS/s的ADC的功率消耗分别为13.9 mW和17.8 mW。     

Combination of DAC switches and SAR logics in a 720 MS/s low-bit successive approximation ADC

In this paper a 4-bit 720 MHz low-power successive approximation register ADC is simulated in a 0.18 µm digital CMOS process. By using both of the 2-bit/step and time-interleaved techniques, a high sampling frequency is obtained. To simplify the SAR ADC in low-bit applications, the analog switches are eliminated and replaced with inherent digital switches of SAR logics. The power supply, resolution, sampling frequency, SNDR, and power consumption of the proposed SAR ADC are 1.8 V, 4-bit, 720 MHz, 22.1 dB, and 10 mW.     

基于分段电容阵列的改进型逐次逼近型ADC

为缩短高速模数转换器(ADC)中高位(MSB)电容建立时间以及减小功耗,提出了一种基于分段式电容阵列的改进型逐次逼近型(SAR)ADC结构,通过翻转小电容阵列代替翻转大电容阵列以产生高位数字码,并利用180 nm CMOS工艺实现和验证了此ADC结构。该结构一方面可以缩短产生高位数码字过程中的转换时间,提高量化速度;另一方面其可以延长大电容的稳定时间,减小参考电压的负载。通过缩小比较器输入对管的面积以减小寄生电容带来的误差,提升高位数字码的准确度。同时,利用一次性校准技术减小比较器的失配电压。最终,采用180 nm CMOS工艺实现该10 bit SAR ADC,以验证该改进型结构。结果表明,在1.8 V电源电压、780μW功耗、有电路噪声和电容失配情况下,该改进型SAR ADC得到了58.0 dB的信噪失真比(SNDR)。     

A 10-bit 2.5-MS/s SAR ADC with 60.46 dB SNDR in 0.13-μm CMOS technology

This paper presents a 10-bit 2.5-MS/s successive-approximation-register (SAR) analog- to-digital-converter (ADC) design for micro controller unit of signal process system. Because of the proposed new segmented architecture of 7 MSBs-plus-3 LSBs capacitor–resistor hybrid digital-to-analog-converter using a thermometer decoder for the most significant 5 MSBs, this design achieves superior static nonlinearity and dynamic performance of SNDR, SFDR. Utilizing the proposed deviation calibration technique, the discharging and charging via substrate resulting from deviation of the comparator’s common-mode voltage is cancelled. The ADC is fabricated in a standard 1P5M 0.13-μm CMOS technology. The peak DNL and INL are +0.18/?0.20-LSB, +0.30/?0.25 LSB respectively while the ENOB is 9.52-bit around all process–voltage–temperature corner analysis. At a 2.3-V supply voltage and a 2.5-MS/s sampling rate, the ADC achieves a SNDR of 60.46 dB, SFDR of 75.32 dB while the power dissipation is 0.191-mW, that resulting in a figure of merit of 98.45 fJ/c-s. The die of ADC measures 0.51 × 0.20 mm² resulting in area efficiency of 122.6 μm²/code and compared with the benchmark SAR ADCs, this work is the most area efficient design.     

An energy-efficient reconfigurable analog-to-digital converter for orthopedic implants

This paper presents a pipelined analog to digital converter (ADC) with reconfigurable resolution and sampling rate for biomedical applications. Significant power saving is achieved by turning off the sample-and-hold stage and the first two pipeline stages of the ADC instead of turning off the last two stages. The reconfiguration scheme allows having three modes of operation with variable resolutions and sampling rates. Reconfigurable operational transconductance amplifiers and an interference elimination technique have been employed to optimize power-speed-accuracy performance in biomedical instrumentation. The proposed ADC exhibits a 56.9 dB SNDR with 35.4 mW power consumption in 10-bit, 40 MS/s mode and 49.2 dB SNDR with only 7.9 mW power consumption in 8-bit, 2.5 MS/s mode. The area of the core layout is 1.9 mm² in a 0.35 μm bulk-CMOS process.     

An area-efficient 55 nm 10-bit 1-MS/s SAR ADC for battery voltage measurement

An area-efficient CMOS 1-MS/s 10-bit charge-redistribution SAR ADC for battery voltage measurement in a SoC chip is proposed. A new DAC architecture presents the benefits of a low power approach without applying the common mode voltage. The threshold inverter quantizer(TIQ)-based CMOS Inverter is used as a comparator in the ADC to avoid static power consumption which is attractive in battery-supply application. Sixteen level-up shifters aim at converting the ultra low core voltage control signals to the higher voltage level analog circuit in a 55 nm CMOS process. The whole ADC power consumption is 2.5 mW with a maximum input capacitance of 12 pF in the sampling mode. The active area of the proposed ADC is 0.0462 mm2 and it achieves the SFDR and ENOB of 65.6917 dB and 9.8726 bits respectively with an input frequency of 200 kHz at 1 MS/s sampling rate.     

Battery level A/D conversion with fuel gauge sense voltage cancellation in 40 nm CMOS technology

A new integrated approach for battery voltage conversion inside portable devices is presented. It is specifically suited for latest Fuel Gauge techniques and exploits an A/D converter that operates as a General Purpose ADC inside the system. A peculiar solution for an analog cancellation of the Coulomb counter sense resistor voltage drop on the battery level measurement is disclosed. A prototype made by this battery voltage buffer and a 10-bit A/D converter has been integrated in a 40 nm CMOS process with double oxide option, resulting to a total power consumption of about 950 μW, and an active area of 0.174 mm².     

A 1.2 V 10-bit 5MS/s low power CMOS cyclic ADC based on double-sampling technique

This paper presents a 1.2 V 10-bit 5MS/s low power cyclic analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The strategy to minimize the power adopts the double-sampling technique. At the front-end, a timing-skew-insensitive double-sampled Miller-capacitance-based sample-and-hold circuit (S/H) is employed to enhance the dynamic performance of the cyclic ADC. Double sampling technique is also applied to multiplying digital-to-analog converter (MDAC). This scheme provides a better power efficiency for the proposed cyclic ADC. Furthermore, bootstrapped switch is used to achieve rail-to-rail signal swing at low-voltage power supply. The prototype ADC, fabricated in TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS 1P6 M process, achieves DNL and INL of 0.32LSB and 0.45LSB respectively, while SFDR is 69.1 dB and SNDR is 58.6 dB at an input frequency of 600 kHz. Operating at 5MS/s sampling rate under a single 1.2 V power supply, the power consumption is 1.68 mW.     

A reconfigurable two-stage cyclic ADC for low-power applications in 3.3 V 0.35 µm CMOS

This article presents a reconfigurable pipeline analog-to-digital converter (ADC) using a two-stage cyclic configuration. The ADC consists of two stages with 1.5 effective bit resolution, two reference circuits for voltage and current biasing, and a clock generator and timing circuit. Throughout the development of this ADC, several techniques were combined for reducing the power consumption as well as for preserving the converter linearity. To reduce the power consumption, the circuit has a single operational trans-conductance amplifier shared by both pipeline stages. To keep conversion linearity, circuits such as the bootstrapped complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transmission gates and a robust comparator topology were implemented. The circuit can be configured to perform conversion between 7 and 15 bit resolutions, and it works with the master clock frequency in the range of 1 kHz to 40 MHz. The circuit has been prototyped in a 3.3 V 0.35 µm CMOS process and consumes 14.1 mW at 40 MHz and 8 MSample/s sampling rate. With this resolution and sampling rate, it achieves 60.1 dB SNR, 56.57 dB SINAD and 9.1 bit ENOB at 0.666 MHz input frequency and 53.6 dB SNR, 52.4 dB SINAD and 8.6 bit ENOB at 3.85 MHz input frequency. The technological FOM obtained was 13.2 A s/m².     

An 87 fJ/conversion-step 12 b 10 MS/s SAR ADC using a minimum number of unit capacitors

This work proposes a 12 b 10 MS/s 0.11 μm CMOS successive-approximation register ADC based on a C-R hybrid DAC for low-power sensor applications. The proposed C-R DAC employs a 2-step split-capacitor array of upper seven bits and lower five bits to optimize power consumption and chip area at the target speed and resolution. A V_CM-based switching method for the most significant bit and reference voltage segments from an insensitive R-string for the last two least significant bits minimize the number of unit capacitors required in the C-R hybrid DAC. The comparator accuracy is improved by an open-loop offset cancellation technique in the first-stage pre-amp. The prototype ADC in a 0.11 μm CMOS process demonstrates the measured differential nonlinearity and integral nonlinearity within 1.18 LSB and 1.42 LSB, respectively. The ADC shows a maximum signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio of 63.9 dB and a maximum spurious-free dynamic range of 77.6 dB at 10 MS/s. The ADC with an active die area of 0.34 mm² consumes 1.1 mW at 1.0 V and 10 MS/s, corresponding to a figure-of-merit of 87 fJ/conversion-step.     

A 10-bit 50-MS/s redundant SAR ADC with split capacitive-array DAC

A new architecture for successive-approximation register analog-to-digital converters (SAR ADC) using generalized non-binary search algorithm is proposed to reduce the complexity and power consumption of the digital circuitry. The proposed architecture is based on the split capacitive-array DAC with a simple switching logic as compared to the conventional non-binary SAR ADC architecture. A 10-bit 50-MS/s SAR ADC is designed based on the proposed architecture in a 0.18 μm CMOS technology. Simulation results show that at a supply voltage of 1.2 V, the SAR ADC achieves a peak signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio of 59.5 dB, and a power consumption of 1.3 mW, resulting in a figure of merit of 33 fJ/conversion-step.     

An area-and-power-efficient 8.4-bit ENOB 30 MS/s SAR ADC in 65 nm CMOS

Area and power consumption are two main concerns for the electronics towards the digitalization of in-probe 3D ultrasound imaging systems. This work presents a 10-bit 30 MS/s successive approximation register analog-to-digital converter, which achieves good area efficiency as well as power efficiency, by using a symmetrical MSB-capacitor-split capacitor array with customized small-value finger capacitors. Moreover, simplified dynamic digital logic and a dynamic comparator have been designed. Fabricated in a 65 nm CMOS technology, the core circuit only occupies 0.016 mm². The ADC achieves a signal-to-noise ratio of 52.2 dB, and consumes 61.3 μW at 30 MS/s from a 1 V supply voltage, resulting in a figure of merit (FoM) of 6.2 fJ/conversion-step. The FoM defined by including the area is 0.1 mm² fJ/conversion-step.     

Linear relationship ADC with complimentary switch-based bootstrapped sample and hold circuit

This paper presents the design, fabrication and tested results of an analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) using linear relationship ratio of comparator and resolution. An original N-bit flash architecture uses 2^N?1 comparators (N = resolution), while the proposed architecture uses only N comparators for N-bit making it a linear relationship design. This paper also deals with the design of sample and hold circuit that utilises clock bootstrapping technique which allows sampling at peak voltages and helps in minimising charge injection errors, attaining 125 µV for the proposed design. The proof of concept of 4-bit prototype ADC using 1P?2M is fabricated using AMIS 500 nm CMOS C5X technology and the experimental results at a sampling rate of 800 MS/s reveal an effective no. of bit of 3.34 bits, signal-to-noise ratio of 24.44 dB and differential non-linearity and integral non-linearity of 0.42 and 0.40, respectively. The converter consumes 7 mW power when operated on 2.5 V supply and occupies 0.014 mm² chip area.     

Algorithmic ADC operating with a single reference voltage for PLL-based chemical sensing applications

This paper deals with the design of an algorithmic switched-capacitor analog-to-digital converter (ADC), operating with a single reference voltage, a single-ended amplifier, a single-ended comparator, and presenting a small input capacitance. The ADC requires two clock phases per conversion bit and N clock cycles to resolve the N-bits. The ADC achieves a measured peak signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) of 49.9 dB and a peak signal-to-noise-and-distortion-ratio (SNDR) of 46.7 dB at P_in = ?6dBFS with a sampling rate of 0.25 MS/s. The measured differential-non-linearity and integral-non-linearity are within +0.6/?0.5 and +0.2/?0.5 LSB, respectively. The ADC power consumption is 300 μW and it is implemented in 90 nm CMOS technology with a single power supply of 1.2 V. The ADC saves power at system-level by requiring only a single reference voltage. At system level, this solution is therefore not only robust but competitive as well.     

A 360 fJ/conversion-step, 14-bit, 100 MS/s,digitally background calibrated pipelined ADC in 130-nm CMOS

This paper describes a 14-bit digitally background calibrated pipeline analog-to-digital converter (ADC) implemented in a mainstream 130-nm CMOS technology. The proposed calibration technique linearizes the digital output to correct for errors resulting from capacitor mismatch, finite amplifier gain, voltage reference errors and differential offsets. The software-based calibration technique requires quite modest digital resources and its estimated dynamic power is under 1 % of the ADC power consumption. After calibration, the 14-bit ADC achieves a measured peak Signal-to-Noise-plus-Distortion-Ratio of 71.1 dB at 100 MS/s sampling rate. The worst-case integral nonlinearity is improved from 32.9 down to 4 Least-Significant-Bits after calibration. The chip occupies an active area of 1.25 mm² and the core ADC (S/H+analog+digital power) consumes 105 mW. The Figure-of-Merit is 360 fJ per conversion-step.     

Integrated control circuit for adaptive sampling

A fully integrated controller for non-uniform data sampling suitable for the pre-processing of signals in a power- and size-restricted sensor front-end is presented. The sample rate is dynamically varied based on signal activity determined by the 2nd derivative of the input voltage. The derivative is realized with high-pass filters having 647 Hz cut-off frequency. A digital circuit generates the time-stamps and the trigger for an external analog-to-digital converter. Measured results of a 0.35 μm CMOS implementation show a sample rate variation of 7:1 and a system power advantage compared to conventional front-ends. The circuit dissipates 48 μW from ±1.5 V supplies and consumes an active area of 0.068 mm².