A 20-mW 640-MHz CMOS Continuous-Time Σ∆ ADC With 20-MHz Signal Bandwidth, 80-dB Dynamic Range and 12-bit ENOB

A wide bandwidth continuous-time sigma-delta ADC, operating between 20 and 40 MS/s output data rate, is implemented in 130-nm CMOS. The circuit is targeted for applications that demand high bandwidth, high resolution, and low power, such as wireless and wireline communications, medical imaging, video, and instrumentation. The third-order continuous-time SigmaDelta modulator comprises a third-order RC operational-amplifier-based loop filter and 4-bit internal quantizer operating at 640 MHz. A 400-fs rms jitter LC PLL with 450-kHz bandwidth is integrated, generating the low-jitter clock for the jitter-sensitive continuous-time SigmaDelta ADC from a single-ended input clock between 13.5 and 40 MHz. To reduce clock jitter sensitivity, nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) DAC pulse shaping is used. The excess loop delay is set to half the sampling period of the quantizer and the degradation of modulator stability due to excess loop delay is avoided with a new architecture. The SigmaDelta ADC achieves 76-dB SNR, -78-dB THD, and a 74-dB SNDR or 12 ENOB over a 20-MHz signal band at an OSR of 16. The power consumption of the CT SigmaDelta modulator itself is 20 mW and in total the ADC dissipates 58 mW from the 1.2-V supply     

Efficient Look-Up-Table-Based Modeling for Robust Design of Σ∆ ADCs

The sigma-delta (SigmaDelta) analog-digital converter (ADC) has been widely used in data conversion applications due to its good performance. However, oversampling and complex circuit behaviors render the transistor-level analysis of these designs prohibitively time consuming. The inefficiency of the standard simulation approach also rules out the possibility of analyzing the impacts of a multitude of environmental and process variations critical in modern VLSI technologies. We present a look-up table (LUT)-based modeling technique to facilitate much more efficient performance analysis of SigmaDelta ADCs. Various transistor-level circuit nonidealities are systematically characterized at the building block level and the whole system is simulated much more efficiently using these building block models. Our approach can provide up to four orders of magnitude runtime speedup over SPICE-like simulators, hence significantly shortening the CPU time required for evaluating system performances such as signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio. The proposed modeling technique is further extended to enable scalable performance variation analysis of complex SigmaDelta ADC designs. Such modeling approach allows us to perform trade-off analysis of various topologies considering not only nominal performances but also their variabilities. Equally important, with our efficient parametric modeling technique, we are able to feasibly extract simulation-based statistical performance correlation models allowing low-cost alternate linearity test of ADC designs.     

Cascaded Complex ADCs With Adaptive Digital Calibration for $I/Q$ Mismatch

A complex analog-to-digital converter (ADC) intended for digital intermediate frequency (IF) receiver applications digitizes analog signals at IFs with excellent power/bandwidth efficiency. However, it is vulnerable to mismatches between its in-phase and quadrature (I/Q) paths that can dramatically degrade its performance. The proposed solution mitigates I/Q mismatch effects using a complex sigma-delta (SigmaDelta) modulator cascaded with 9-bit pipeline converters in each of the I and Q paths. The quantization noise of the first stage complex modulator is eliminated using an adaptive scheme to calibrate finite-impulse response digital filters in the digital noise-cancellation logic block. Although low-pass SigmaDelta cascade ADCs are widely used because of their inherent stability and high-order noise shaping, the complex bandpass cascade architecture introduced herein maintains these advantages and doubles the noise shaping bandwidth. Digital calibration also reduces the effects of analog circuit limitations such as finite operational amplifier gain, which enables high performance and low power consumption with high-speed deep-submicrometer CMOS technology. Behavioral simulations of the complex SigmaDelta/pipeline cascade bandpass ADC using the adaptive digital calibration algorithm predict a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 78 dB over a 20-MHz signal bandwidth at a sampling rate of 160 MHz in the presence of a 1% I/Q mismatch.     

A 14 mW 2.5 MS/s 14 bit Σ∆ Modulator Using Split-Path Pseudo-Differential Amplifiers

This paper presents the design and experimental results of a 1.25 MHz signal bandwidth 14 bit CMOS SigmaDelta modulator. With our proposed switched-capacitor split-path pseudo-differential amplifiers, this modulator achieves high power efficiency, high sampling frequency, and small die area. A new signal and reference front-end sampling network eliminates the input common-mode voltage and reduces power consumption and linearity requirement of the opamp. A prototype chip has been designed and fabricated in a 0.25 mum CMOS technology with a core area of 0.27 mm². Experimental results show that an 84 dB dynamic range is achieved over a 1.25 MHz signal bandwidth when clocked at 125 MHz. The power dissipation is 14 mW at 2.4 V including on-chip voltage reference buffers.     

An IF-to-Baseband Σ∆ Modulator for AM/FM/IBOC Radio Receivers With a 118 dB Dynamic Range

A single-bit fifth-order complex continuous-time IF-to-baseband SigmaDelta modulator for AM/FM/IBOC receivers is presented. The input IF is 10.7 MHz and the sampling frequency is 41.7 MHz. The modulator achieves a dynamic range of 118dB in AM mode (3 kHz BW), 98dB in FM mode (200 kHz BW), and 86dB in IBOC mode (500 kHz BW). The modulator's high dynamic range enables the realization of an AM radio receiver without a VGA and without an AM channel-selection filter, thereby reducing system complexity and cost. The elimination of the VGA also improves the sensitivity and the overall noise figure of the receiver. The modulator's spurious free dynamic range is 88 dB in the bandwidth from 25 to 525 kHz. The IM2 distance is 92 dB, and the IM3 distance is 91 dB. The ADC was fabricated in a one-poly five-metal 0.18-mum CMOS process with an active area of 6.0mm². It consumes 210 mW from a 1.8-V supply     

A 12-Bit, 10-MHz Bandwidth, Continuous-Time $SigmaDelta$ ADC With a 5-Bit, 950-MS/s VCO-Based Quantizer

The use of VCO-based quantization within continuous-time (CT) SigmaDelta analog-to-digital converter (ADC) structures is explored, with a custom prototype in 0.13 mum CMOS showing measured performance of 86/72 dB SNR/SNDR with 10 MHz bandwidth while consuming 40 mW from a 1.2 V supply and occupying an active area of 640 mum times 660 mum. A key element of the ADC structure is a 5-bit VCO-based quantizer clocked at 950 MHz which achieves first-order noise shaping of its quantization noise. The quantizer structure allows the second-order CT SigmaDelta ADC topology to achieve third-order noise shaping, and direct connection of the VCO-based quantizer to the internal DACs of the ADC provides intrinsic dynamic element matching of the DAC elements.     

Adaptive Blocker Rejection Continuous-Time $Sigma Delta $ ADC for Mobile WiMAX Applications

An adaptive blocker-rejection wideband continuous-time (CT) sigma-delta (SigmaDelta) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is presented. An integrated blocker detector reconfigures the ADC loop architecture to avoid overloading in the presence of strong interferers, improving receiver channel selectivity and sensitivity without increasing its dynamic range (DR) requirements. The adaptive operation relaxes receiver baseband channel filtering requirements for a worldwide inter-operability for microwave access (WiMAX, IEEE 802.16e) receiver. The ADC achieves 71 dB of dynamic range (DR), 65 dB of peak SNDR and 68 dB of peak SNR over a 10 MHz signal bandwidth, consuming 18 mW from a 1.2 V supply. The ADC system reconfigures the loop filter topology within 51 mus, improving receiver selectivity without any transient impact on BER. In the blocker suppression mode, the ADC can withstand 30 dBc blocker at the adjacent channel, achieving - 22 dB error vector magnitude (EVM) with a 24 Mb/s 16-QAM signal. The IC is fabricated on a 130 nm 8-level metal, metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor, CMOS technology, occupying 1.5 times 0.9 mm² silicon area.     

A 90-dB SNR 2.5-MHz output-rate ADC using cascaded multibitdelta-sigma modulation at 8× oversampling ratio

A 16-b 2.5-MHz output-rate analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for wireline communications and high-speed instrumentation has been developed. A 2-1-1 cascaded delta-sigma modulator (DSM) employing 4-b quantizers in every stage makes all quantization noise sources negligible at 8× oversampling ratio, Data weighted averaging with bi-directional rotation eliminates tones generated by multibit digital-to-analog converter (DAC) nonlinearity to increase the spurious-free dynamic-range (SFDR). Switched-capacitor design techniques using low-threshold transistors reduce front-end sampling distortion. The 24.8 mm² chip in 0.5-μm CMOS also integrates the decimation filter and voltage reference. The ADC achieves 90-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the 1.25-MHz bandwidth and 102-dB SFDR with 270-mW power dissipation     

Putting the "FLEX" in flexible mobile wireless radios - A wideband continuous-time baudpass sigma-delta ADC software radios

This article has provided a brief overview of the SigmaDelta ADC conversion technologies for SDRs. The wireless receiver challenges were identified, the ADC design considerations and SigmaDelta solutions were discussed, and a low-distortion CT BP SigmaDelta modulator architecture was presented. The article has shown that the proposed CT BP SigmaDelta modulator is suitable for implementing high-IF ADC, making possible the software radio in handhelds. The major challenges in implementing such a high-IF ADC are the power dissipation and the degree of configurability, programmability, and adaptability that can be achieved by applying digital tuning and adaptive calibration     

Impact of Sampling Clock Phase Noise on Σ∆ Frequency Discriminators

SigmaDelta frequency discriminators (SigmaDeltaFDs) convert instantaneous frequency deviations of a carrier signal to digital. They are used for decoding narrowband phase or frequency modulated signals in communication receivers, self calibration of RF frequency synthesizers and in digital phase locked loops. In this paper, the impact of reference (sampling) clock phase noise on a SigmaDeltaFD's spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) is derived. It is shown that for SigmaDeltaFDs with jittered sampling clock, in addition to FM sidebands, a high baseband tonal content is generated degrading overall SFDR. The reference clock phase noise impact is derived mathematically, and two commonly used SigmaDeltaFDs circuits are designed and implemented to verify the results experimentally. Experimental results are shown to match the theoretical prediction of SFDR within 3 dB.     

A 0.1 mm$^{2}$ , Wide Bandwidth Continuous-Time $SigmaDelta$ ADC Based on a Time Encoding Quantizer in 0.13 $mu$ m CMOS

The ADC shown in this paper uses an innovative sigma-delta (SigmaDelta) architecture that replaces the flash quantizer and mismatch corrected DAC of a multibit continuous time (CT) modulator by a time domain encoder similar to a PWM modulator to reduce the effective ADC area. The modulator achieves the resolution of a multibit design using single bit circuitry by concentrating most of the quantization error energy around a single frequency, which is afterwards removed, seizing the zeros of a sinc decimation filter. The non flat error spectrum is accomplished by use of two filter loops, one of which is made to operate in a self-oscillating mode. An experimental CT-SigmaDelta ADC prototype has been fabricated in 0.13 mum CMOS which implements a third order modulator with two operating modes. Measurements show an effective number of bits (ENOB) of 10 bits and 12 bits in a signal bandwidth of 17 MHz and 6.4 MHz, respectively, and a power-efficient figure of merit (FoM = Pwr/2 middot BW middot 2^ENOB) of 0.48 pJ/conversion at 1.5 V supply. The active area of the ADC is 0.105 mm².     

A Power-Efficient Two-Channel Time-Interleaved ΣΔ Modulator for Broadband Applications

A two-channel time-interleaved second-order sigma-delta modulator for broadband applications including asymmetrical digital subscriber line (ADSL) is presented. The proposed two-channel SigmaDelta modulator uses a single integrator channel which does not require additional active elements for the quantizer input generation, since the integrator outputs are directly used as the input of the quantizers. As a result, the entire modulator can be implemented using only two op-amps, which is beneficial for both power consumption and area. Furthermore, this architecture is robust to channel mismatch effects and can operate with a simple clocking scheme. The SigmaDelta modulator achieves a dynamic range of 85 dB over a 1.1-MHz signal bandwidth with an effective clock frequency of 132 MHz. The circuit is implemented in 0.18-mum CMOS technology using metal-insulator-metal capacitors. The total power consumption of the SigmaDelta modulator is 5.4mW from a 1.8-V supply and occupies an active area of 1.1 mm²     

A 64-MHz clock-rate /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ ADC with 88-dB SNDR and -105-dB IM3 distortion at a 1.5-MHz signal frequency

A 64-MHz clock rate sigma-delta (/spl Sigma//spl Delta/) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with -105-dB intermodulation distortion (IMD) at a 1.5-MHz signal frequency is reported. A linear replica bridge sampling network enables the ADC to achieve high linearity for high signal frequencies. Operating at an oversampling ratio of 29, a 2-1-1 cascade with a 2-b quantizer in the last stage reduces the quantization noise level well below that of the thermal noise. The measured signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) in 1.1-MHz bandwidth is 88 dB, and the spurious-free-dynamic-range (SFDR) is 106 dB. The modulator and reference buffers occupy a 2.6-mm/sup 2/ die area and have been implemented with thick oxide devices, with minimum channel length of 0.35 /spl mu/m, in a dual-gate 0.18-/spl mu/m 1.8-V single-poly five-metal (SP5M) digital CMOS process. The power consumed by the ADC is 230 mW, including the decimation filters.     

Generalized Comb Decimation Filters for Σ∆ A/D Converters: Analysis and Design

This paper addresses the design of generalized comb decimation filters, proposing some novel decimation schemes tailored to SigmaDelta modulators. We present a mathematical framework to optimize the proposed decimation filters in such a way as to increase the SigmaDelta quantization noise (QN) rejection around the so called folding bands, frequency intervals whose QN gets folded down to baseband because of the decimation process. Comparisons are given in terms of passband drop and selectivity with respect to classic comb filters with orders ranging from 3 to 6. As far as the practical implementation of the proposed filters is concerned, we present two different architectures, namely a recursive and a nonrecursive implementation, the latter of which constitutes the basis for realizing multiplier-less generalized comb filter (GCF) realizations. We propose a mathematical framework for evaluating the sensitivity of GCFs to the approximation of the multipliers embedded in the filter architectures. The considerations deduced from the sensitivity analysis, pave the way to an optimization algorithm useful for approximating the multipliers with power-of-2 coefficients     

A Subsampling Quadrature Σ∆ Modulator Based on Distributed Resonators for Use in Radio Receiver

The receiver architecture proposed in this brief seizes the subsampling properties of continuous-time sigma-delta (SigmaDelta) modulators based on distributed resonators to construct a quadrature receiver. The proposed architecture is based on a low-pass SigmaDelta modulator that subsamples an intermediate frequency signal around the sampling frequency and does not require quadrature mixers. Instead, the quadrature mixing is replaced by suitably choosing the sampling instants inside the loop. Two practical circuit implementations are proposed. The first one uses separate circuitry for the I and Q paths. The second architecture introduces an innovative way to produce the I and Q outputs that is immune to path mismatch due to the sharing of all the analog circuitry for both paths. The proposed modulator may be feasible for the typical IF frequencies used in cellular base stations.     

A low-power highly digitized receiver for 2.4-GHz-band GFSK applications

This paper describes the design and measurement results of a low-power highly digitized receiver for Gaussian frequency-shift keying modulated input signals at 2.4 GHz. The RF front-end has been based on a low-IF architecture and does not require any variable gain or filtering blocks. The full dynamic range of the low-IF signal is converted into the digital domain by a low-power high-resolution time-continuous SigmaDelta analog-to-digital converter (ADC). This leads to a linear receive chain without limiters. A fifth-order poly-phase loop filter is used in the complex SigmaDelta ADC. The digital block performs filtering and demodulation. Channel filtering is combined with matched filtering and the suppression of noise resulting from the SigmaDelta ADC. The high degree of digitization leads to design flexibility with respect to changing standards and scalability in future CMOS generations. The receiver has been realized in a standard 0.18-mum CMOS process and measures 3.5 mm². The only external components are an antenna filter and a crystal. The power consumption is only 32 mW in the continuous mode, which is at least a factor of two lower than state-of-the-art CMOS receivers     

A Fast, Sigma–Delta (Σ∆) Boost DC–DC Converter Tolerant to Wide LC Filter Variations

Power supplies in portable electronics must adapt to their highly integrated environments and, more intrinsically, respond quickly to fast load dumps. However, frequency compensation must cater to the worst case design LC combination, be it because of tolerance and/or variable design targets, limiting speed and regulation performance to the worst-case scenario, even under best case conditions. Sigma-delta (SigmaDelta) control, which addresses this issue in buck converters, has not been able to concurrently achieve both high speed and wide LC compliance in boost converters. This paper presents a dual-loop SigmaDelta boost converter whose prototype (5 plusmn5% V, 1A) was 20% faster and at least nine times more LC compliant than its leading current-mode PWM counterpart, and this without a compensation circuit. Light load efficiency, intrinsic for battery life, was also better (2% higher at 0.5 W, 600 kHz) because of lower switching losses. The tradeoffs for these benefits were higher output ripple voltage (5 V plusmn1.7%) and lower high load efficiency (less than 1.9% lower at 5 W, 300 kHz).     

A 1.8-V ΔΣ modulator interface for an electretmicrophone with on-chip reference

The design of a delta-sigma (ΔΣ) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for direct voltage readout of an electret microphone is presented. The ADC is integrated on the same chip with a bandgap voltage reference and is designed to be packaged together with an electret microphone. Having a power consumption of 1.7 mW from a supply voltage of 1.8 V, the circuit is well suited for use in mobile applications. The single-loop, single-bit, fourth-order ΔΣ ADC operates at 64 times oversampling for a signal bandwidth of 11 kHz. The measured dynamic range is 80 dB and the peak signal-to-(noise+distortion) ratio is 62 dB. The harmonic distortion is minimized by using an integrator with an instrumentation amplifier-like input which directly integrates the 125-mV peak single-ended voltage generated by the microphone. A combined continuous-time/switched-capacitor design is used to minimize power consumption     

A Multi-Mode Sigma-Delta ADC for GSM/WCDMA/WLAN Applications

The demand for new telecommunication services requiring higher capacities, data rates and different operating modes have motivated the development of new generation multi-standard wireless transceivers. In multi-standard design, sigma-delta based ADC is one of the most popular choices. To this end, in this paper we present cascaded 2-2-2 reconfigurable sigma-delta modulator that can handle GSM, WCDMA and WLAN standards. The modulator makes use of a low-distortion swing suppression topology which is highly suitable for wide band applications. In GSM mode, only the first stage (2nd order ∑-Δ ADC) is used to achieve a peak SNDR of 88dB with over-sampling ratio of 160 for a bandwidth of 200KHz and for WCDMA mode a 2-2 cascaded structure (4th order) is turned on with 1-bit in the first stage and 2-bit in the second stage to achieve 74 dB peak SNDR with over-sampling ratio of 16 for a bandwidth of 2MHz. Finally, a 2-2-2 cascaded MASH architecture with 4-bit in the last stage is proposed to achieve a peak SNDR of 58dB for WLAN for a bandwidth of 20MHz. The novelty lies in the fact that unused blocks of second and third stages can be made inactive to achieve low power consumption. The modulator is designed in TSMC 0.18um CMOS technology and operates at 1.8 supply voltage.     

Efficient Multibit Quantization in Continuous-Time Σ∆ Modulators

A drawback of continuous-time SigmaDelta modulators is their sensitivity to clock jitter. One way to counteract this is to use a multibit feedback loop which requires a (high resolution) multibit quantizer. However, every extra bit in the quantizer doubles its complexity, power consumption and capacitive load for the analog circuit that needs to drive the quantizer. In this paper a new concept for the quantization in sigma delta modulators is proposed. It allows to significantly reduce the required amount of comparators in the multibit quantizer. Three architectures that realize this new concept are presented and their implementation issues discussed. The architectures' performance has been compared with a conventional modulator through computer simulations. Compared to the conventional modulator, the proposed architectures achieve the same performance, with much less comparators in the quantizer