An oscillatory noise‐shaped quantizer for time‐based continuous‐time sigma‐delta modulators

In this paper, a new type of an oscillatory noise‐shaped quantizer (NSQ) for time‐based continuous‐time sigma‐delta modulators is presented. The proposed NSQ is composed of an oscillatory voltage‐to‐time converter and a polyphase sampler. Using Tustin's transformation method and through the approximation of the comparator gain, a linearized model of the NSQ is introduced. This way, a novel realization of the first‐ and second‐order NSQ is presented. Its implementation is based on fully passive continuous‐time filters without needing any amplifier or power consuming element. The ploy‐phase sampler inside the NSQ is based on the combination of a time‐to‐digital and a digital‐to‐time converter. The layout of the proposed NSQ is provided in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company 0.18 μm complementary metal‐oxide‐semiconductor 1P6M technology. The verification of the proposed NSQ is done via investigating both the system level and postlayout simulation results. Leveraging the proposed NSQ in an Lth‐order time‐based continuous‐time sigma‐delta modulator enhances the noise‐shaping order up to L + 2, confirming its superior effectiveness. This makes it possible to design high performance and wideband continuous‐time SDMs with low power consumption and relaxed design complexity.     

A comparative design study of continuous‐time incremental sigma‐delta ADC architectures

This paper presents a comparative design study of continuous‐time (CT) incremental sigma‐delta (IΣΔ) ADCs, which can expand another dimension of the IΣΔ ADC world that is dominated by discrete‐time implementations. Several CT IΣΔ ADC architectures are introduced and analyzed aiming to reduce the modulator's sampling frequency and consequently the power dissipation. Based on the analytical results, three CT IΣΔ ADCs are selected to be examined, implemented, and tested. The three ADC prototypes, fabricated in a standard 0.18‐m CMOS technology, demonstrate competitive figure‐of‐merits in terms of power efficiency compared to the state‐of‐the‐art counterparts. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A single‐bit continuous‐time delta‐sigma modulator using clock‐jitter and inter‐symbol‐interference suppression technique

This paper presents a technique for mitigating two well‐known DAC non‐idealities in continuous‐time delta‐sigma modulators (CTDSMs), particularly in wide‐band and low over‐sampling‐ratio (OSR) cases. This technique employs a special digital‐to‐analog convertor (DAC) waveform, called modified return‐to‐zero (MRZ), to reduce the time uncertainty effect because of the jittered clock at the sampling time instances and eliminate the effect of inter‐symbol‐interference (ISI) which degrades the modulator performance, especially when non‐return‐to‐zero (NRZ) DAC waveform is chosen in the modulator design. A third‐order single‐bit CTDSM is designed based on the proposed technique and step‐by‐step design procedure at circuit and system levels, considering clock jitter and ISI, is explained. Circuit simulations in 180‐nm CMOS technology show that in the presence of circuit non‐idealities which generate jitter and asymmetrical rise and fall times in the DAC current pulse, signal‐to‐noise‐distortion‐ratio (SNDR) of the proposed modulator is higher than the conventional modulator with NRZ waveform by about 10 dB. In these simulations, clock jitter standard deviation is 0.3% of the sampling period (T_S) and the difference between fall/rise times in the DAC current pulse is 4%T_S. Simulated at 600‐MHz sampling frequency (f_S) with an oversampling ratio (OSR) of 24, SNDR figure of merit (FOM_SNDR) of the proposed modulator in 180‐nm CMOS is 300 fj/conversion. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A design methodology for power‐efficient reconfigurable SC ΔΣ modulators

This paper presents a methodology to design reconfigurable switched‐capacitor delta‐sigma modulators (ΔΣMs) capable of keeping their corresponding power efficiency figures constant and optimal for a set of resolutions and signal bandwidths. This method is especially suitable for low‐bandwidth, medium‐to‐high‐resolution specifications, which are common in biomedical application range. The presented methodology is based on an analytic model of all different contributions to the power dissipation of the ΔΣM. In particular, a novel way to predict the static power dissipated by integrators based on class A and class AB operational transconductance amplifier is presented. The power‐optimal solution is found in terms of filter order, quantizer resolution, oversampling ratio, and capacitor dimensions for a targeted resolution and bandwidth. As the size of the sampling capacitors is crucial to determine power consumption, three approaches to achieve reconfigurability are compared: sizing the sampling capacitors to achieve the highest resolution and keep them constant, change only the first sampling capacitor according to the targeted resolution, or program all sampling capacitors to the required resolution. The second approach results in the best trade‐off between power efficiency and simplicity. A reconfigurable ΔΣM for biomedical applications is designed at transistor level in a 0.18‐µm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor process following the methodology discussed. A comparison between the power estimated by the proposed analytic model and the transistor implementation shows a maximum difference of 17%, validating thus the proposed approach. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

GRO‐TDC with gate‐switch‐based delay cell halving resolution limit

In this paper, we propose a time‐to‐digital converter (TDC) with first‐order noise‐shaping. The proposed gated ring oscillator (GRO)‐TDC overcomes the limitation associated with GRO's intrinsic resolution by adopting two GROs, whose delay difference is equal to half the delay of a delay cell. The GRO is composed of 17 stages of a newly proposed delay cell, which utilizes a gate‐switched configuration to solve the charge redistribution problem. The proposed GRO‐TDC is designed using a 65‐nm process technology, with an area of 0.015 mm² and a supply voltage of 1 V. The sampling rate and the effective resolution of the proposed GRO‐TDC are 50 MS/s and 1.22 ps, respectively. Finally, the proposed GRO‐TDC consumes a power of 9.08 and 2.41 mW in the calibration and conversion modes, respectively. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A high‐resolution hybrid digital pulse width modulator with dual‐edge‐triggered flip‐flops and hardware compensation

In this paper, a hybrid architecture of digital pulse width modulator (DPWM) which applies a counter, a phase‐shifted circuit, and a carry chain is proposed. Dual‐edge‐triggered flip‐flops are used in the phase‐shifted circuit to generate signals with 45° phase shift, which not only improves the resolution of the DPWM but also reduces the resource consumption in the carry chain. Furthermore, a hardware compensation method is used to solve the duty cycle increment phenomenon that affects the regulation accuracy of converter. An 11‐bit DPWM with the proposed architecture is implemented and tested by Xilinx Artix‐7 FPGA. The experimental results show a high resolution of 32 ps and a good linearity where R² is 0.99 and verify the effect of duty cycle compensation.     

Design‐oriented model for power‐driven design optimization of SC‐ΣΔ modulators

A behavioral model for switched‐capacitors sigma‐delta modulators, suitable for power‐driven design, is presented. Because of the oversampling behavior of this kind of analog‐to‐digital converters, transistor‐level simulations are extremely time consuming. Thus, accurate behavioral models are mandatory in the preliminary design steps to cut the development time. However, when the power consumption of the modulator is pushed down to the absolute minimum level, second‐order effects affecting the settling behavior of the switched‐capacitor integrator must be taken into account. Furthermore, by means of an accurate noise model, based on a second‐order transfer function of the amplifier, a global power minimization is achieved, and the optimum partitioning between the switch and op‐amp noise is obtained. In spite of the improved accuracy, the proposed model requires only a few parameters of the amplifier in the integrator. This allows to easily link the model to an external set of circuit equations, to be derived for the specific amplifier used in the modulator. The model was used in the design of a third‐order modulator in an STM 90‐nm technology. The silicon samples exhibit an effective resolution of 15.2‐b with a 500‐Hz output rate, an oversampling ratio of 500, and a Schreier figure‐of‐merit of 162 dB, with a 38‐μW power consumption at 1.2‐V supply.     

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 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 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.     

Design of a CMOS multi‐rate adaptive continuous‐time equalizer based on power spectrum estimation

An adaptive continuous‐time equalizer for reliable short‐haul high‐speed serial communications is described in this paper. The adaptive equalizer uses the spectrum‐balancing technique to adapt its response to changes in the bandwidth, amplitude, and bit rate of the input signal. In this way, it is able to compensate the frequency response of a 1‐mm diameter step‐index plastic optical fiber, for lengths up to 50 m, and bit rates ranging from 400 Mb/s to 2.5 Gb/s. Experimental results are shown to demonstrate its feasibility. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A high‐order discontinuous Galerkin method with time‐accurate local time stepping for the Maxwell equations

We present an explicit numerical method to solve the time‐dependent Maxwell equations with arbitrary high order of accuracy in space and time on three‐dimensional unstructured tetrahedral meshes. The method is based on the discontinuous Galerkin finite element approach, which allows for discontinuities at grid cell interfaces. The computation of the flux between the grid cells is based on the solution of generalized Riemann problems, which provides simultaneously a high‐order accurate approximation in space and time. Within our approach, we expand the solution in a Taylor series in time, where subsequently the Cauchy–Kovalevskaya procedure is used to replace the time derivatives in this series by space derivatives. The numerical solution can thus be advanced in time in one single step with high order and does not need any intermediate stages, as needed, e.g. in classical Runge–Kutta‐type schemes. This locality in space and time allows the introduction of time‐accurate local time stepping (LTS) for unsteady wave propagation. Each grid cell is updated with its individual and optimal time step, as given by the local Courant stability criterion. On the basis of a numerical convergence study we show that the proposed LTS scheme provides high order of accuracy in space and time on unstructured tetrahedral meshes. The application to a well‐acknowledged test case and comparisons with analytical reference solutions confirm the performance of the proposed method. Copyright © 2008 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.