A continuous-time /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ ADC with increased immunity to interferers

Receivers are being digitized in a quest for flexibility. Analog filters and programmable gain stages are being exchanged for digital processing at the price of a very challenging ADC. This paper presents an alternative solution where the filter and programmable gain functionality is integrated into a /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ ADC. The novel filtering ADC is realized by adding a high-pass feedback path to a conventional /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ ADC while a compensating low-pass filter in the forward path maintains stability. As such, the ADC becomes highly immune to interferers even if they exceed the maximum allowable input level for the wanted channel. As a consequence, the ADC input range can be programmed dynamically to the level of the wanted signal only. This results in an input-referred dynamic range of 89 dB in 1-MHz bandwidth and an intentionally moderate output signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio of 46-59 dB (depending on the programmed gain). The merged functionality enables a better overall power/performance balance for the receiver baseband. The design consumes less than 2 mW and active area is 0.14 mm/sup 2/ in a 0.18-/spl mu/m digital CMOS technology.     

A 1.5-V 12-bit power-efficient continuous-time third-order /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulator

This paper presents the design strategy, implementation, and experimental results of a power-efficient third-order low-pass /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ analog-to-digital converter (ADC) using a continuous-time (CT) loop filter. The loop filter has been implemented by using active RC integrators. Several power optimizations, design requirements, and performance limitations relating to circuit nonidealities in the CT modulator are presented. The influence of the low supply voltage on the various building blocks such as the amplifier as well as on the overall /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulator is discussed. The ADC was implemented in a 3.3-V 0.5-/spl mu/m CMOS technology with standard threshold voltages. Measurements of the low-power 1.5-V CT /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ ADC show a dynamic range and peak signal-to-noise-plus-distortion ratio of 80 and 70 dB, respectively, in a bandwidth of 25 kHz. The measured power consumption is only 135 /spl mu/W from a single 1.5-V power supply.     

A CMOS smart temperature sensor with a 3/spl sigma/ inaccuracy of /spl plusmn/0.5/spl deg/C from -50/spl deg/C to 120/spl deg/C

A low-cost temperature sensor with on-chip sigma-delta ADC and digital bus interface was realized in a 0.5 /spl mu/m CMOS process. Substrate PNP transistors are used for temperature sensing and for generating the ADC's reference voltage. To obtain a high initial accuracy in the readout circuitry, chopper amplifiers and dynamic element matching are used. High linearity is obtained by using second-order curvature correction. With these measures, the sensor's temperature error is dominated by spread on the base-emitter voltage of the PNP transistors. This is trimmed after packaging by comparing the sensor's output with the die temperature measured using an extra on-chip calibration transistor. Compared to traditional calibration techniques, this procedure is much faster and therefore reduces production costs. The sensor is accurate to within /spl plusmn/0.5/spl deg/C (3/spl sigma/) from -50/spl deg/C to 120/spl deg/C.     

Efficient sampling of reference noise in switched capacitor /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ ADC

Efficient sampling of the reference leg noise within a bilinear switched capacitor /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ ADC is presented, resulting in improved thermal noise performance. Whenever a transition occurs in the feedback of a /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ ADC, implemented using bilinear integrators, zero charge is transferred from the reference leg. Consequently the average noise power added by the reference leg can be reduced substantially if the reference leg is only sampled when there is a corresponding charge transfer. For mid-scale inputs, the sampled noise from the reference leg is reduced by more than 6 dB.     

Enhanced split-architecture /spl Delta/-/spl Sigma/ ADC

A split /spl Delta/-/spl Sigma/ ADC topology is proposed which provides enhanced noise shaping by cross-coupling the quantisation errors of the two halves of the structure. Unlike the multi-stage noise shaping architecture, the new structure is insensitive to mismatch errors and it does not reduce the stability of the loops. Simulations confirm the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

A 14-bit delta-sigma ADC with 8/spl times/ OSR and 4-MHz conversion bandwidth in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process

A 14-bit 8/spl times/ oversampling delta-sigma (/spl Delta//spl Sigma/) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for wide-band communication applications has been developed. By using a novel architecture, a high maximum out-of-band quantization noise gain (Q/sub max/) is realized, which greatly improves the SNR and tonal behavior. The ADC employs a fifth-order single-stage structure with a 4-bit quantizer. It achieves 82-dB SNDR and 103-dB SFDR at 4-MHz conversion bandwidth with a single 1.8-V power supply.     

An 11b 70-MHz 1.2-mm/sup 2/ 49-mW 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS ADC with on-chip current/voltage references

This work proposes an 11b 70-MHz CMOS pipelined analog-digital converter (ADC) as one of core circuit blocks for very high speed digital subscriber line system applications. The proposed ADC for the internal use has the strictly limited number of externally connected I/O pins while the ADC employs on-chip CMOS current/voltage references and a merged-capacitor switching technique to improve ADC performances. The ADC implemented in a 0.18-/spl mu/m 1P4M CMOS technology shows the maximum signal-to-noise distortion ratio (SNDR) of 60 dB at 70 MSample/s. The ADC maintains the SNDR of 58 dB and the spurious-free dynamic resistance of 68 dB for input frequencies up to the Nyquist rate at 60 MSample/s. The measured differential and integral nonlinearities of the ADC are within /spl plusmn/0.63 and /spl plusmn/1.21 LSB, respectively. The active chip area is 1.2 mm/sup 2/ and the ADC consumes 49 mW at 70 MSample/s at 1.8 V.     

A 9-V/Lux-s 5000-frames/s 512/spl times/512 CMOS sensor

A high-responsivity 9-V/Lux-s high-speed 5000-frames/s (at full 512/spl times/512 resolution) CMOS active pixel sensor (APS) is presented in this paper. The sensor was designed for a 0.35-/spl mu/m 2P3M CMOS sensor process and utilizes a five-transistor pixel to provide a true parallel shutter. Column-parallel analog-to-digital converter (ADC) architecture yields fast readout from pixels and digitization of the data simultaneously with acquiring a new frame. The chip has a two-row SRAM to store data from the ADC and read previous rows of data out of the chip. There are a total of 16 parallel ports operating up to 90 MHz delivering /spl sim/1.3 Gpixel/s or 13 Gb/s of data at the maximum rate. In conclusion, a comparison between two high-speed digital CMOS sensor architectures, which are a column-parallel APS and a digital pixel sensor (DPS), is conducted.     

A 0.5-V 1-/spl mu/W successive approximation ADC

A successive approximation analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is presented operating at ultralow supply voltages. The circuit is realized in a 0.18-/spl mu/m standard CMOS technology. Neither low-V/sub T/ devices nor voltage boosting techniques are used. All voltage levels are between supply voltage V/sub DD/ and ground V/sub SS/. A passive sample-and-hold stage and a capacitor-based digital-to-analog converter are used to avoid application of operational amplifiers, since opamp operation requires higher values for the lowest possible supply voltage. The ADC has signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratios of 51.2 and 43.3 dB for supply voltages of 1 and 0.5 V, at sampling rates of 150 and 4.1 kS/s and power consumptions of 30 and 0.85 /spl mu/W, respectively. Proper operation is achieved down to a supply voltage of 0.4 V.     

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.     

An all-digital analog-to-digital converter with 12-/spl mu/V/LSB using moving-average filtering

A compact, high-resolution analog-to-digital converter (ADC) especially for sensors is presented. The basic structure is a completely digital circuit including a ring-delay-line with delay units (DUs), along with a frequency counter, latch, and encoder. The operating principles are: (1) the delay time of the DU is modulated by the analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion voltage and (2) the delay pulse passes through a number of DUs within a sampling (= integration) time and the number of DUs through which the delay pulse passes is output as conversion data. Compact size and high resolution were realized with an ADC having a circuit area of 0.45 mm/sup 2/ (0.8-/spl mu/m CMOS) and a resolution of 12 /spl mu/V (10 kS/s). Its nonlinearity is /spl plusmn/0.1% FS per 200-mV span (1.8-2.0 V), for 14-b resolution. Sample holds are unnecessary and a low-pass filter function removes high-frequency noise simultaneously with A/D conversion. Thus, the combination of this ADC and a digital filter that follows can eliminate an analog prefilter to prevent the aliasing before A/D conversion. Also, both this ADC can be shrunk and operated at low voltages, so it is an ideal means to lower the cost and power consumption. Drift errors can be easily compensated for by digital processing.     

A 85-dB dynamic range multibit delta-sigma ADC for ADSL-CO applications in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS

A high-resolution multibit sigma-delta analog-to-digital converter (ADC) implemented in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology is introduced. The circuit is targeted for an asymmetrical digital subscriber line (ADSL) central-office (CO) application . An area- and power-efficient realization of a second-order single-loop 3-bit modulator with an oversampling ratio of 96 is presented. The /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulator features an 85-dB dynamic range over a 300-kHz signal bandwidth. The measured power consumption of the ADC core is only 15 mW. An innovative biasing circuitry is introduced for the switched-capacitor integrators.     

A 3-mW 74-dB SNR 2-MHz continuous-time delta-sigma ADC with a tracking ADC quantizer in 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS

A third-order continuous-time multibit (4 bit) /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ ADC for wireless applications is implemented in a 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS process. It is shown that the power consumption can be considerably reduced by using a tracking ADC composed of three comparators with interpolation instead of using a 4-bit flash quantizer. Moreover, the usage of a tracking ADC opens the door to a new forward-looking dynamic element matching (DEM) technique, which helps to reduce the loop delay time and consequently improves the loop stability. The SNR is 74 dB over a bandwidth of 2 MHz. The ADC consumes 3 mW from a 1.5-V supply when clocked at 104 MHz. The active area is 0.3 mm/sup 2/.     

Highly integrated direct conversion receiver for GSM/GPRS/EDGE with on-chip 84-dB dynamic range continuous-time /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ ADC

This paper describes a highly digitized direct conversion receiver of a single-chip quadruple-band RF transceiver that meets GSM/GPRS and EDGE requirements. The chip uses an advanced 0.25-/spl mu/m BiCMOS technology. The I and Q on-chip fifth-order single-bit continuous-time sigma-delta (/spl Sigma//spl Delta/) ADC has 84-dB dynamic range over a total bandwidth of /spl plusmn/135 kHz for an active area of 0.4 mm/sup 2/. Hence, most of the channel filtering is realized in a CMOS IC where digital processing is achieved at a lower cost. The systematic analysis of dc offset at each stage of the design enables to perform the dc offset cancellation loop in the digital domain as well. The receiver operates at 2.7 V with a current consumption of 75 mA. A first-order substrate coupling analysis enables to optimize the floor plan strategy. As a result, the receiver has an area of 1.8 mm/sup 2/.     

New radix-(2/spl times/2/spl times/2)/(4/spl times/4/spl times/4) and radix-(2/spl times/2/spl times/2)/(8/spl times/8/spl times/8) DIF FFT algorithms for 3-D DFT

In this paper, new three-dimensional (3-D) radix-(2/spl times/2/spl times/2)/(4/spl times/4/spl times/4) and radix-(2/spl times/2/spl times/2)/(8/spl times/8/spl times/8) decimation-in-frequency (DIF) fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithms are developed and their implementation schemes discussed. The algorithms are developed by introducing the radix-2/4 and radix-2/8 approaches in the computation of the 3-D DFT using the Kronecker product and appropriate index mappings. The butterflies of the proposed algorithms are characterized by simple closed-form expressions facilitating easy software or hardware implementations of the algorithms. Comparisons between the proposed algorithms and the existing 3-D radix-(2/spl times/2/spl times/2) FFT algorithm are carried out showing that significant savings in terms of the number of arithmetic operations, data transfers, and twiddle factor evaluations or accesses to the lookup table can be achieved using the radix-(2/spl times/2/spl times/2)/(4/spl times/4/spl times/4) DIF FFT algorithm over the radix-(2/spl times/2/spl times/2) FFT algorithm. It is also established that further savings can be achieved by using the radix-(2/spl times/2/spl times/2)/(8/spl times/8/spl times/8) DIF FFT algorithm.     

Integrated high-/spl kappa/ (/spl kappa/ /spl sim/19) MIM capacitor with Cu/low-/spl kappa/ interconnects for RF application

We demonstrate a high-performance metal-high /spl kappa/ insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor integrated with a Cu/low-/spl kappa/ backend interconnection. The high-/spl kappa/ used was laminated HfO/sub 2/-Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ with effective /spl kappa/ /spl sim/19 and the low-/spl kappa/ dielectric used was Black Diamond with /spl kappa/ /spl sim/2.9. The MIM capacitor (/spl sim/13.4 fF//spl mu/m/sup 2/) achieved a Q-factor /spl sim/53 at 2.5 GHz and 11.7 pF. The resonant frequency f/sub r/ was 21% higher in comparison to an equivalently integrated Si/sub 3/N/sub 4/-MIM capacitor (/spl sim/0.93 fF//spl mu/m/sup 2/) having similar capacitance 11.2 pF. The impacts of high-/spl kappa/ insulator and low-/spl kappa/ interconnect dielectric on the mechanism for resonant frequency improvement are distinguished using equivalent circuit analysis. This letter suggests that integrated high-/spl kappa/ MIM could be a promising alternative capacitor structure for future high-performance RF applications.     

Thermo-optical modulation at /spl lambda/=1.5 /spl mu/m in an /spl alpha/-SiC-/spl alpha/-Si-/spl alpha/-SiC planar guided-wave structure

A planar waveguide based on an amorphous silicon-amorphous silicon carbide heterostructure is proposed for the realization of passive and active optical components at the wavelengths /spl lambda/=1.3-1.5 /spl mu/m. The waveguide has been realized by low temperature plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition and is compatible with the standard microelectronic technologies. Thermo-optical induced modulation at /spl lambda/=1.5 /spl mu/m is demonstrated in this waveguide. Numerical simulations predict that operation frequencies of about 3 MHz are possible. The measurements have also allowed the determination of the previously unknown thermo-optical coefficient of undoped amorphous silicon at this wavelength.     

An embedded 0.8 V/480 /spl mu/W 6b/22 MHz flash ADC in 0.13-/spl mu/m digital CMOS process using a nonlinear double interpolation technique

For high-data-rate wireless communication, low-voltage baseband converters integrated with DSP in deep submicrometer processes are area- and power-efficient. Through careful architecture selections and circuit techniques, this paper demonstrates a low-voltage (0.8 V), low-power (480 /spl mu/W), 6-b/22-MHz flash-interpolation ADC which occupies 0.3 mm/sup 2/ and achieves 33 dB SNDR and 47 dB SFDR. The power efficiency of this converter is 0.6 pJ/conv-step which compares favorably with all published results. We also introduce a nonlinear double interpolation technique that enables the use of a 0.13-/spl mu/m standard digital CMOS process without special resistors.     

A 70-mW 300-MHz CMOS continuous-time /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ ADC with 15-MHz bandwidth and 11 bits of resolution

A wide-bandwidth continuous-time sigma-delta ADC is implemented in a 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS. The circuit is targeted for wide-bandwidth applications such as video or wireless base-stations. The active blocks are composed of regular threshold voltage devices only. The fourth-order architecture uses an OpAmp-RC-based loop filter and a 4-bit internal quantizer operated at 300-MHz clock frequency. The converter achieves a dynamic range of 11 bits over a bandwidth of 15 MHz. The power dissipation is 70 mW from a 1.5-V supply.     

Continuous-time /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulators using distributed resonators

We derive a method for using distributed resonators in /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulators and demonstrate these /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulators have several advantages over existing /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulator architectures. Like continuous-time (CT) /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulators, the proposed /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulators do not require a high-precision track-and-hold, and additionally can take advantage of the high-Q of distributed resonators. Like discrete-time /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulators, the proposed /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulators are relatively insensitive to feedback loop delays and can subsample. We present simulations of several types of these /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulators and examine the challenges in their design.