A multi-stage sigma-delta modulator based on noise-coupling and digital feed-forward techniques

This paper presents a new structure for high-resolution, low-power and wideband discrete time multi-stage (DT-MASH) sigma-delta (ΣΔ) modulators. It uses multi-bit digital input feed forward path (DFF) and noise coupling (NC) techniques. With the DFF technique, the modulator does not need a power-consuming analog adder at the quantizer input, and the number of comparators of the quantizer will be reduced significantly. Also, because of the reduced swing of the modulator’s integrators, low power integrators can be used. Using a second-order NC technique with no extra active block, the order of the modulator, which uses some paths between analog stages, is increased, and its performance is improved with zero-optimization of the modulator’s noise transfer function (NTF). Behavioral simulations and extensive mathematical analyses confirm the effectiveness of the proposed structure. The effect of the non-idealities in the DFF and NC paths were considered in the behavioral simulations. To examine its performance, a MASH 2–1 modulator was designed in the circuit level with a 180-nm CMOS technology and 1.8 V power supply. The integrators use a new op-amp switching technique to reduce total power consumption. With an over-sampling ratio (OSR) of 8 for the 10 MHz signal bandwidth, the proposed structure improves the signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) by 28 dB compared with a conventional MASH 2–1 structure at approximately the same power consumption and very low complexity.