Analog-to-Digital converters (ADCs) for video applications have made exciting progress in miniaturization and power reduction in the past 20 years. This paper mainly describes the key technologies for miniaturization and power reduction of 10-bit video-frequency ADCs. By reviewing useful architectures and circuit schemes for video-frequency ADCs, self-calibration techniques and interleaving techniques are surveyed. The subranging pipeline look-ahead ADC architecture is introduced. It has a potential for reducing power consumption and improving conversion rate when minute deep submicron CMOS devices are used with low supply voltage.

This paper proposes a new architecture for multibit complex bandpass ΔΣAD modulators with built-in Switched-Capacitor (SC) circuits for application to Low-IF receivers such as used for Bluetooth and WLAN. In the realization of complex bandpass ΔΣAD modulators, we face the following problems: (i) SNR of AD converter is deteriorated by mismatches between internal analog I and Q paths. (ii) Layout design becomes complicated because of signal lines crossing by complex filter and feedback from DAC for I and Q paths in the complex modulator, and this increases required chip area. We propose a new structure for a complex bandpass ΔΣAD modulator which can be completely divided into two paths without layout crossing, and solves the problems mentioned above. The two parts of signal paths and circuits in the modulator are changed for I and Q while CLK is changed for High/Low by adding multiplexers. Symmetric circuits are used for I and Q paths at a certain timing, and they are switched by multiplexers to those used for Q and I paths at another timing. Therefore the influence from mismatches between I and Q paths is reduced by dynamic matching. As a result, the modulator is divided into two separate parts without crossing signal lines between I and Q paths and its layout design can be greatly simplified compared with conventional modulators. We have conducted MATLAB simulations to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed structure.

This paper presents a design of low-power CMOS OTA-C filters suitable for on-chip integration of advanced monolithic system LSIs that have analog I/O and digital signal processing capability. First, we discuss the distortion of MOS cross-coupled circuits which have a quite low distortion when the MOS FETs have the square law characteristics. Considering the nonidealities of MOS FET, however, we find that the third harmonic component of signal dominates the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the cross-coupled pair circuit. We propose a new architecture to reduce the 3rd harmonic component. Low distortion operational transconductance amplifiers (OTA) which consist of the proposed low distortion cross-coupled pair are applied to the realization of OTA-Capacitor filters. The SPICE simulation shows that the THD of the filter is 0.0047% and the power dissipation is 22.6 mW.

We have designed, fabricated and measured a second-order multibit switched-capacitor complex bandpass ΔΣAD modulator to evaluate our new algorithms and architecture. We propose a new structure of a complex bandpass filter in the forward path with I, Q dynamic matching, that is equivalent to the conventional one but can be divided into two separate parts. As a result, the ΔΣ modulator, which employs our proposed complex filter can also be divided into two separate parts, and there are no signal lines crossing between the upper and lower paths formed by complex filters and feedback DACs. Therefore, the layout design of the modulator can be simplified. The two sets of signal paths and circuits in the modulator are changed between I and Q while CLK is changed between high and low by adding multiplexers. Symmetric circuits are used for I and Q paths at a certain period of time, and they are switched by multiplexers to those used for Q and I paths at another period of time. In this manner, the effect of mismatches between I and Q paths is reduced. Two nine-level quantizers and four DACs are used in the modulator for low-power implementations and higher signal-to-noise-and-distortion (SNDR), but the nonlinearities of DACs are not noise-shaped and the SNDR of the ΔΣAD modulator degrades. We have also employed a new complex bandpass data-weighted averaging (DWA) algorithm to suppress nonlinearity effects of multibit DACs in complex form to achieve high accuracy; it can be realized by just adding simple digital circuitry. To evaluate these algorithms and architecture, we have implemented a modulator using 0.18 µm CMOS technology for operation at 2.8 V power supply; it achieves a measured peak SNDR of 64.5 dB at 20 MS/s with a signal bandwidth of 78 kHz while dissipating 28.4 mW and occupying a chip area of 1.82 mm2. These experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the above two algorithms, and the algorithms may be extended to other complex bandpass ΔΣAD modulators for application to low-IF receivers in wireless communication systems.

A 7 bit 1.0 Gsps Cascaded Folding ADC is presented. This ADC employs cascaded folding architecture with 3-degree folders. A new reset technique and layout shuffling enable the ADC to operate at high-speed with low power consumption. Implemented in a 90 nm CMOS process technology the ADC consumes 230 mW with 1.2 V and 2.5 V supplies and has a SNR of 38 dB.

This work presents the thermal noise analysis results of ring amplifiers in the MDAC of cyclic ADC. Ring amplifier is an alternative closed-loop structure for residual signal amplification with MDAC, and two types of ring amplifiers: pseudo-differential and fully-differential ring-amplifiers are considered for the implementation of MDAC in cyclic ADC. Theoretical analysis results show that power of thermal noise in MDAC with a pseudo-differential amplifier is much higher than that with a fully-differential ring-amplifier. SPICE simulation results with transient noise analyses also show the similar trend. Experimental prototype cyclic ADCs in 65nm CMOS technology are implemented with the same architecture and the same circuit components except for amplifiers. Comparison of the measured results of the two ADCs confirms the validity of the theoretical analysis results.

This paper proposes a pipeline analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with non-binary encoding technique based on β-expansion. By using multiply-by-β switched-capacitor (SC) multiplying digital-to-analog converter (MDAC) circuit, our proposed ADC is composed by radix-β (1 < β < 2) 1 bit pipeline stages instead of using the conventional radix-2 1.5 bit/1 bit pipeline stages to realize non-binary analog-to-digital conversion. Also with proposed β-value estimation algorithm, there is not any digital calibration technique is required in proposed pipeline ADC. The redundancy of non-binary ADC tolerates not only the non-ideality of comparator, but also the mismatch of capacitances and the gain error of operational amplifier (op-amp) in MDAC. As a result, the power hungry high gain and wide bandwidth op-amps are not necessary for high resolution ADC, so that the reliability-enhanced pipeline ADC with simple amplifiers can operate faster and with lower power. We analyse the β-expansion of AD conversion and modify the β-encoding technique for pipeline ADC. In our knowledge, this is the first proposal architecture for non-binary pipeline ADC. The reliability of the proposed ADC architecture and β-encoding technique are verified by MATLAB simulations.

Proof-of-concept cyclic analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) have been designed and fabricated in 90-nm CMOS technology. The measurement results of an experimental prototype demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed switched-capacitor (SC) architecture to realize a non-binary ADC based on β expansion. Different from the conventional binary ADC, a simple 1-bit/step structure for an SC multiplying digital-to-analog converter (MDAC) is proposed to present residue amplification by β (1 < β < 2). The redundancy of non-binary ADCs with radix β tolerates the non-linear conversion errors caused by the offsets of comparators, the mismatches of capacitors, and the finite DC gains of amplifiers, which are used in the MDAC. We also employed a radix value estimation algorithm to obtain an effective value of β for non-binary encoding; it can be realized by merely adding a simple conversion sequence and digital circuits. As a result, the power penalty of a high-gain wideband amplifier and the required accuracy of the circuit elements for a high-resolution ADC were largely relaxed so that the circuit design was greatly simplified. The implemented ADC achieves a measured peak signal-to-noise-and-distortion-ratio (SNDR) of 60.44dB, even with an op-amp with a poor DC gain (< 50dB) while dissipating 780µW in analog circuits at 1.4V and occupying an active area of 0.25 × 0.26mm2.

A 12-bit 1.25MS/s cyclic analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is designed and fabricated in 90nm CMOS technology, and only occupies an active area as small as 0.037mm2. The proposed ADC is composed of a non-binary AD convertion stage, and a on-chip non-binary-to-binary digital block includes a built-in radix-value self-estimation scheme. Therefore, althouh a non-binary convertion architechture is adopted, the proposed ADC is the same as other stand-alone binary ADCs. The redundancy of non-binary 1-bit/step architecture relaxes the accuracy requirement on analog components of ADC. As a result, the implementation of analog circuits such as amplifier and comparator becomes simple, and high-density Metal-Oxide-Metal (MOM) capacitors can be used to achieve a small chip area. Furthermore, the novel radix-value self-estimation technique can be realized by only simple logic circuits without any extra analog input, so that the total active area of ADC is dramatically reduced. The prototype ADC achieves a measured peak signal-to-noise-and-distortion-ratio (SNDR) of 62.3dB using a poor DC gain amplifier as low as 45dB and MOM capacitors without any careful layout techniques to improve the capacitor matching. The proposed ADC dissipated 490µW in analog circuits at 1.4V power supply and 1.25Msps (20MHz clocking). The measured DNL is +0.94/-0.71LSB and INL is +1.9/-1.2LSB at 30kHz sinusoidal input.

In this paper, a robust cyclic ADC architecture with β-encoder is proposed and circuit scheme using switched-capacitor (SC) circuit is introduced. Different from the conventional binary ADC, the redundancy of proposed cyclic ADC outputs β-expansion code and has an advantage of error correction. This feature makes ADC robust against the offset of comparator capacitor mismatch and finite DC gain of amplifier in multiplying-DAC (MDAC). Because the power penalty of high-gain wideband amplifier and the required accuracy of circuit elements for high resolution ADC can be relaxed, the proposed architecture is suitable for deep submicron CMOS technologies beyond 90 nm. We also propose a β-value estimation algorithm to realize high accuracy ADC based on β-expansion. The simulation results show the effectiveness of proposed architecture and robustness of β-encoder.

This paper proposes a continuous-time bandpass ΔΣAD modulator architecture which performs high-accuracy AD conversion of high frequency analog signals and can be used for next-generation radio systems. We use an RF DAC inside the modulator to enable subsampling and also to make the SNDR of the continuous-time modulator insensitive to DAC sampling clock jitter. We have confirmed that this is the case by MATLAB simulation. We have also extended our modulator to multi-bit structures and show that this alleviates excess loop delay problems.

This paper describes an algorithm for Successive Approximation Register (SAR) ADCs with overlapping steps that allow comparison decision errors (due to, such as DAC incomplete settling) to be digitally corrected. We generalize this non-binary search algorithm, and clarify which decision errors it can digitally correct. This algorithm requires more SAR ADC conversion steps than a binary search algorithm, but we show that the sampling speed of an SAR ADC using this algorithm can be faster than that of a conventional binary-search SAR ADC -- because the latter must wait for the settling time of the DAC inside the SAR ADC.