A Highly Linear OTA-Less 1-1 MASH VCO-Based $\Delta\Sigma$ ADC With an Efficient Phase Quantization Noise Extraction Technique

Abstract

In this article, an efficient technique is introduced to extract the quantization noise of a multi-phase voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO)-based quantizer (VCOQ) in the time domain as a pulsewidth modulated (PWM) signal. Using this technique, a new highly linear VCO-based 1-1 multi-stage noise shaping (MASH) delta–sigma analog-to-digital converter (ADC) structure is presented. This architecture does not require any operational transconductance amplifier (OTA)-based analog integrators or power-hungry linearization methods. The first stage is a closed-loop multi-phase VCO-based voltage-to-phase (V-to-P) converter, and the second stage is an open-loop multi-phase VCO-based voltage-to-frequency (V-to-F) converter. Using the proposed technique, the phase quantization error of the first stage is extracted as a pulse signal and then fed to the second stage. The input of the first VCO is a very small amplitude signal, and the input of the second VCO is a two-level PWM signal. Therefore, the VCO non-linearity does not limit the overall ADC performance, mitigating the need for power-hungry linearization methods. The prototype achieves second-order noise shaping with a DR/SFDR/SNR/SNDR of 82.7/88.7/80.3/79.7 dB for an input signal BW of 2 MHz. The fabricated design consumes 1.248 mW from a 0.9-V supply.