An ultra low area asynchronous combo 4/8/12-bit/quaternary A/D converter based on integer division

Abstract

An asynchronous A/D Converter architecture based on a binary tree structure is presented in this paper. Two alternative design strategies are presented that lead either to a high mismatch immunity ADC that requires a light calibration logic (area: 0.123mm2, power: 72mW) or a faster, tinier and even lower power ADC (area: 0.21mm2, power: 25mW) with lower mismatch immunity that needs a slightly more complicated calibration logic. Both alternative ADC design strategies require at least one or two orders of magnitude lower area than any known approach and a remarkable low power consumption without sacrificing speed. The designed A/D Converter can operate with a configurable resolution of either 4, 8, or 12-bits. Moreover, 6 quaternary digits or three 16-level outputs are also available from the intermediate nodes of the binary tree, for applications that require multi-valued communication lines. Simulation results prove that the peak conversion rate of the high mismatch immunity A/D design alternative exceeds 300, 230 and 225MS/s for 4, 8 and 12-bit resolution, respectively, while the peak conversion rate of the faster design alternative is higher than 500, 440 and 420MS/s for 4, 8 and 12-bit resolution, respectively. An appropriate sample/hold and voltage to current conversion architecture has been developed along with an intelligent output latching technique that improve the achieved signal to noise and distortion ratio by up to 7dB. Moreover, an appropriate calibration method that extends the temperature operating range and compensates for the component mismatches is presented. The ultra low area and power consumption of the developed ADC architecture favours its employment in sensor networks while these features make its use attractive as a building block in time interleaved parallel ADCs for the achievement of ultra high speed conversion.