Hybrid Analog-to-digital Converter Research Articles

A 14-Bit Hybrid Analog-to-Digital Converter for Infrared Focal Plane Array Digital Readout Integrated Circuit.

This paper presents a 14-bit hybrid column-parallel compact analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for the application of digital infrared focal plane arrays (IRFPAs) with compromised power and speed performance. The proposed hybrid ADC works in two phases: in the first phase, a 7-bit successive approximation register (SAR) ADC performs coarse quantization; in the second phase, a 7-bit single-slope (SS) ADC performs fine quantization to complete the residue voltage conversion. In this work, the number of unit capacitors is reduced to 1/128th of that of a conventional 14-bit SAR ADC, which is beneficial for the application of small pixel-pitch IRFPAs. In this work, a tradeoff segmented thermometer-coded digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is adopted in the first 7-bit coarse quantization process: the lower 3-bit is binary coded, and the upper 4-bit is thermometer coded. A thermometer-coded DAC can improve the linearity of ADC. Capacitor array matching can be incredibly relaxed compared with a binary-weight 14-bit SAR ADC, resulting in a noncalibration feature. Moreover, by sharing DAC and comparator analog circuits between the SAR ADC and the SS ADC, the power consumption and layout area are consequently reduced. The proposed hybrid ADC was fabricated using a 180 nm CMOS process. The measurement results show that the proposed ADC has a differential nonlinearity of -0.61/+0.84 LSB and a sampling rate of 120 kS/s. The developed ADC achieves a temporal noise of 1.7 LSBrms at a temperature of 77 K. In addition, the SNDR is 72.9 dB, and the ENOB is 11.82 bit, respectively. Total power consumption is 71 μW from supply voltages of 3.3 V (analog) and 1.8 V (digital).

A 0.49–4.34 μW LC-SAR Hybrid ADC with a 10.85-Bit ENOB and 20 KS/s Bandwidth

This paper presents a level-crossing successive-approximation-register (LC-SAR) hybrid analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that combines an LC ADC with an SAR ADC, which may be used for Internet of Things (IoT) random sparse event scenarios. The sampling frequency of a traditional LC ADC is usually proportional to the maximum instantaneous rate of change of the input signal; therefore, a higher input signal frequency inevitably leads to higher system power consumption. However, the proposed hybrid ADC uses the input level difference between the two moments before and after level-crossing detection, thereby ensuring a higher conversion precision and lower power consumption, even at higher input signal frequencies. Compared with traditional LC ADC or SAR ADC, the proposed hybrid ADC combines the ultralow-power advantage of LC ADC with the high-precision advantage of SAR ADC in converting IoT data with sparse characteristics such as ECG, EEG, and brain potential. The LC-SAR hybrid ADC is designed with a 0.18 μm CMOS process and consumes 4.34 μW at a 1.8 V supply voltage, achieving an SNDR of 67.41 dB and a bandwidth of 20 kHz. The spectrum analysis result was 10.85 ENOB when the input sinusoidal signal was 14.975 kHz. When inputted with an ECG signal, the system power consumption was as low as 0.49 μW. Furthermore, the proposed hybrid ADC obtained a good figure of merit, with FoMw and FoMs reaching 58.8 fJ/conv.steps and 164 dB, respectively. Compared to a conventional uniform sampling ADC, approximately 80% of the power savings and an 8x compression ratio can be achieved in physiological signal acquisition applications.

A 10-Bit 2.5-GS/s Two-Step ADC With Selective Time-Domain Quantization in 28-nm CMOS

In this paper, a single-channel two-step voltage-time hybrid domain analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is proposed. To achieve high sampling rate and high accuracy, 3.5-bit voltage domain MDAC and 7-bit high-speed time domain ADC (TD-ADC) are combined into a 10-bit hybrid ADC. In the first stage MDAC, a low-power push-pull amplifier is used to improve settling speed, and 1-bit redundancy is designed for calibration and dither injection. The TD-ADC with selective time domain quantization is implemented by a constant-current voltage to time converter (VTC) array and a direct positive feedback time domain comparator. The proposed VTC array can maintain high linearity with a large input swing in high-speed application. The prototype ADC was fabricated in a 28-nm CMOS process and occupied a core area of 0.074 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> . Under a 0.95-V power supply, the chip achieves a measured peak SNDR of 53.2 dB and SFDR of 61.7 dB respectively at conversion rate up to 2.5 GS/s. The FOM is 48.2 fJ/conversion-step.

A Survey on Analog-to-Digital Converter Integrated Circuits for Miniaturized High Resolution Ultrasonic Imaging System.

As traditional ultrasonic imaging systems (UIS) are expensive, bulky, and power-consuming, miniaturized and portable UIS have been developed and widely utilized in the biomedical field. The performance of integrated circuits (ICs) in portable UIS obviously affects the effectiveness and quality of ultrasonic imaging. In the ICs for UIS, the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is used to complete the conversion of the analog echo signal received by the analog front end into digital for further processing by a digital signal processing (DSP) or microcontroller unit (MCU). The accuracy and speed of the ADC determine the precision and efficiency of UIS. Therefore, it is necessary to systematically review and summarize the characteristics of different types of ADCs for UIS, which can provide valuable guidance to design and fabricate high-performance ADC for miniaturized high resolution UIS. In this paper, the architecture and performance of ADC for UIS, including successive approximation register (SAR) ADC, sigma-delta (Σ-∆) ADC, pipelined ADC, and hybrid ADC, have been systematically introduced. In addition, comparisons and discussions of different types of ADCs are presented. Finally, this paper is summarized, and presents the challenges and prospects of ADC ICs for miniaturized high resolution UIS.

A fully differential switched‐capacitor integrator based programmable resolution hybrid ADC architecture for biomedical applications

A novel switched-capacitor integrator based programmable resolution analog to digital converter (ADC) architecture is proposed. The proposed hybrid ADC architecture can be switched between successive approximation register (SAR) and delta-sigma modulator (DSM) mode in 8-bit to 15-bit resolution. A mathematical relationship showing the effect of mismatch of capacitors on ADC linearity is derived. A fully differential folded cascode operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) operating in a weak inversion region is designed using gm/ID technique with programmable unity gain bandwidth and slew rate. The designed OTA offers 83 dB DC gain. The proposed ADC, designed and laid out in UMC 180 nm standard CMOS technology, occupies an area of 0.228 mm2. The ADC resolution is programmable from 8-bit to 15-bit using a 3-bit control bus (res[2 : 0]). The hybrid ADC operates in SAR mode from 8-bit to 11-bit resolutions and as the first-order DSM with a multi-bit quantizer in 12-bit to 15-bit resolutions. The dynamic performance of the proposed ADC is verified through post-layout simulations with a supply voltage of 1.8 V. It exhibits a signal-to-noise and distortion ratio of 45–86 dB and consumes a power of 0.86–98 μW across target resolutions (8–15 bits).

A 16‐bit Hybrid ADC with Circular‐Adder‐Based Counting for 15μm Pitch 640×512 LWIR FPAs

A hybrid Analog to digital converter (ADC) is presented for long-wave infrared focal plane arrays. A two-stage quantization structure is applied in the folding integration process, which results in better chargehandling capacity and higher linearity compared with conventional designs while using fewer transistors at the pixel level. By employing a circular-adder-based counting structure with 3T dynamic memory cells, hardware consumption can be reduced. A pixel circuit of pitch 15μm has been designed using the 0.18mm Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process. The power consumption of the pixel-level ADC is 0.214μW, and the charge-handling capacity is 1Ge-. Simulation results demonstrate a signal-to-noise ratio of 90dB and a nonlinearity of 0.11%.

Modeling of High-Resolution Data Converter: Two-Step Pipelined-SAR ADC based on ISDM

The features of high-resolution and high-bandwidth are in an increasing demand considering to the wide range application fields based on high performance data converters. In this paper, a modeling of high-resolution hybrid analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is proposed to meet those requirements, and a 16-bit two-step pipelined successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with first-order continuous-time incremental sigma-delta modulator (ISDM) assisted is presented to verify this modeling. The combination of high-bandwidth two-step pipelined-SAR ADC with low noise ISDM and background comparator offset calibration can achieve higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) without sacrificing the speed and plenty of hardware. The usage of a sub-ranging scheme consists of a coarse SAR ADC followed by an fine ISDM, can not only provide better suppression of the noise added in 2nd stage during conversion but also alleviate the demands of comparator’s resolution in both stages for a given power budget, compared with a conventional Pipelined-SAR ADC. At 1.2 V/1.8 V supply, 33.3 MS/s and 16 MHz input sinusoidal signal in the 40 nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process, the post-layout simulation results show that the proposed hybrid ADC achieves a signal-to-noise distortion ratio (SNDR) and a spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of 86.3 dB and 102.5 dBc respectively with a total power consumption of 19.2 mW.

Review of Analog-To-Digital Conversion Characteristics and Design Considerations for the Creation of Power-Efficient Hybrid Data Converters

This article reviews design challenges for low-power CMOS high-speed analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). Basic ADC converter architectures (flash ADCs, interpolating and folding ADCs, subranging and two-step ADCs, pipelined ADCs, successive approximation ADCs) are described with particular focus on their suitability for the construction of power-efficient hybrid ADCs. The overview includes discussions of channel offsets and gain mismatches, timing skews, channel bandwidth mismatches, and other considerations for low-power hybrid ADC design. As an example, a hybrid ADC architecture is introduced for applications requiring 1 GS/s with 6–8 bit resolution and power consumption below 11 mW. The hybrid ADC was fabricated in 130-nm CMOS technology, and has a subranging architecture with a 3-bit flash ADC as a first stage, and a 5-bit four-channel time-interleaved comparator-based asynchronous binary search (CABS) ADC as a second stage. Testing considerations and chip measurements results are summarized to demonstrate its low-power characteristics.

A Low-Power High-Speed Hybrid ADC With Merged Sample-and-Hold and DAC Functions for Efficient Subranging Time-Interleaved Operation

An 8-bit 1-GS/s hybrid analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for high-speed low-power applications is introduced. It has a subranging architecture with a 3-bit flash ADC as a first stage and a 5-bit four-channel time-interleaved comparator-based asynchronous binary search (CABS) ADC as a second stage. In each channel, a merged sample-and-hold and capacitive digital-to-analog converter (SHDAC) performs the sampling and residue generation for the subranging operation. The effects of the parasitic capacitances on the SHDAC linearity are analyzed, and a linearity correction method is introduced to enable power-efficient high-speed operation in the presence of parasitics because the design approach allows reducing the sampling capacitance in the SHDAC. Furthermore, the sampling network configuration incorporates an error reduction technique to alleviate the clock feedthrough of bootstrap switches. The offsets of the comparators in the flash ADC are calibrated using a built-in reference signal via an extra sampling channel. According to postlayout simulations at 1 GS/s in 130-nm CMOS, the ADC has an effective number of bits higher than 7.37 bits up to the Nyquist frequency while consuming 13.3 mW from a 1.2-V supply.

A Novel Hybrid Radix-3/Radix-2 SAR ADC With Fast Convergence and Low Hardware Complexity

This brief presents a fast-converging hybrid successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) based on the radix-3 and radix-2 search approaches. The radix-3 approach achieves 1.6 bits/cycle, and the radix-2 approach mitigates the effect of comparator offset and improves the accuracy of the ADC. Incorporating clock gating of comparators and efficient switching of capacitors, the proposed hybrid ADC demonstrates promising balance between hardware complexity and speed and can achieve equivalent signal-to-noise-and-distortion-ratio (SNDR) with less capacitors compared with radix-3 SAR ADC. Behavioral simulation-based results verify operation and merit of the proposed architecture. An 11-bit 45-MS/s prototype with 5% capacitor mismatch in 180-nm CMOS was simulated in SPICE and achieves 67 dB of SNDR after calibration.

A low-power/high-resolution dual-mode analog-to-digital converter for wireless sensor applications

A successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with an integrating resolution booster (IRB) is proposed and experimentally verified to provide the capability of dual-mode operation, that is, low-power and high-resolution modes. This dual-mode architecture corresponds to a kind of hybrid ADC architecture, combining a low-power SAR ADC and a high-resolution integrating-type ADC together. A prototype ADC design is fabricated in a 0.18µm CMOS process, and its dual-mode operation is experimentally verified. The total power consumption in the low-power mode was only 8µW with the resolution of 6bits, and the high-resolution mode achieved an additional resolution of 4bits by activating the IRB, consuming the instant power of 380µW.

Ultra-energy-efficient analog-to-digital converters based on single-electron transistor/CMOS hybrid technology for biomedical applications

Ultra-energy-efficient analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) based on single-electron transistor (SET)/complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) hybrid technology are proposed as a solution to sense and process biomedical signals. Our results show the energy efficiency of 0.82 pJ/state, which is lower than that in previously reported energy-efficient ADCs. The performance and dissipated power of proposed ADCs are estimated and compared with those of CMOS ADCs by using Lee's SPICE model including non-ideal effects of the experimental data. While the proposed ADC shows an operating power lower by two orders of magnitude than that of the CMOS flash-type ADC, the number of required transistors is about 10% of that in the CMOS flash-type ADC. The peak-to-valley current ratio in Coulomb oscillation of SETs used in the circuit implementation has the range of 1.15–1.5, which is consistent with the experimental result of top-down approached Si-based SETs at T = 77–100 K. From the perspective of the immunity to the gate capacitance Ccg mismatch and the background charge Q0 noise, it is shown that the criteria of SET/CMOS hybrid ADCs are ΔCcg ⩽ 0.02 × Ccg (with Ccg = 0.24 aF) and ΔQ0 ⩽ 0.23q, respectively.