Systematic Synthesis of Cascaded Continuous-Time ΔΣ ADCs for Wideband Data Conversion

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-4-2013

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MWSCAS.2013.6674785

Abstract

Continuous-time delta sigma (CT-ΔΣ ) ADCs are gaining wider adoption in data conversion systems primarily aided by their robustness to mismatch in nano-scale CMOS technologies and inherent anti-alias filtering. In past, several techniques have been employed to achieve wider conversion bandwidths by either scaling the designs to a lower technology node or by adopting architectures with lower oversampling ratios (OSR). Cascaded, or MASH, CT-ΔΣ ADCs have been explored to achieve conversion bandwidths by cascading lower order ΔΣ loops followed by a digital coarse quantization noise canceling filter (NCF). Another technique which has recently been explored is to increase the quantizer sampling rate, in a given technology node, by absorbing excess loop-delay (ELD) greater than one clock cycle (Ts) in the loop. However, these techniques individually cannot sufficiently meet the ever increasing bandwidth demand for the broadband wireless applications. Further, the ELD > Ts designs require an extra modulator order to achieve the same noise-shaping performance as the low-speed ELD < 0.5 Ts prototype, necessitating high-order CT-ΔΣ loops. As a step towards combing the two techniques, we propose a systematic design method to synthesize 3-2 MASH CT-ΔΣ modulators to achieve higher conversion bandwidths, BW ≥ 40MHz in a 130-nm CMOS technology.

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