VCO-Based Quantizers Using Frequency-to-Digital and Time-to-Digital Converters

VCO-Based Quantizers Using Frequency-to-Digital and Time-to-Digital Converters
Author: Samantha Yoder
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 64
Release: 2011-08-28
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1441997229

This book introduces the concept of voltage-controlled-oscillator (VCO)-based analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). Detailed explanation is given of this promising new class of high resolution and low power ADCs, which use time quantization as opposed to traditional analog-based (i.e. voltage) ADCs.

Time-to-Digital Converters

Time-to-Digital Converters
Author: Stephan Henzler
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2010-03-10
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9048186285

Micro-electronics and so integrated circuit design are heavily driven by technology scaling. The main engine of scaling is an increased system performance at reduced manufacturing cost (per system). In most systems digital circuits dominate with respect to die area and functional complexity. Digital building blocks take full - vantage of reduced device geometries in terms of area, power per functionality, and switching speed. On the other hand, analog circuits rely not on the fast transition speed between a few discrete states but fairly on the actual shape of the trans- tor characteristic. Technology scaling continuously degrades these characteristics with respect to analog performance parameters like output resistance or intrinsic gain. Below the 100 nm technology node the design of analog and mixed-signal circuits becomes perceptibly more dif cult. This is particularly true for low supply voltages near to 1V or below. The result is not only an increased design effort but also a growing power consumption. The area shrinks considerably less than p- dicted by the digital scaling factor. Obviously, both effects are contradictory to the original goal of scaling. However, digital circuits become faster, smaller, and less power hungry. The fast switching transitions reduce the susceptibility to noise, e. g. icker noise in the transistors. There are also a few drawbacks like the generation of power supply noise or the lack of power supply rejection.

Logarithmic Voltage-to-Time Converter for Analog-to-Digital Signal Conversion

Logarithmic Voltage-to-Time Converter for Analog-to-Digital Signal Conversion
Author: Mauro Santos
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2019-04-05
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3030159787

This book presents a novel logarithmic conversion architecture based on cross-coupled inverter. An overview of the current state of the art of logarithmic converters is given where most conventional logarithmic analog-to-digital converter architectures are derived or adapted from linear analog-to-digital converter architectures, implying the use of analog building blocks such as amplifiers. The conversion architecture proposed in this book differs from the conventional logarithmic architectures. Future possible studies on integrating calibration in the voltage to time conversion element and work on an improved conversion architecture derived from the architecture are also presented in this book.

Time-interleaved Analog-to-Digital Converters

Time-interleaved Analog-to-Digital Converters
Author: Simon Louwsma
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2010-09-08
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9048197163

Time-interleaved Analog-to-Digital Converters describes the research performed on low-power time-interleaved ADCs. A detailed theoretical analysis is made of the time-interleaved Track & Hold, since it must be capable of handling signals in the GHz range with little distortion, and minimal power consumption. Timing calibration is not attractive, therefore design techniques are presented which do not require timing calibration. The design of power efficient sub-ADCs is addressed with a theoretical analysis of a successive approximation converter and a pipeline converter. It turns out that the first can consume about 10 times less power than the latter, and this conclusion is supported by literature. Time-interleaved Analog-to-Digital Converters describes the design of a high performance time-interleaved ADC, with much attention for practical design aspects, aiming at both industry and research. Measurements show best-inclass performance with a sample-rate of 1.8 GS/s, 7.9 ENOBs and a power efficiency of 1 pJ/conversion-step.

High-Performance AD and DA Converters, IC Design in Scaled Technologies, and Time-Domain Signal Processing

High-Performance AD and DA Converters, IC Design in Scaled Technologies, and Time-Domain Signal Processing
Author: Pieter Harpe
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2014-07-23
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319079387

This book is based on the 18 tutorials presented during the 23rd workshop on Advances in Analog Circuit Design. Expert designers present readers with information about a variety of topics at the frontier of analog circuit design, serving as a valuable reference to the state-of-the-art, for anyone involved in analog circuit research and development.

Design of VCO-based ADCs

Design of VCO-based ADCs
Author: Vishnu Unnikrishnan
Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2017-03-28
Genre:
ISBN: 9176856240

Today's complex electronic systems with billions of transistors on a single die are enabled by the aggressive scaling down of the device feature size at an exponential rate as predicted by the Moore's law. Digital circuits benefit from technology scaling to become faster, more energy efficient as well as more area efficient as the feature size is scaled down. Moreover, digital design also benefits from mature CAD tools that simplify the design and cross-technology porting of complex systems, leveraging on a cell-based design methodology. On the other hand, the design of analog circuits is getting increasingly difficult as the feature size scales down into the deep nanometer regime due to a variety of reasons like shrinking voltage headroom, reducing intrinsic gain of the devices, increasing noise coupling between circuit nodes due to shorter distances etc. Furthermore, analog circuits are still largely designed with a full custom design ow that makes their design and porting tedious, slow, and expensive. In this context, it is attractive to consider realizing analog/mixed-signal circuits using standard digital components. This leads to scaling-friendly mixed-signal blocks that can be designed and ported using the existing CAD framework available for digital design. The concept is already being applied to mixed-signal components like frequency synthesizers where all-digital architectures are synthesized using standard cells as basic components. This can be extended to other mixed-signal blocks like digital-to-analog and analog to- digital converters as well, where the latter is of particular interest in this thesis. A voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO)-based analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is an attractive architecture to achieve all-digital analog-to digital conversion due to favorable properties like shaping of the quantization error, inherent anti-alias filtering etc. Here a VCO operates as a signal integrator as well as a quantizer. A converter employing a ring oscillator as the VCO lends itself to an all-digital implementation. In this dissertation, we explore the design of VCO-based ADCs synthesized using digital standard cells with the long-term goal of achieving high performance data converters built from low accuracy switch components. In a first step, an ADC is designed using vendor supplied standard cells and fabricated in a 65 nm CMOS process. The converter delivers an 8-bit ENOB over a 25 MHz bandwidth while consuming 3.3 mW of power resulting in an energy efficiency of 235 fJ/step (Walden FoM). Then we utilize standard digital CAD tools to synthesize converter designs that are fully described using a hardware description language. A polynomial-based digital post-processing scheme is proposed to correct for the VCO nonlinearity. In addition, pulse modulation schemes like delta modulation and asynchronous sigma-delta modulation are used as a signal pre-coding scheme, in an attempt to reduce the impact of VCO nonlinearity on converter performance. In order to investigate the scaling benefits of all-digital data conversion, a VCO-based converter is designed in a 28 nm CMOS process. The design delivers a 13.4-bit ENOB over a 5 MHz bandwidth achieving an energy efficiency of 4.3 fJ/step according to post-synthesis schematic simulation, indicating that such converters have the potential of achieving good performance in deeply scaled processes by exploiting scaling benefits. Furthermore, large conversion errors caused by non-ideal sampling of the oscillator phase are studied. An encoding scheme employing ones counters is proposed to code the sampled ring oscillator output into a number, which is resilient to a class of sampling induced errors modeled by temporal reordering of the transitions in the ring. The proposed encoding reduces the largest error caused by random reordering of up to six subsequent bits in the sampled signal from 31 to 2 LSBs. Finally, the impact of process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations on the performance while operating the converter from a subthreshold supply is investigated. PVT-adaptive solutions are suggested as a means to achieve energy-efficient operation over a wide range of PVT conditions.

Design, Modeling and Testing of Data Converters

Design, Modeling and Testing of Data Converters
Author: Paolo Carbone
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2013-10-05
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3642396550

This book presents the a scientific discussion of the state-of-the-art techniques and designs for modeling, testing and for the performance analysis of data converters. The focus is put on sustainable data conversion. Sustainability has become a public issue that industries and users can not ignore. Devising environmentally friendly solutions for data conversion designing, modeling and testing is nowadays a requirement that researchers and practitioners must consider in their activities. This book presents the outcome of the IWADC workshop 2011, held in Orvieto, Italy.

Nonuniform Sampling

Nonuniform Sampling
Author: Farokh Marvasti
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 938
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1461512298

Our understanding of nature is often through nonuniform observations in space or time. In space, one normally observes the important features of an object, such as edges. The less important features are interpolated. History is a collection of important events that are nonuniformly spaced in time. Historians infer between events (interpolation) and politicians and stock market analysts forecast the future from past and present events (extrapolation). The 20 chapters of Nonuniform Sampling: Theory and Practice contain contributions by leading researchers in nonuniform and Shannon sampling, zero crossing, and interpolation theory. Its practical applications include NMR, seismology, speech and image coding, modulation and coding, optimal content, array processing, and digital filter design. It has a tutorial outlook for practising engineers and advanced students in science, engineering, and mathematics. It is also a useful reference for scientists and engineers working in the areas of medical imaging, geophysics, astronomy, biomedical engineering, computer graphics, digital filter design, speech and video processing, and phased array radar.

Design of Power-Efficient Highly Digital Analog-to-Digital Converters for Next-Generation Wireless Communication Systems

Design of Power-Efficient Highly Digital Analog-to-Digital Converters for Next-Generation Wireless Communication Systems
Author: Xinpeng Xing
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2017-10-04
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319665650

This book discusses both architecture- and circuit-level design aspects of voltage-controlled-oscillator (VCO)-based analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), especially focusing on mitigation of VCO nonlinearity and the improvement of power efficiency. It shows readers how to develop power-efficient complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) ADCs for applications such as LTE, 802.11n, and VDSL2+. The material covered can also be applied to other specifications and technologies. Design of Power-Efficient Highly Digital Analog-to-Digital Converters for Next-Generation Wireless Communication Systems begins with a general introduction to the applications of an ADC in communications systems and the basic concepts of VCO-based ADCs. The text addresses a wide range of converter architectures including open- and closed-loop technologies. Special attention is paid to the replacement of power-hungry analog blocks with VCO-based circuits and to the mitigation of VCO nonline arity. Various MATLAB®/Simulink® models are provided for important circuit nonidealities, allowing designers and researchers to determine the required specifications for the different building blocks that form the systematic integrated-circuit design procedure. Five different VCO-based ADC design examples are presented, introducing innovations at both architecture and circuit levels. Of these designs, the best power efficiency of a high-bandwidth oversampling ADC is achieved in a 40 nm CMOS demonstration. This book is essential reading material for engineers and researchers working on low-power-analog and mixed-signal design and may be used by instructors teaching advanced courses on the subject. It provides a clear overview and comparison of VCO-based ADC architectures and gives the reader insight into the most important circuit imperfections.