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.

Time-encoding VCO-ADCs for Integrated Systems-on-Chip

Time-encoding VCO-ADCs for Integrated Systems-on-Chip
Author: Georges Gielen
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 118
Release: 2022-03-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3030880672

This book demonstrates why highly-digital CMOS time-encoding analog-to-digital converters incorporating voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) and time-to-digital converters (TDCs) are a good alternative to traditional switched-capacitor S-D modulators for power-efficient sensor, biomedical and communications applications. The authors describe the theoretical foundations and design methodology of such time-based ADCs from the basics to the latest developments. While most analog designers might notice some resemblance to PLL design, the book clearly highlights the differences to standard PLL circuit design and illustrates the design methodology with practical circuit design examples. Describes in detail the design methodology for CMOS time-encoding analog-to-digital converters that can be integrated along with digital logic in a nanometer System on Chip; Assists analog designers with the necessary change in design paradigm, highlighting differences between designing time-based ADCs and traditional analog circuits like switched-capacitor converters and PLLs; Uses a highly-visual, tutorial approach to the topic, including many practical examples of techniques introduced.

Biomedical Electronics, Noise Shaping ADCs, and Frequency References

Biomedical Electronics, Noise Shaping ADCs, and Frequency References
Author: Pieter Harpe
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2023-06-22
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3031289129

This book is based on the 18 tutorials presented during the 30th 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, with specific contributions focusing on analog circuits for machine learning, current/voltage/temperature sensors, and high-speed communication via wireless, wireline, or optical links. This book serves as a valuable reference to the state-of-the-art, for anyone involved in analog circuit research and development.

Hybrid ADCs, Smart Sensors for the IoT, and Sub-1V & Advanced Node Analog Circuit Design

Hybrid ADCs, Smart Sensors for the IoT, and Sub-1V & Advanced Node Analog Circuit Design
Author: Pieter Harpe
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2017-09-18
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319612859

This book is based on the 18 tutorials presented during the 26th 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, with specific contributions focusing on hybrid ADCs, smart sensors for the IoT, sub-1V and advanced-node analog circuit design. This book serves as a valuable reference to the state-of-the-art, for anyone involved in analog circuit research and development.

Resistor-based Temperature Sensors in CMOS Technology

Resistor-based Temperature Sensors in CMOS Technology
Author: Sining Pan
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2022-04-04
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3030952843

This book describes the background, principles, implementations, characterization, and future trends of temperature sensors made from silicon resistors in CMOS technology, including their readout circuits. Readers will benefit from the latest research of CMOS temperature sensors, and could learn about various precision analog techniques such as phase detection, continuous-time ΔΣ ADC, zoom ADC, FIR-DAC, dynamic element matching, OTA linearization, etc.

Integrated Circuits for Analog Signal Processing

Integrated Circuits for Analog Signal Processing
Author: Esteban Tlelo-Cuautle
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2012-07-27
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1461413834

This book presents theory, design methods and novel applications for integrated circuits for analog signal processing. The discussion covers a wide variety of active devices, active elements and amplifiers, working in voltage mode, current mode and mixed mode. This includes voltage operational amplifiers, current operational amplifiers, operational transconductance amplifiers, operational transresistance amplifiers, current conveyors, current differencing transconductance amplifiers, etc. Design methods and challenges posed by nanometer technology are discussed and applications described, including signal amplification, filtering, data acquisition systems such as neural recording, sensor conditioning such as biomedical implants, actuator conditioning, noise generators, oscillators, mixers, etc. Presents analysis and synthesis methods to generate all circuit topologies from which the designer can select the best one for the desired application; Includes design guidelines for active devices/elements with low voltage and low power constraints; Offers guidelines for selecting the right active devices/elements in the design of linear and nonlinear circuits; Discusses optimization of the active devices/elements for process and manufacturing issues of nanometer technology.

Heterogeneous Cyber Physical Systems of Systems

Heterogeneous Cyber Physical Systems of Systems
Author: Ioannis Papaefstathiou
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2022-09-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 100079315X

Cyber-physical systems are the natural extension of the so-called “Internet of Things”. They are “systems of collaborating computational elements controlling physical entities”. Cyber Physical Systems of Systems (CPSoS) are considered “The Next Computing Revolution” after Mainframe computing (60’s-70’s), Desktop computing & Internet (80’s-90’s) and Ubiquitous computing (00’s); because all aspects of daily life are rapidly evolving towards humans interacting amongst themselves as well as their environment via computational devices (often mobile), and because in most cases systems will employ their computational capabilities to interact amongst themselves.CPSoS enable the physical world to merge with the cyber one. Using sensors, the embedded systems monitor and collect data from physical processes, such as the steering of a vehicle, energy consumption or human health functions. The systems are networked making the data globally available. CPSoS make it possible for software applications to directly interact with events in the physical world, for example to measure and react to changes in blood pressure or peaks in energy consumption. Embedded hardware and software systems crucially expand the functionality and competitiveness of vehicles, aircraft, medical equipment, production plants and household appliances. Connecting these systems to a virtual environment of globally networked services and information systems opens completely new areas of innovation and novel business platforms.Future CPSoS will have many sophisticated, interconnected parts that must instantaneously exchange, parse, and act on detailed data in a highly coordinated manner. Continued advances in science and engineering will be necessary to enable advances in design and development of these complex systems.

Next-Generation ADCs, High-Performance Power Management, and Technology Considerations for Advanced Integrated Circuits

Next-Generation ADCs, High-Performance Power Management, and Technology Considerations for Advanced Integrated Circuits
Author: Andrea Baschirotto
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2019-10-24
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3030252671

This book is based on the 18 tutorials presented during the 28th 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, including next-generation analog-to-digital converters , high-performance power management systems and technology considerations for advanced IC design. For anyone involved in analog circuit research and development, this book will be a valuable summary of the state-of-the-art in these areas. Provides a summary of the state-of-the-art in analog circuit design, written by experts from industry and academia; Presents material in a tutorial-based format; Includes coverage of next-generation analog-to-digital converters, high-performance power management systems, and technology considerations for advanced IC design.

Hybrid ADCs, Smart Sensors for the IoT, and Sub-1V & Advanced Node Analog Circuit Design

Hybrid ADCs, Smart Sensors for the IoT, and Sub-1V & Advanced Node Analog Circuit Design
Author: Pieter Harpe
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-08-18
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9783319870410

This book is based on the 18 tutorials presented during the 26th 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, with specific contributions focusing on hybrid ADCs, smart sensors for the IoT, sub-1V and advanced-node analog circuit design. This book serves as a valuable reference to the state-of-the-art, for anyone involved in analog circuit research and development.