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J. Semicond. > 2013, Volume 34 > Issue 3 > 035009

SEMICONDUCTOR INTEGRATED CIRCUITS

A 27-mW 10-bit 125-MSPS charge domain pipelined ADC with a PVT insensitive boosted charge transfer circuit

Zhenhai Chen1, 2, , Songren Huang1, 2, Hong Zhang3, Zongguang Yu1, 2 and Huicai Ji2

+ Author Affiliations

 Corresponding author: Chen Zhenhai, diaoyuds@126.com

DOI: 10.1088/1674-4926/34/3/035009

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Abstract: A low power 10-bit 125-MSPS charge-domain (CD) pipelined analog-to-digital converter (ADC) based on MOS bucket-brigade devices (BBDs) is presented. A PVT insensitive boosted charge transfer (BCT) that is able to reject the charge error induced by PVT variations is proposed. With the proposed BCT, the common mode charge control circuit can be eliminated in the CD pipelined ADC and the system complexity is reduced remarkably. The prototype ADC based on the proposed BCT is realized in a 0.18 μm CMOS process, with power consumption of only 27 mW at 1.8-V supply and active die area of 1.04 mm2. The prototype ADC achieves a spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of 67.7 dB, a signal-to-noise ratio (SNDR) of 57.3 dB, and an effective number of bits (ENOB) of 9.0 for a 3.79 MHz input at full sampling rate. The measured differential nonlinearity (DNL) and integral nonlinearity (INL) are +0.5/-0.3 LSB and +0.7/-0.55 LSB, respectively.

Key words: pipelined analog-to-digital convertercharge domainlow powercharge transfer circuitcharge comparator

Pipelined analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are widely used in those fields that require a high conversion rate and medium to high resolution[1]. With the rapid development of CMOS technology and design methodology in the past decades, the performances of reported pipelined ADCs are improved continuously. The pipelined ADCs in Refs. [2, 3] have already achieved a resolution of up to 16-bit with sampling rate of over 160-MSPS. However, these ADCs are implemented with conventional switched-capacitor (SC) techniques, which rely on high-gain operational amplifiers (op-amps) with large bandwidth to ensure required precision and speed. Therefore, the power consumption of these ADCs exceeds 1 W because of the high-performance op-amps used. Obviously, the power consumption of pipelined ADCs that use high-performance op-amps will increase dramatically with further improvement of speed and resolution performances. Additionally, the ADCs in Refs. [2, 3] are implemented in BiCMOS processes, which limit the embedded applications of these ADC in advanced deep submicron CMOS technology.

In order to alleviate the trade-off between power consumption and speed-resolution performances, several new design methods of pipelined ADC have been proposed and verified to be effective in the past years. An effective method is to use low gain op-amps or even open-loop amplifiers to replace the high-performance op-amps in the conversion stages[4-7], and then adopt various digital calibration algorithms to correct the gain error and nonlinearities brought by the low gain op-amps or open-loop amplifiers. In this way, the power consumption in the op-amps can be reduced extensively. However, the calibration algorithms are complex and consume considerable chip area and power. The pipelined ADCs in Refs. [8,9] are implemented based on comparators or zero-crossing methods to eliminate op-amps to reduce power consumption drastically. However, these two solutions show limited dynamic range due to the voltage fluctuations and noise from the ground rail.

The charge-domain (CD) pipelined ADCs based on bucket-brigade devices (BBDs) provide an alternative opamp-less and low-power pipelined ADC architecture[10]. However, the speed of the CD pipelined ADCs based on conventional BBDs is severely limited by the poor charge transfer efficiency[11]. Recently, the charge transfer efficiency of BBDs is improved greatly by a boosted charge transfer circuit (BCT)[12, 13]. With the novel BCTs, the conversion rate of CD pipelined ADCs is improved remarkably. However, the output charge amount of the BCT in Refs. [12,13] is influenced remarkably by process, voltage and temperature (PVT) variations, which can cause large fluctuations in the common-mode (CM) charge when the BCTs are used in CD pipelined ADCs. The CM charge errors reduce the input signal range of the ADC extensively. Furthermore, as CM charge error accumulates stage by stage, several stages at the backend of the pipeline may fail to function when the CM charge error increases to a given extent. In order to relieve the problem, complicated CM charge control techniques are introduced in Ref.[12] to enhance the performance, increasing the design complexity and power consumption.

In order to reduce the CM charge errors due to PVT variations and eliminate the CM charge control circuit, a new BCT topology that adopts a differential difference amplifier (DDA) with a voltage reference to reject the output CM charge errors caused by PVT variations is proposed in this paper. Based on the proposed BCT, a low power 10-bit 125-MSPS CD pipelined ADC without using any CM charge control techniques is implemented in 0.18 μm CMOS technology, with power consumption of only 27 mW from a 1.8 V supply.

The BCT circuit transmits the input charge packet to the output terminal under the control of the clock signals and acts as the core circuit of a CD pipeline stage. The BCT circuit and its operating waveforms in Ref. [12] are given in Fig. 1(a). The gate of MS is controlled by the output of the amplifier A1, which is composed of M1, M2, and M3. Before t1, Φ1 is in high state, and MS is initially turned off. The source node (S) and the drain node (D) of MS are set to reference voltages Vp1 and Vp2, respectively. The input signal Vin is tracked and converted into charge by capacitor C1. The charge transferring process is initiated at t1 when Φ1 changes to low state and the voltage at node A, VA, falls to ground through switch S2. The voltage change of VA causes a drop of the voltage at node S (VS), which in turn induces a larger increase in VG because of amplifier A1. The large voltage difference between VG and VS turns on MS. Due to the difference between VD and VS, charge stored on C1 transfers onto C2, which causes VS to rise and VD to fall. Then, amplifier A1 drives VG to fall gradually. At time t2, when VS settles to the cut-off value V0, MS is turned off and the charge transfer process is terminated. At t3, the next charge conversion and transfer process begins. The charge transferred in the whole process can be expressed in terms of the voltage change across capacitor C1,

Figure  1.  BCTs and operation waveforms. (a) BCT in Ref. [12]. (b) The proposed BCT. (c) Schematic and simulated waveform of the proposed BCT.

QT=C1{[VA(t2)VA(t1)][VS(t2)VS(t1)]}=C1[Vin(t1)+VP1V0],

(1)

where V0 is the voltage at node S when MS is just turned off, which is determined both by the size and threshold voltage of MS, and the input/output characteristics of amplifier A. For a circuit operating under given conditions, V0 is a constant.

In CD pipelined ADCs, two BCTs are employed in a conversion stage to perform differential signal processing[12]. Assuming that the input signals of the differential stage are Vinp and Vinn, the differential charge, QT,diff, the common-mode charge, QT,CM, can be obtained from Eq. (1):

{QT,diff=C1[Vinp(t1)Vinn(t1)]QT,CM=C1[Vin,CM+VP1/2V0/2],

(2)

where Vin,CM = (Vinp+Vinn)/2, is the CM level of the input differential voltage. From Eq. (2), the differential output charge is a linear function of the differential input voltage at t1. Therefore, A/D conversion can be performed by quantization of the differential voltage at node D between t1 and t2. Conditional charge subtracting (or adding) circuits are also needed at node D to form a complete CD pipeline stage, which are omitted in Fig. 1 for simplicity.

As shown in Eq. (2), the CM charge is determined mainly by Vin,CM, VP1, and V0. The input common-mode level, Vin,CM, can be set by an off-chip common-mode circuit, and VP1 is often generated by a bandgap reference. Therefore, Vin,CM and VP1 are relatively stable under PVT variations. However, because V0 is mainly determined by the DC operating point of the amplifier, A1, it will vary extensively with PVT and cause large common-mode charge errors.

The proposed BCT structure and its operating waveforms is given in Fig. 1(b), in which a DDA is used to detect the voltage difference between nodes D and S, VDVS, and compare it with a differential reference Vr2Vr1. The charge transferred can be expressed in term of the voltage change across C1 or C2:

QT=C1{[VA(t2)VA(t1)][VS(t2)VS(t1)]}=C2[VD(t2)VD(t1)].

(3)

After t2, the DDA set VDVS towards Vr2Vr1:

VD(t2)VS(t2)=Vr2Vr1.

(4)

Applying Eq. (3) into Eq. (4) and substituting each voltage term with its corresponding value, the transferred charge can be recalculated as

QT=[Vin(t1)+(Vp2Vp1)(Vr2Vr1)][C1C2/(C1+C2)].

(5)

For a differential conversion stage composed of two proposed BCTs, the differential and common-mode charge can be expressed as

QT,diff=[Vinp(t1)Vinn(t1)][C1C2/(C1+C2)],QT,CM=[Vin,CM+(Vp1Vp2)/2(Vr2Vr1)/2]×[C1C2/(C1+C2)].

(6)

From Eq. (6), QT,diff is still a linear function of the differential input voltage at t1. Comparing Eq. (6) with Eq. (2), the PVT sensitive term V0/2 in Eq. (2) is now replaced with (Vr2Vr1)/2, which is the difference of a pair of reference voltages. Hence, the CM charge is much more insensitive to PVT variations than that of the BCT in Fig. 1(a).

Circuit implementation of the proposed BCT is shown in Fig. 1(c), in which the input and output switch capacitor circuits are omitted for simplicity. Simulated transient waveforms of the proposed circuit with a clock frequency of 125 MHz are given in Fig. 1(c). The charge transferring process is initiated at t1 as discussed above. Amplifier A1 senses the large value of VDVS and turns on MS. The value of VDVS reduces gradually and settles to Vr2Vr1 at t2 when VG falls to a given low value and turns off MS. The simulated settling time is about 2.6 ns, which means the proposed BCT can work under a clock frequency above 125 MHz.

The proposed BCT is designed with 0.18 μm CMOS technology, and simulated at a 1.8 V power supply. A sample circuit for the BCT in Fig. 1(a) is also designed for comparison. The capacitors and the transistor MS are designed with the same sizes (C1=2C2 = 1 pF, (W/L)MS = 20/0.3). The amplifier A1 in Fig. 1(a) and the DDA in Fig. 1(c) are both designed with a gain of 30 dB. An equivalent charge expression is chosen for both BCTs to compare charge waveforms:

Qe=(VDVS)C1C2/(C1+C2).

(7)

The simulated Qe under different process corners (SS for slow, TT for typical and FF for fast), temperatures, and supply voltages are given in Fig. 2.

Figure  2.  Comparisons of simulation results under different conditions.

As can be seen from Fig. 2, the charge waveforms of the BCT in Fig. 1(a) vary significantly with large PVT variations, while the waveforms of the proposed BCT keep almost unchanged, which verifies that the proposed BCT can reject charge errors due to PVT variations remarkably. The proposed BCT's power consumption is about twice that of the conventional one. However, this power consumption increase is much smaller than the power consumption of the CM control circuit used in conventional CD pipelined ADCs.

Based on the proposed PVT, various sub-stages for a CD pipelined ADC can be constructed by adding appropriate sub-ADC, sub-DAC and conditional charge conditional charge subtracting (or adding) circuits. The abstraction model for a sub-stage with arbitrary resolution and its operation waveforms are given in Fig.3[14]. To simplify the description of the CD sub-stage, a single-ended configuration is used. The CD sub-stage is composed of a charge storage node Xn, two charge storage capacitors Cc and Cs, a sub-ADC for charge comparison of the input charge Qi and generating the quantization result D(n) of this stage, a sub-DAC for evaluating D(n) and generating the voltage Vdac for charge subtraction from Qi, and a BCT circuit for transferring the residue charge Qout to the following sub-stage. The reset switch Sr is used to reset Xn after charge transfer process is completed. The sub-ADC is implemented with low-power comparators, and the sub-DAC can be implemented with simple switches. Since no opamp is used in the sub-stage, the power consumption is quite lower than the sub-stage in conventional pipelined ADCs.

Figure  3.  (a) Diagram of the CD pipelined ADC sub-stage and (b) its operation waveform.

The operation waveform of the sub-stage is given in Fig. 3(b). At t0, when the charge transfer circuit of the pre-stage is closed, Qi begins to transfer into Xn, as charge is transferred by electrons, with the charge injecting into node Xn, the voltage of Xn (Vn (0)) will drop gradually. At t1, the charge receiving process of Qi is completed, and the voltage of Xn keeps constant. The sub-ADC begins to quantize Qi and generates the quantization results D(n) after t1. When quantization is finished at t2, D(n) is passed to the digital error correction circuit of the ADC and fed into the sub-DAC to generates the voltage Vdac for conditional charge subtraction. The charge amount of CsΔVdac is subtracted from Qi to obtain the residue charge Qout. At t3, Vc is connected to a lower voltage, causing a negative step on Xn. Simultaneously, the charge transfer switch in the BCT is closed, Qout will be transferred to the next sub-stage. With the charge being transferred out of node Xn, the voltage of Xn rises gradually. At t4, voltage at Xn is increased to a given value to turn off St, and complete the charge transfer process. The voltage of Xn (Vn (4)) keeps constant until t5, when Sr is turned on to reset Vn. At t6, after resetting of Xn is completed, one operation period of the sub-stage is finished.

The charge relationship of the ADC sub-stage can be derived as:

Qout=Qi+CsΔVdac+(Cc+Cs)[Vn(t0)Vn(t4)]+Cc[Vc(t4)Vc(t0)]=Qi+CsΔVdac+Qc,

(8)

where Qc=(Cc+Cs)[Vn(0)Vn(t4)]+Cc[Vc(t4)Vc(t0)], is a constant. When the CD pipelined ADC sub-stage in Fig. 3(a) is implemented in fully differential form, we can get the output CM charge of the CD pipelined ADC sub-stage as

Qcmout=(Qi+CsΔVdac+2Qc+2QicmQi+Cs[VFdacΔVdac)]/2=Qicm+CsVFdac/2+Qc,

(9)

where VFdac is the full output range of sub-DAC, Qicm is the input CM charge. From Eq. (9), we can find that the output CM charge is composed of three parts, the input CM charge, the sub-DAC incremental charge CsVFdac/2 and the constant charge Qc introduced during the charge transfer process. Ideally, the output CM charge Qcmout of all sub-stages in the CD pipelined ADC is constant. Therefore, the CM charge error control circuit can be eliminated.

In order to illustrate the operation of the CD pipelined ADC more explicitly, the structure of two successive 1.5-bit CD sub-stages and their controlling timing are given in Fig. 4. The 1.5-bit sub-stage circuit works under 4 non-overlapping clock phases, reset1 phase (Φset1), sampling phase (Φ1), reset2 phase (Φset2) and transfer phase (Φ2). When Φset1 is active, the differential charge storage node Xn(n) and Xp(n) of stage(n) is reset to a initial voltage, hence the charge stored on Xn(n) and Xp(n) is reset to an initial amount. When the sampling phase (Φ1) is on, the residue charge package Qn(n-1) and Qp(n-1) of stage(n-1) is transferred through BCT circuits St1n and St1p, respectively, to Xn(n) and Xp(n). With the charge injected into node Xn(n) and Xp(n), the voltages of Xn(n) and Xp(n) drop correspondingly. This voltage change will be quantized by a sub-ADC by comparing with the reference voltages Rp and Rn to obtain the quantization results D1D0 of stage(n). At the same time, D1D0 of stage(n+1), generated in the previous clock phase, is evaluated by the sub-DAC of stage(n+1) to control the charge subtraction capacitors C4n and C4p, subtracting the corresponding charge from the differential charge storage node Xn(n+1) and Xp(n+1) of stage(n+1). Therefore, the differential residue charge package Qn(n+1) and Qp(n+1) of stage(n+1) is obtained and transformed to stage(n+2) (not shown in Fig. 4). The circuits that are active during this phase are shown in bold lines in Fig. 4.

Figure  4.  Two stages of 1.5 bit/stage sub-stage with a working clock phase.

Similarly, before the transfer phase, the Φset2 phase will reset the differential charge storage node Xn(n+1) and Xp(n+1) of stage(n+1) to the initial state. When the transfer (Φ2) phase is on, the D1D0 of stage(n), generated in the sampling phase, is evaluated by the sub-DAC of stage(n) to control the charge subtraction capacitors C3n and C3p, subtracting the corresponding charge from the differential charge storage node Xn(n) and Xp(n) of stage(n). The resulted differential residue charge packages, Qn(n) and Qp(n), of stage(n) are then transferred to stage(n+1). The circuits that are active during this phase are shown in fine lines.

The block diagram of the 10-bit CD pipelined ADC in this paper is shown in Fig. 5, which is composed of a high-speed low-distortion sample and hold (S&H) circuit, a 2.5-bit CD sub-stage, 5 consecutive 1.5-bit CD sub-stages and a final 3-bit flash stage. The input differential analog voltage signal, Vin and Vip are firstly sampled and converted into charge package signals Qin and Qip, by the S&H respectively. Qin and Qip are then processed stage by stage by the following 7 sub-stages in the charge domain. The resulting 16 raw bits are finally fed into a digital correction logic to obtain the final 10-bit A/D conversion results.

Figure  5.  Block diagram of the CD pipelined ADC.

In order to reduce power consumption while balancing the thermal noise and matching requirements, the BBD capacitor sizes in the pipeline stages are arranged in the manner of a tapered structure[12], i.e., the capacitor values shrink with corresponding ration stage by stage. The ADC includes an on-chip precision bandgap reference voltage generator and buffer amplifiers. As 4-phase non-overlapping clock signals with over 100-MHz frequency are needed in the ADC, a distributed clock generator is employed. A duty cycle stabilizer (DCS) is also adopted to process the input clock signal and reject the clock skew and jitter.

The circuit diagram of the S&H circuit is shown in Fig. 6, which is a passive SC S&H including a pair of BCT circuits. As the input analog bandwidth is needed to be over 400 MHz, in order to enhance the IF sampling performance, Ss1 and Ss2 are implemented with constant VGS sampling switches. As the other switches, S1, S2, S3 and S4, are used to transfer DC signals, they are realized as a normal NMOS switch. The two proposed BCTs, St1 and St2 are used to transfer the sampled charge into the first stage. The sampling capacitors, Cp and Cn are implemented with a metal-oxide-metal capacitor.

Figure  6.  Circuit structure of S&H.

The proposed S&H circuit works under two-phase non-overlapping clock signals, Φ1 and Φ2. The input voltage Vid=VipVin is sampled in Φ1 phase and transformed into Qid=QipQin in Φ2 phase. The falling edge of Φ1p is designed to be leading Φ1 slightly to cancel the charge injection from the sampling switch. When Φ1 phase is on at t1, charge storage nodes Nip and Nin are connected to Vip and Vin, by Ss1 and Ss2, respectively, and charge storage nodes Nop and Non are connected to common mode voltage Vcm through S1 and S4 respectively. S1 and S4 are turned off at t2, and then Ss1 and Ss2 are turned off at t3, which completes the sampling phase. When Φ2 is active at t4, Nip and Nin are connected to Vs through S2 and S3, respectively, and St1 and St2 are turned on transform the differential charge, Qid=QipQin to the first sub-stage.

In the voltage-to-charge transfer process discussed above, the output charge Qip and Qin can be expressed in terms of the voltage change across sampling capacitors Cp and Cn.

Qip=Cp(ΔVNipΔVNop),

(10)

Qin=Cn(ΔVNinΔVNon),

(11)

where ΔVNip = VsVip, ΔVNin = VsVin, ΔVNop = ΔVNon = VcmVr, Vs and Vcm are constant voltage. Assuming Cp=Cn=Cs, by substituting ΔVNip, ΔVNin, ΔVNop and ΔVNon into Eqs. (10) and (11), also subtracting Eq. (11) from Eq. (10), the differential charge can be derived as

Qid=QipQin=Cs(ΔVNipΔVNin)=CsVid.

(12)

From Eq. (12), the input voltage Vid is sampled and transferred into a charge of Qid=CsVid.

As shown in Fig. 7(a), the charge comparator used in the sub-ADC of each pipelined sub-stage is composed of a commonly used capacitively coupled comparator and 4 charge sensors, which are connected at the inputs of the charge comparator. Charge sensors are used to isolate the charge package signal from capacitors C1 and C2. If no isolation is introduced, the input charge signal Qip and Qin will be coupled to C1 and C2 when Φ2 phase is on, and charge sharing between the input charge and the charge stored on C1, C2 will take place, which destroys the charge signals Qip and Qin. Figure 7(b) shows the charge sensor used in the charge comparator, which is essentially a clock controlled source follower.

Figure  7.  Structure and schematic of the charge comparator. (a) Circuit diagram. (b) Schematic of the charge sensor. (c) Schematic of the latched comparator.

The input capacitors used for the capacitively coupled comparator is about 0.1 pF. No offset cancellation scheme is employed because large comparator offsets can be tolerated in pipelined ADCs with redundancy. The latched comparator is shown in Fig. 7(c), which includes three stages: input amplifier (M0-M6), regeneration latches (M7-M10), and output S-R latch (M14-M21). The input amplifier is a simple NMOS differential pair with a PMOS active load, which not only amplifies the input signal but also suppresses the kickback noise from the regeneration latches. The NMOS switches (M3 and M4) are turned off during regeneration time to save power consumption. It also helps to reduce kickback noise from the regeneration latches. The combination of PMOS and NMOS regeneration latches speeds up the regeneration compared to the PMOS-only latches. The regeneration latches are reset to a voltage close to the power supply by M11 and M12 during the sampling/resetting phase. One additional reset switch, M13, across the differential latching nodes reduces the offset due to the mismatch of M11 and M12. The NMOS switch M22 disables the NMOS regeneration latch during the resetting phase to avoid large DC current to ground. The output S-R latch holds the comparison result during the whole clock period for the convenience of following encoding logic.

The ADC has been fabricated in a 0.18 μm CMOS process. The die photograph is shown in Fig. 8(a), in which the S&H circuit and the tapered charge-domain pipeline sub-stages are placed in the bottom side, while the bandgap reference voltage generator, the clock buffer and digital error correction logic block are placed in the upper side. The total active area excluding the PAD and ESD cells is about 0.8 × 1.3 mm2.

Figure  8.  Die photograph and measured results of the prototype ADC. (a) Die photograph. (b) FFT spectrum. (c) INL/DNL.

The measured output spectrum with a 3.79-MHz input sinusoid signal at 125-MSPS sampling rate is shown in Fig. 8(b). The measured SNR and the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) are about 57.3 dB and 67.7 dB, respectively. The signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) is about 55.8 dB, therefore the effective number of bits (ENOB) is about 9.0. The measured nonlinearity of the ADC is shown in Fig. 8(c). The maximum integral nonlinearity (INL) is +0.7/0.55 LSB, and the maximum DNL is +0.5/0.3 LSB. The INL graph shows big transitions for codes that are at the 6 thresholds of the 2.5-bit first stage of the pipelined ADC. The total ADC power consumption is about 27 mW excluding the output drivers from a 1.8 V supply. The measured dynamic performances versus input frequency are shown in Fig. 9. The dynamic performances versus the magnitude of 3.79 MHz input signal at 125 MSPS is given in Fig. 10. The measured performances of the prototype ADC with comparison to those of the recently reported 10-bit ADCs[15-19] in a 0.18 μm CMOS process are summarized in Table 1. The 10-bit 125 MSPS CD pipelined ADC based on the proposed BCT has a power efficiency of 0.42 pJ/step and an area efficiency of, 0.009 mm2/MHz, which shows very good power efficiency with a reasonable trade-off between power consumption and die area when compared with the recently reported 0.18-μm 10-bit ADCs.

Figure  9.  SFDR and SNR versus input frequency.
Figure  10.  SFDR and SNR versus input level.
Table  1.  Performance summary.
DownLoad: CSV  | Show Table

A PVT insensitive BCT circuit is proposed in this paper. A low power 10-bit, 125-MSPS CD pipelined ADC based on the proposed BCT is fabricated in 0.18 μm CMOS technology. With the proposed BCT circuits, common mode charge control circuits are eliminated and the system complexity is reduced remarkably. Measurement results show that the prototype ADC achieves a SFDR of, 67.7 dB, an ENOB of, 9.0 bit and DNL/INL of 0.5/0.7 LSB for a 3.79 MHz input at full sampling rate. The prototype ADC shows a power efficiency of 0.42 pJ/step and occupies an area of only 0.8 × 1.3 mm2.



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Fig. 1.  BCTs and operation waveforms. (a) BCT in Ref. [12]. (b) The proposed BCT. (c) Schematic and simulated waveform of the proposed BCT.

Fig. 2.  Comparisons of simulation results under different conditions.

Fig. 3.  (a) Diagram of the CD pipelined ADC sub-stage and (b) its operation waveform.

Fig. 4.  Two stages of 1.5 bit/stage sub-stage with a working clock phase.

Fig. 5.  Block diagram of the CD pipelined ADC.

Fig. 6.  Circuit structure of S&H.

Fig. 7.  Structure and schematic of the charge comparator. (a) Circuit diagram. (b) Schematic of the charge sensor. (c) Schematic of the latched comparator.

Fig. 8.  Die photograph and measured results of the prototype ADC. (a) Die photograph. (b) FFT spectrum. (c) INL/DNL.

Fig. 9.  SFDR and SNR versus input frequency.

Fig. 10.  SFDR and SNR versus input level.

Table 1.   Performance summary.

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    Zhenhai Chen, Songren Huang, Hong Zhang, Zongguang Yu, Huicai Ji. A 27-mW 10-bit 125-MSPS charge domain pipelined ADC with a PVT insensitive boosted charge transfer circuit[J]. Journal of Semiconductors, 2013, 34(3): 035009. doi: 10.1088/1674-4926/34/3/035009
    Z H Chen, S R Huang, H Zhang, Z G Yu, H C Ji. A 27-mW 10-bit 125-MSPS charge domain pipelined ADC with a PVT insensitive boosted charge transfer circuit[J]. J. Semicond., 2013, 34(3): 035009. doi: 10.1088/1674-4926/34/3/035009.
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    Received: 17 June 2012 Revised: 24 September 2012 Online: Published: 01 March 2013

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      Zhenhai Chen, Songren Huang, Hong Zhang, Zongguang Yu, Huicai Ji. A 27-mW 10-bit 125-MSPS charge domain pipelined ADC with a PVT insensitive boosted charge transfer circuit[J]. Journal of Semiconductors, 2013, 34(3): 035009. doi: 10.1088/1674-4926/34/3/035009 ****Z H Chen, S R Huang, H Zhang, Z G Yu, H C Ji. A 27-mW 10-bit 125-MSPS charge domain pipelined ADC with a PVT insensitive boosted charge transfer circuit[J]. J. Semicond., 2013, 34(3): 035009. doi: 10.1088/1674-4926/34/3/035009.
      Citation:
      Zhenhai Chen, Songren Huang, Hong Zhang, Zongguang Yu, Huicai Ji. A 27-mW 10-bit 125-MSPS charge domain pipelined ADC with a PVT insensitive boosted charge transfer circuit[J]. Journal of Semiconductors, 2013, 34(3): 035009. doi: 10.1088/1674-4926/34/3/035009 ****
      Z H Chen, S R Huang, H Zhang, Z G Yu, H C Ji. A 27-mW 10-bit 125-MSPS charge domain pipelined ADC with a PVT insensitive boosted charge transfer circuit[J]. J. Semicond., 2013, 34(3): 035009. doi: 10.1088/1674-4926/34/3/035009.

      A 27-mW 10-bit 125-MSPS charge domain pipelined ADC with a PVT insensitive boosted charge transfer circuit

      DOI: 10.1088/1674-4926/34/3/035009
      Funds:

      the 333 Talent Project of Jiangsu Province, China BRA2011115

      Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61106027) and the 333 Talent Project of Jiangsu Province, China (No. BRA2011115)

      the National Natural Science Foundation of China 61106027

      More Information
      • Corresponding author: Chen Zhenhai, diaoyuds@126.com
      • Received Date: 2012-06-17
      • Revised Date: 2012-09-24
      • Published Date: 2013-03-01

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