High-precision ADC design techniques in ISSCC 2025

Bingrui Li; Zongnan Wang; Xiyuan Tang

doi:10.1088/1674-4926/25050012

J. Semicond. > 2025, Volume 46 > Issue 7 > 070204

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

High-precision ADC design techniques in ISSCC 2025

Bingrui Li^{1, 2}, Zongnan Wang^{1, 2} and Xiyuan Tang^{1, 2,}

+ Author Affiliations

1. Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
2. School of Integrated Circuits, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

Author Bio:

Bingrui Li received the B.S. degree from Yuanpei College at Peking University, Beijing, China, in 2024. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and School of Integrated Circuits, Peking University, Beijing, China. His research interests include sensor interfaces, analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits.

Zongnan Wang received the B.S. degree from the school of microelectronic science and engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China, in 2022. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and School of Integrated Circuits, Peking University, Beijing, China. His research interests include analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits.

Xiyuan Tang received the B.Sc. degree (Hons.) from the School of Microelectronics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in 2012, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA, in 2014 and 2019 respectively. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Peking University, Beijing, China. He was a Design Engineer with Silicon Laboratories, Austin, TX from 2014 to 2017, where he was involved in the RF receiver design. From 2019−2021, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. His research interests include data converters, low-power mixed-signal circuits, and emerging computing. Dr. Tang serves on the Technical Program Committees (TPC) of ISSCC and ASSCC. He also serves as an associate editor for IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters. He was a recipient of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Rising Stars in 2020, Best Paper Award at Silicon Labs Tech Symposium in 2016, National Scholarship in 2011, and Shanghai Scholarship in 2010.

Corresponding author: Xiyuan Tang, xitang@pku.edu.cn

DOI: 10.1088/1674-4926/25050012CSTR: 32376.14.1674-4926.25050012

References

[1]	Dolev N, Kramer M, Murmann B. A 12-bit, 200-MS/s, 11.5-mW pipeline ADC using a pulsed bucket brigade front-end. 2013 Symposium on VLSI Circuits, 2013, C98
[2]	Huang S Y, Zhang Z S, He X Y, et al. A 70dB SNDR 80MHz BW filter-embedded pipeline-SAR ADC achieving 172dB FoMs with progressive conversion and floating-charge-transfer amplifier. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 318 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904746
[3]	Zhao H, Zhang X H, Deng Q J, et al. A fully dynamic noise-shaping SAR ADC achieving 120dB SNDR and 189dB FoMs in 1kHz BW. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 306 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904778
[4]	Gao J H, Luan Y H, Ye S Y, et al. A 93.3dB SNDR, 180.4dB FoMs calibration-free noise-shaping pipelined-SAR ADC with cross-stage gain-mismatch-error-shaping technique and negative-R-assisted residue integrator. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 310 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904557
[5]	Wang Z N, Li B R, Tang J J, et al. A 184.8dB-FoMs 1.6MS/s incremental noise-shaping pipeline ADC with single-amplification-based kT/C noise cancellation technique. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 1 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904507
[6]	Chen Z Y, Ye S Y, Gao J H, et al. An easy-drive 16MS/s pipelined-SAR ADC using split coarse-fine input-buffer-sampling scheme and fast robust background inter-stage gain calibration. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 1 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904526
[7]	Zhou Y, Xu B W, Chiu Y. A 12 bit 160 MS/s two-step SAR ADC with background bit-weight calibration using a time-domain proximity detector. IEEE J Solid State Circuits, 2015, 50(4), 920 doi: 10.1109/JSSC.2014.2384025
[8]	Luan Y H, Xu X H, Gao J H, et al. A 12.2μW 99.6dB-SNDR 184.8dB-FOMs DT zoom PPD ΔΣM with gain-embedded bootstrapped sampler. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 308 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904732
[9]	Ye S Y, Cui J J, Gao J H, et al. A rail-to-rail 3rd-order noise-shaping SAR ADC achieving 105.4dB SFDR with integrated input buffer using continuous-time correlated level shifting. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 314 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904773
[10]	Gregoire B R, Moon U K. An over-60 dB true rail-to-rail performance using correlated level shifting and an opamp with only 30 dB loop gain. IEEE J Solid State Circuits, 2008, 43(12), 2620 doi: 10.1109/JSSC.2008.2006312
[11]	Lin D T, Li L, Farahani S, et al. A flexible 500MHz to 3.6GHz wireless receiver with configurable DT FIR and IIR filter embedded in a 7b 21MS/s SAR ADC. IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference 2010, 2010, 1 doi: 10.1109/CICC.2010.5617620
[12]	Murmann B. ADC performance survey 1997-2024. [Online] Available: https://github.com/bmurmann/ADC-survey

Fig. 1. (Color online) The high-performance amplifier techniques^[2].

DownLoad: Full-Size Img PowerPoint

Fig. 2. (Color online) The DEM^{[3, 4]} ((a) and (b)) and calibration ((c) and (d)) techniques^{[5, 6]}.

DownLoad: Full-Size Img PowerPoint

Fig. 3. (Color online) The ADC and peripheral circuits co-design techniques. (a)−(c) ADC-buffer co-design techniques^{[6, 8, 9]}; (d) ADC-filter co-design techniques^[2].

DownLoad: Full-Size Img PowerPoint

Fig. 4. (Color online) The survey of (a) energy over SNDR and (b) FoMs over bandwidth^[12].

DownLoad: Full-Size Img PowerPoint

Table 1. Performance summary of high-precision ADCs in ISSCC 2025.

Parameters	Zhao et al.^[3]	Luan et al.^[8]	Gao et al.^[4]	Wang et al.^[5]	Ye et al.^[9]	Chen et al.^[6]	Huang et al.^[2]
Architecture	NS-SAR	PPD ZOOM	NS pipelined- SAR	Incremental NS pipeline	NS-SAR	Pipelined- SAR	Filter-embedded pipelined-SAR
Process (nm)	180	55	55	28	55	22	28
Area (mm²)	0.15	0.029	0.028	0.034	0.043	0.06	0.036
Supply (V)	1.8/5	1/1.2	1.2	0.9	1.2	1.8/0.9	−
Fs (MHz)	2.048	1	20	16	40	16	350/2800¹
BW (kHz)	1	4	156.25	800	2500	8000	80 000
Power (μW)	139.1	12.2	307	467.3	470/1150²	450/1620²	4870
SNDR (dB)	120.6	99.6	93.3	92.5	82.9	79.4	70.1
SFDR (dB)	132.5	−	112.8	112.2	105.4	99.4	83.4
DR (dB)	123.5	102	95.02	93.1	83.2	81.8	72
FoMs³ (dB)	189.2	184.8	180.4	184.8	180.2/176.3²	181.9/176.3²	172.2
¹Conversion rate/filter sampling rate, ²without input buffer/with input buffer, ${}^3\text{FoM}_\text{S}=\text{SNDR}+10\cdot {\mathrm{log}}_{10}(\text{BW/Power}). $

DownLoad: CSV

[1]	Dolev N, Kramer M, Murmann B. A 12-bit, 200-MS/s, 11.5-mW pipeline ADC using a pulsed bucket brigade front-end. 2013 Symposium on VLSI Circuits, 2013, C98
[2]	Huang S Y, Zhang Z S, He X Y, et al. A 70dB SNDR 80MHz BW filter-embedded pipeline-SAR ADC achieving 172dB FoMs with progressive conversion and floating-charge-transfer amplifier. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 318 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904746
[3]	Zhao H, Zhang X H, Deng Q J, et al. A fully dynamic noise-shaping SAR ADC achieving 120dB SNDR and 189dB FoMs in 1kHz BW. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 306 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904778
[4]	Gao J H, Luan Y H, Ye S Y, et al. A 93.3dB SNDR, 180.4dB FoMs calibration-free noise-shaping pipelined-SAR ADC with cross-stage gain-mismatch-error-shaping technique and negative-R-assisted residue integrator. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 310 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904557
[5]	Wang Z N, Li B R, Tang J J, et al. A 184.8dB-FoMs 1.6MS/s incremental noise-shaping pipeline ADC with single-amplification-based kT/C noise cancellation technique. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 1 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904507
[6]	Chen Z Y, Ye S Y, Gao J H, et al. An easy-drive 16MS/s pipelined-SAR ADC using split coarse-fine input-buffer-sampling scheme and fast robust background inter-stage gain calibration. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 1 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904526
[7]	Zhou Y, Xu B W, Chiu Y. A 12 bit 160 MS/s two-step SAR ADC with background bit-weight calibration using a time-domain proximity detector. IEEE J Solid State Circuits, 2015, 50(4), 920 doi: 10.1109/JSSC.2014.2384025
[8]	Luan Y H, Xu X H, Gao J H, et al. A 12.2μW 99.6dB-SNDR 184.8dB-FOMs DT zoom PPD ΔΣM with gain-embedded bootstrapped sampler. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 308 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904732
[9]	Ye S Y, Cui J J, Gao J H, et al. A rail-to-rail 3rd-order noise-shaping SAR ADC achieving 105.4dB SFDR with integrated input buffer using continuous-time correlated level shifting. 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025, 314 doi: 10.1109/ISSCC49661.2025.10904773
[10]	Gregoire B R, Moon U K. An over-60 dB true rail-to-rail performance using correlated level shifting and an opamp with only 30 dB loop gain. IEEE J Solid State Circuits, 2008, 43(12), 2620 doi: 10.1109/JSSC.2008.2006312
[11]	Lin D T, Li L, Farahani S, et al. A flexible 500MHz to 3.6GHz wireless receiver with configurable DT FIR and IIR filter embedded in a 7b 21MS/s SAR ADC. IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference 2010, 2010, 1 doi: 10.1109/CICC.2010.5617620
[12]	Murmann B. ADC performance survey 1997-2024. [Online] Available: https://github.com/bmurmann/ADC-survey