Low power design techniques for analog-to-digital converters in submicron CMOS

Graduation date: 2011Advances in process technologies have led to the development of low-power high speed digital signal processing blocks that occupy small areas. These advances are critical in the development of portable electronic devices with small feature size and long battery life. However, the design of analog and mixed-signal\ud building blocks, especially analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), becomes complex and power-inefficient with each advance in process node. This is because of decreased headroom and low intrinsic gain.\ud \ud In this thesis, circuit techniques that enable the design of low-complexity power-efficient ADCs in submicron CMOS are introduced. The techniques include improved correlated level shifting that allow the use of simple low gain amplifiers to realize high performance pipelined and delta-sigma ADCs. Also included is an investigation of the possibility of replacing the power-hungry amplifier in integrators, used in delta-sigma modulators, with low power zero-crossing-based ones. Simulation results of a correlated level shifting pipelined ADC and measurement results of a fabricated prototype of a zero-crossing-based delta-sigma ADC are employed to discuss the effectiveness of the techniques in achieving compact low-power designs