A 2.3 mW 10-bit 170 MS/s two-step binary-search assisted time-interleaved SAR ADC

Abstract

This paper presents the architecture of a 10b 170 MS/s two-step binary-search assisted time-interleaved SAR ADC. The front-end stage of this ADC is built with a 5b binary-search ADC, which is shared by two time-interleaved 6b SAR ADCs in the second-stage. The design does not use any static component such as op-amp or preamplifier that causes large dissipation of static power. DAC settling speed and power are also relaxed thanks to this architecture. Besides, the process insensitive asynchronous logic further reduces the delay of SA loop rather than using worst case delay cells to compensate the process variation problem. The ADC was fabricated in 65 nm CMOS and achieves 54.6 dB SNDR at 170 MS/s with only 2.3 mW of power consumption, leading to a FoM of 30.8 fJ/conversion-step. © 1966-2012 IEEE.