Nested Digital Background Calibration of a 12-bit Pipelined ADC Without an Input SHA

Abstract

To reduce power dissipation, the input sample-and- hold amplifier (SHA) is eliminated in a pipelined analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with nested background calibration. The nested architecture calibrates the pipelined ADC with an algorithmic ADC that is also calibrated. Without an input SHA, a timing difference between the sampling instants of the two ADCs creates an error that interferes with calibration of the pipelined ADC. This problem is overcome with digital background timing com- pensation. It uses a differentiator with fixed coefficients to build an adaptive interpolator. With a 58-kHz sinusoidal input, the 12-bit 20-Msample/s pipelined ADC achieves a signal-to-noise-and-dis- tortion ratio (SNDR) of 70.2 dB, a spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of 80.3 dB, and an integral nonlinearity (INL) of 0.75 least significant bit (LSB). With a 9-MHz input, the SNDR is 64.2 dB, and the SFDR is 78.3 dB. About 2 million samples or 0.1 s are required for convergence. The prototype occupies 7.5 mm /50 in 0.35- m CMOS and dissipates 231 mW from 3.3 V , which is 23 mW less than in a previous prototype with the input SHA.