Transcript High Speed and Low Power Analog to Digital Data Converters

By: Ali Mesgarani
Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Idaho
1
Outline
 Motivation and goals
 Background
 New ADC topologies proposed for high speed, low power
and medium resolution
 Asynchronous binary search ADC
 Pipeline binary search ADC
 Conclusion
2
Motivation
 ADCs are key design blocks in modern microelectronic systems.
 More signal-processing functions are implemented in the digital
domain.




Noise immunity
Low power
Easy to design using CAD tools
Reproducibility, …
 Today’s high speed communication systems have increased the
demand for increased data rates, small area, and low power
consumption.
 High speed ADCs have significant importance in today’s digital
signal processing and communication systems.
 Designing energy efficient A/D converters by developing new
architectures and circuits to take full advantage of what the modern
process technologies have to offer.
3
Outline
 Motivation and goals
 Background
 New ADC topologies proposed for high speed, low power
and medium resolution
 Asynchronous binary search ADC
 Pipeline binary search ADC
 Conclusion
4
Why do we need A/D converters?
 The real world is analog, but easier to process digital data.
 Speech, image, …
 Digital data needs to be carried on an analog signal
 Signal received at the antenna must be digitized.
 Analog signals contain too much unnecessary amount of
data
 ADC samples the data and splits it into finite information
 ADC converts analog information to digital information
5
ADC at receiver in a link
DAC
ADC
6
Analog to digital converter (ADC)
Analog
Digital
Sample
& Hold
Quantization
fsample
7
Quantization
111
110
101
100
Digital Output
Digital Output Dout
111
VFSR
ΔV, VLSB
011
010
110
101
100
011
010
001
001
000
000
Vref
8
4
Vref
8
7
Vref
8
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Time
Analog Input Vin
8
High speed ADC applications
 Ultra Wide Band (UWB) communication
 High Speed Serial Links
 Digital Oscilloscope
 Hard Disk Drive Read-Channel
 Digital TV
 Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN)
 Software Defined Radio
9
High speed ADC applications
Reference
Resolution (bits)
Speed (GS/s)
Power (mW)
Application
Park, CICC’06
5.0
3.50
227.0
UWB
Chan, JSSC’08
7.0
5.00
-
UWB
Verbruggen, JSSC’10
6.0
2.60
2.2
UWB
Harwood, ISSCC ‘07
4.5
12.50
-
Serial links
Cao, JSSC ‘10
6.0
10.00
10000.0
Serial links
Uyttenhove, JSSC ‘03
6.0
1.30
545.0
Hard disk drive read-channel
Cao, ISSCC ‘08
6.0
1.30
600.0
Hard disk drive read-channel
Poulton, ISSCC ’02
8.0
4.00
4600.0
Digital oscilloscope
Poulton, ISSCC ‘03
8.0
20.00
10000.0
Digital oscilloscope
Schvan,ISSCC ‘8
10.0
1.35
420.0
Digital TV
Van der Plas,ISSCC ‘06
4.0
1.25
2.5
WPAN
10
ADC topologies
 Flash
 Pipeline
 Successive Approximation Register (SAR)
 Sub-ranging
 Ramp
 Single slope
 Dual slope
 Delta-Sigma
11
Flash ADC
 N-bit flash: 2N -1 comparators
 Vin connected with 2N -1
comparators in parallel
 Comparators connected to
resistor string
Vref
Vin
R/2
Over range
R
R
D0
R
R
(2N-1) to N
encoder
D1
R
DN-1
R
R
R/2
12
Flash ADC pros and cons
 Pros
 Very fast
 Cons
 Area and power increase exponentially with resolution
 Input capacitive loading on Vin
 Noise
 Offset
 Jitter sensitivity
13
Pipelined A/D converters
 Widely used where high resolution and high throughput is
required
 A pipeline A/D converter is a multi-step amplitude
quantizer
 Cascade of stages of low-resolution analog-to-digital
converters
 Trades latency for speed
14
Pipeline A/D converters
Coarse
quantizer
15
Pipeline A/D converter Pros and Cons
 Pros
 High throughput
 Easy upgrade to higher resolutions
 Cons
 Latency
 High demands on speed and gain of amplifier(s)
 High power
16
SAR ADC
 Based on binary search
 Consisted of a comparator, N-bit DAC, binary search logic
 Compare VD/A with input signal Vin
 Modify VD/A by D0D1D2…DN-1 until closest possible value
to Vin is reached
 Sequential converter
Vin
S&H
VD/A
Logic
D0 D1
DAC
DN-1
Successive Approximation
Register (SAR) ADC
Vref
17
3-bit SAR ADC example
111
7
Vref
8
110
110
VD/A
101
Vin
011
010
Vref
1.
3.
2.
Iterations
final
result
011
010
001
8
101
100
100
4
Vref
8
111
001
000
18
SAR ADC pros and cons
 Pros
 Small area
 Low power
 Cons
 Low speed: N clock cycle for N-bit SAR ADC.
 Complex clock generation at high sampling rates:


A 6 bit 300MS/s SAR ADC requires 2.1 GHz clock generator
with low skew.
Clock generator consumes more power than the ADC itself!
19
Resolution vs sampling rate of ADCs
 SAR ADCs are the most energy efficient ADC topologies but low
speed
 Can we design ADCs with efficiency of SAR and speed of flash
converters.
20
Asynchronous SAR ADC
 Problems with SAR
 The logic delay in the feedback takes up to 75% of clock cycle
 Complex clock generation
 Solution: Asynchronous SAR/Binary Search ADC
 No complex clock gen.
 No binary search logic
4.5/8
ABS ADC
0
0
1
1
1
0
21
Asynchronous SAR ADC
 Unroll feedback loop
 N comparators are used.
 Asynchronous clock is
generated from MSB to
LSB.
 Speed is limited by N
comparator delays and
DAC delays
22
Asynchronous SAR pros and cons
 Pros
 Can operate faster than conventional SAR
 No need for high speed clock generation
 Cons
 Offset between comparators

High resolution cannot be achieved like SAR because of the
offset.
 Larger area
23
Outline
 Motivation and goals
 Background
 New ADC topologies proposed for high speed, low
power and medium resolution
 Asynchronous binary search ADC
 Pipeline binary search ADC
 Conclusion
24
Proposed ADC topologies
 Asynchronous topologies
 2-bit/stage Asynchronous Binary Search (ABS) ADC
 Hybrid topologies
 Pipeline Binary Search (PBS) ADC
25
Proposed ADC topologies
 Asynchronous topologies
 2-bit/stage Asynchronous Binary Search (ABS) ADC
 Hybrid topologies
 Pipeline Binary Search (PBS) ADC
26
2-bit/stage ABS ADC
 In a typical asynchronous SAR/binary search ADC speed
is limited by N comparator, N DAC delays
 How to speed up?
 Resolve two bits in each stage (2-bit flash)
 Speed limited by N/2 comparator delays and DAC delays.
 Speed improvement by two times
 Penalty
 Power consumption increases by 1.5 times
27
2-bit/stage ABS ADC Operation
 Use a 2bit flash quantizer in
each stage (3 comparators)
 Break the reference into 4
intervals.
 Combines sub-ranging and
asynchronous processing
ideas.
 Break the flash ADC
operation into multiple
steps
=9.5/16
=9.5/16
0
0
10/16
Asynch. CLK
=9.5/16
=9.5/16
1
0
9/16
Asynch. CLK
=9.5/16
=9.5/16
1
8/16
1
Asynch. CLK
28
2-bit/stage ABS ADC implementation
φ1a C
1a φ1b
From φ1b
MUX
SH
-+
φ1a φ1b + φ1bb
Vin
16
64
SH
-+
φ1a φ1b + φ1bb
Va3
-+
φ1a en2 + -
Vin
SH
Va2
en2b
-+
φ1a en2 + -
Vin
SH
Va1
en2b
-+
φ1a en2 + -
en2,en2b
Vin
en2b
a1,a2,a3,a4
SH
Vb3
d1,d0
-+
φ1a en3 + en3b
Vin
SH
Vb2
-+
φ1a en3 + en3b
Vin
SH
Vb1
Encoder Logic
φ1bb
Vin
32
64
SH
Set2[0..15,0..2]
16:1 Set Multiplexer
φ1a φ1b + -
Vin
Asynchronous Timing Generator
-+
d3,d2
Set1[0..3,0..2]
Binary Search and Encoder Logic
d5,d4
4:1 Set Multiplexer
SH
Vref,LO
φ1a
Asynchronous Timing Generator
Vin
48
64
Resistive Ladder
Vref,HI
Binary Search and Encoder Logic
Vin
-+
φ1a en3 + -
en3,en3b
en3b
φ1a
φ1b
en2
en3
data
XXXXX
latch
d5d4XXXX d5d4d3d2XX d5d4d3d2d1d0
latch
XXXXXX
XXXXd1d0
29
2-bit/stage ABS ADC simulation result
Parameters
Value
Process
RF CMOS, IBM
Feature size (nm)
90
Resolution (bits)
6
Supply (V)
1.2
Sampling rate (MS/s)
900
SNDR (dB)
35.82
Power (mW)
3.8
FoM (fJ/conv.step)
75
30
Proposed ADC topologies
 Asynchronous topologies
 2-bit/stage Asynchronous Binary Search (ABS) ADC
 Hybrid topologies
 Pipeline Binary Search (PBS) ADC
31
Pipelined Binary Search ADC
 How can we further speed up the binary search operation
of Successive Approximation Register ADC?
 Can we operate the Successive approximation algorithm
in pipeline fashion?
 By combining SAR and Pipeline architectures better
performance than proposed ABS ADC were achieved.
 Two new topologies of PBS are developed.
32
Pipeline Binary Search (PBS) ADC
 SAR-ADC loop has to be unrolled.
 Sampled input signal has to be delayed by an analog delay line.
 N-comparators and (n-1) digital to analog converters (DACs) have to
be used
 Speed is limited to 1 comparator delay and DAC delays
 How to delay an analog signal?
33
How to delay the analog signal?
 Digital delay can be easily implemented using a D-latch or
DFF
 Analog delay line is implemented by interleaved
sampling of the analog signal
 Example: 2-clock cycle analog delay
34
6 bit, PBS ADC Circuit Implementation
 No opamp is used in this pipeline ADC
 Lower power, higher speed
35
Layout for the PBS1 ADC
DACs
R-String
Comparator
Sample&Holds
Clock ditribution
36
Simulation result for PBS1 ADC
Parameters
Value
Process
LLLVT CMOS, UMC
Feature size(nm)
65
Resolution (bits)
6
Supply (V)
1.2
Sampling rate (GS/s)
1.5
SNDR (dB)
35.6
Power (mW)
5.8
FoM (fJ/conv.step)
78
37
Comparison with state of the art ADCs
ISSCC’8
JSSC’10
TCAS I’10
CICC ‘10
This work:PBS I ADC
This work:ABS ADC
Technology (nm)
130
65
65
40
65
90
Resolution (bits)
6
6
5
6
6
6
# of channels
2
2
1
1
1
1
Sampling Rate (GS/s)
1.20
1.00
0.70
1.25
1.20
1.50
0.90
Peak SNDR (dB)
35.0
31.5
29.0
30.5
36.0
35.8
36.1
SNDR (dB)
28.0
28.0
26.9
26.5
35.6
35.6
35.8
Power (mW)
32.0
6.3
2.0
6.1
4.8
5.8
4.3
Supply (V)
1.0
1.2
1.0
1.0
FoM (fJ/cs)
980
210
116
178
1.2
81
1.2
78
74
38
Summary
 High speed and low power analog to digital converters are essential
part of many communication and signal processing applications
 In this research new ADC topologies that take the advantage of
energy efficiency of SAR ADCs while enabling high speed operation
compared with conventional SAR ADCs architectures is proposed.
 A new 2 bit/stage ABS ADC was introduced
 Twice as fast as conventional ABS ADCs
 A new ADC concept and implementation (PBS ADC) was introduced
 Enables binary search operation in a pipelined fashion
 Application of asynchronous ADCs as quantizers for high resolution
ADCs
39
Thank you for your attention
Q&A
40