A high-speed two-step analog-to-digital converter with an open-loop residue amplifier

Abstract

It is well known that feedback is a very valuable tool for analog designers to improve linearity, and desensitize various parameters affected by process, temperature and supply variations. However, using strong global feedback limits the operation speed of analog circuits due to stability requirements. The circuits and techniques explored in this research avoid the usage of strong-global-feedback circuits to achieve high conversion rates in a two-stage analog-to-digital converter (ADC). A two-step, 9-bit, complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) ADC utilizing an open-loop residue-amplifier is demonstrated. A background-calibration technique was proposed to generate the reference voltage to be used in the second stage of the ADC. This technique alleviates the gain variation in the residue amplifier, and allows an open-loop residue amplifier topology. Even though the proposed calibration idea can be extended to multistage topologies, this design was limited to two stages. Further, the ADC exploits a high-performance double-switching frontend sample-and-hold amplifier (SHA). The proposed double-switching SHA architecture results in exceptional hold-mode isolation. Therefore, the SHA maintains the desired linearity performance over the entire Nyquist bandwidth.