A 65-dB-SNDR Pipelined SAR ADC Using PVT-Robust Capacitively Degenerated Dynamic Amplifier

This article presents a process, voltage, and temperature (PVT)-robust capacitively degenerated dynamic amplifier as the residue amplifier of the low-power pipelined successive-approximation-register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The proposed dynamic amplifier achieves a voltage gain of 16 with a two-stage configuration and high linearity over a wide temperature range with an on-chip timing generator. This work solves problems related to the low voltage gain and high temperature-sensitivity of the capacitively degenerated dynamic amplifier, while retaining the advantages of high linearity, wide output swing, and high energy efficiency. The prototype ADC is implemented in a 65-nm CMOS process and achieves 65-dB signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) and 79.8-dB spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) at a sampling rate of 50 MS/s, while consuming only 0.46 mW. The power overhead of the timing generator is only 10% of the overall power consumption. It shows only 0.7-dB and 1.86-dB SNDR variations at 0.8-1.0-V supply variation and 0 C-?-100 C-? temperature variation, respectively.

Automated summary

This article introduces a PVT-robust capacitively degenerated dynamic amplifier as the residue amplifier of the low-power pipelined SAR ADC. The proposed dynamic amplifier achieves a voltage gain of 16 and high linearity over a wide temperature range with an on-chip timing generator. The prototype ADC achieves a high SNDR and SFDR while consuming low power and showing minimal variations in SNDR.