A 4th Order Continuous-Time ADC with VCO-Based Integrator and Quantizer

ISSCC 2009, Session 9.5

Matt Park1, Michael H. Perrott2

1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA USA2 SiTime Corporation, Sunnyvale, CA, USA

2Motivation

A highly digital receive path is very attractive for achieving multi-standard functionality A key issue is achieving a wide bandwidth ADC with high

resolution and low power- Minimal anti-alias requirements are desirable for simplicity

Continuous-Time Sigma-Delta ADC structureshave very attractive characteristics for this space

LNA

ADC

AnalogAnti-Alias

Filter

DigitalChannel

Filter

ADC

cos(wot)

sin(wot)

I

Q

SampleClock

3A Basic Continuous-Time Sigma-Delta ADC Structure

Sampling occurs at the quantizer after filtering by H(s) Quantizer noise is shaped according to choice of H(s)

- High open loop gain required to achieve high SNR

DAC

H(s)

clock

IN OUT

Multi-LevelQuantizer

We will focus on achieving an efficient implementationof the multi-level quantizer by using a ring oscillator

4 Input: analog tuning of ring oscillator frequency Output: count of oscillator cycles per Ref clock period

Ring Oscillator

Register

Reset

Ref

Count

Out

Ref

Count

Counters

Out 15 30

VtuneVtune

OscillatorPhases

12 21

Alon, Stojanovic, HorowitzJSSC 2005

Kim, Cho, ISCAS 2006

Similar approaches:

Application of Ring Oscillator as an ADC Quantizer

5VCO-Based Quantizer Also Shapes Delay Mismatch

Barrel shifting through delay elements- Mismatch between delay elements is first order shaped

Enable

Enable

Enable

Enable

Measurement 1

Measurement 2

Measurement 3

Measurement 4

6Benefits of VCO-based Quantization

Much more digital implementation- No resistor ladder or differential gain stages

Offset and mismatch is not of critical concern Metastability behavior is improved

A

A

IN

A

CLK

Vdd

N

1

1

0

N-Stage Ring Oscillator

N-bit Register

Pre-Amp Comparator

N-Stage

Resistor

Ladder

IN

CLK

110 01

Buffer

Vdd

Implementation is high speed, low power, low area

7VCO

1- z-1

Quantizer

First Order

Difference

Ref

Vtune Out

2Kv

s1- z-1

T

1

T

Vtune Out

VCO Sampler

VCO

Noise

Quantization

Noise

First Order

Difference

ff

-20 dB/dec

Output

Noise

f

20 dB/dec

VCO KvNonlinearity

Frequency Domain Model of VCO Quantizer

VCO modeled as integrator and Kv nonlinearity Sampling of VCO phase modeled as scale factor of 1/T Quantizer modeled as

addition of quantization noise

Key non-idealities:- Quantization noise

- First order shaped!- VCO noise- VCO Kv nonlinearity

8Example SNDR with 20 MHz BW (1 GHz Sample Rate)

105 106 107 108-100

-80

-60

-40

-20

0

20

40

60

Frequency (Hz)

A

m

p

l

i

t

u

d

e

(

d

B

)

Simulated ADC Output Spectrum

2Kv

s1- z-1

1

T

Vtune Out

VCO Sampler

VCO

Noise

Quantization

Noise

First Order

Difference

ff

-20 dB/dec

Output

Noise

f

20 dB/dec

VCO KvNonlinearity

Conditions SNDR

Ideal 68.2 dB

VCO Thermal Noise 65.4 dB

VCO Thermal + Nonlinearity 32.2 dB

VCO Kv nonlinearity iskey SNDR bottleneck

Kvco: 5% linearityVCO noise:-100

dBc/Hz@ 10 MHz

9Reducing the Impact of Nonlinearity using Feedback

Place VCO-based quantizer within a continuous-time Sigma-Delta ADC structure- Quantizer nonlinearity suppressed by preceding gain

stage

Iwata, Sakimura, TCAS II, 1999Naiknaware, Tang, Fiez, TCAS II, 2000

VCO-based

Quantizer

Gain and

Filtering

DAC

Vtune

Ref

In Out

Peak SNDR limited by Kv non-linearity to 67 dB (20 MHz BW)10

A Second Order Continuous-Time Sigma-Delta ADC

DOUT

VIN

973 MHz

IDAC1 IDAC2

Vtune

VA V

B

VCO-based Quantizer & Barrel-Shift

DEM

31

Straayer, PerrottVLSI 2007

Third order noise shaping with a second order structure!

0.13u CMOS IC

How Do We Overcome Kv Nonlinearity to Improve SNDR?

11

Voltage-to-Frequency VCO-based ADC (1st Order )

In prior work, VCO frequency is desired output variable- Input must span the entire non-linear voltage-to-frequency

(Kv) characteristic to exercise full dynamic range- Strong distortion at extreme ends of the Kv curve12

Proposed Voltage-to-Phase Approach (1st Order )

VCO output phase is now the output variable- Small perturbation on Vtune allows large VCO phase shift- VCO acts as a CT integrator with infinite DC gain

13High SNDR requires higher order

Proposed 4th Order Architecture for Improved SNDR

Goal: ~80 dB SNDR with 20 MHz bandwidth- Achievable with 4th order loop filter, 4-bit VCO-based quantizer- 4-bit quantizer: tradeoff resolution versus DEM overhead

Combined frequency/phase feedback for stability/SNDR14

Schematic of Proposed Architecture

Opamp-RC integrators- Better linearity than Gm-C, though higher power

Explicit DWA

15

Schematic of Proposed Architecture

Passive summation performed with resistors- Low power- Must design carefully to minimize impact of parasitic pole

Explicit DWA

16

Schematic of Proposed Architecture

DEM explicitly performed on phase feedback- NRZ DAC unit elements

DEM implicitly performed on frequency feedback- RZ DAC unit elements (Note: Miller, US Patent (2004))

17

Behavioral Simulation (available at www.cppsim.com)

VCO Kv non-linearity Device noise Amplifier finite

gain, finite BW DAC and VCO

unit element mismatch

Key Nonidealities

VCO nonlinearity is not the bottleneck for achievable SNDR!

0.1 1.0 10.0 100.0-200

-180

-160

-140

-120

-100

-80

-60

-40

-20

0

20FFT PLOT

ANALOG INPUT FREQUENCY (MHz)

A

M

P

L

I

T

U

D

E

(

d

B

)

Only VCO Kv

Non-Linearity:

SNDR ~ 95 dB

Selected Noise,

Non-Linearity:

SNDR ~ 85 dB

20 MHz Bandwidth

85 dB SNDR!

Circuit Details

19

en0 en1 en2 en4

en0 en1 en2 en4

VCO Integrator Schematic

15 stage current starved ring-VCO - 7 stage ring-VCO

shown for simplicity- Pseudo differential

control- PVT variation

accommodated by enable switches on PMOS/NMOS

Rail-to-rail VCO output phase signals (VDD to GND)

Straayer, VLSI 2007

20

VCO Quantizer Schematic

Phase quantization with sense-amp flip-flop - Single

phase clocking

Rail-to-rail quantizer output signals (VDD to GND)

Nikolic et al, JSSC 200021

outm outp

inp inm

clk

clk

clk

d

d

q

q

d

d

q

q

d

d

q

q

d

d

q

q

d

d

q

q

d

d

q

q

d

d

q

q

Phase Quantizer, Phase and Frequency Detector

Phase OutputFrequency Output

d

d

q

q

d

d

q

q

d

d

q

q

d

d

q

q

d

d

q

q

d

d

q

q

d

d

q

q

22

Highly digital implementation- Phase sampled &

quantized by SAFF- XOR phase and

frequency detection with FF and XOR

Automatic DWA for frequency detector output code- Must explicitly

perform DWA on phase detector output code

iout,m

iout,p

Retiming

Flip-Flop

Low-Swing

Buffer

Current DAC

Unit-Element

clk

data

D

DB

Q

QB iout,p

iout,m

am

ap

Vinp

VDD

VSS

Vinm

Vinp

Vbias,n

Vcasc,n

VinmVinp

i

o

u

t

,

m

i

o

u

t

,

p

(same cell for Vinm) Low-swing

buffers- Keeps switch

devices in saturation

- Fast on / Slow off reduces glitches at DAC output

- Uses external Vdd/Vss

Resistor degeneration minimizes 1/f noise

Main Feedback DAC Schematic

Yan et alJSSC 2004

Bit-Slice of Minor Loop RZ DAC

RZ DAC unit elements transition every sample period- Breaks code-dependency of transient mismatch (ISI)- Uses full-swing logic signals for switching

PMOS Drivers

NMOS Drivers

up

dump,p

clk

clkb

VDD

datab

clkb

data

clkVDD

dump,n

inp

inm

inp

up

outp outm

inm

Vcasc,n

Vbias,n

Vcasc,p

Vbias,p

dump,n

dump,p

vcm

24

Opamp Schematic

Modified nested Miller opamp- 4 cascaded gain stages, 2

feedforward stages- Behaves as 2-stage Miller near

cross-over frequencies- Opamp 1 power is 2X of

opamps 2 and 3 (for low noise)

Parameter ValueDC Gain 63 dBUnity-Gain Frequency 4.0 GHzPhase Margin 55Input Referred Noise Power (20 MHz BW)

11 uV (rms)

Power (VDD = 1.5 V) 22.5 mW

Mitteregger et al, JSSC 2006

25

Gm Gm

Gm

inm

inp

Vcm Vcm

Vcm

Vbp

VbnVcm

outp

outm

DEM Architecture (3-bit example)

Achieves low-delay to allow 4-bit DEM at 900 MHz- Code through barrel shift propagates in half a sample period

Therm. to Binary

Barrel Shift8 8

5 2 3 65 2 3 6

3 3

Accumulator

clk

NRZDACInputs

PhaseQuantizerOutput

See also:Yang

ISSCC 2008

Die Photo (0.13u CMOS)

Die photo courtesy of Annie Wang (MTL)

27

Active area 0.45 mm2

Sampling Freq 900 MHz

Input BW 20 MHz

Supply Voltage 1.5 V

Analog Power 69 mW

Digital Power 18 mW

SNDR (20MHz)SNR (20MHz)

0-10-20-30-40-50-60-70-80

0

20

40

60

80

100

-20

S

N

D

R

/

S

N

R

(

d

B

)

M

a

g

n

i

t

u

d

e

(

d

B

)

0

20

40

60

80

100

-20

-40

Input Amplitude (dBFS)0.1 1.0 10.0 100.0

Frequency (Hz)

100,000 pt. FFT

Peak SNDR = 78.1 dBPeak SNR = 81.2 dB

Measured Results

78 dB Peak SNDR performance in 20 MHz- Bottleneck: transient mismatch from main feedback DAC

Architecture robust to VCO Kv non-linearity

28Figure of Merit: 330 fJ/Conv with 78 dB SNDR

Transient DAC mismatch is likely the key bottleneck

Behavioral Model Reveals Key Performance Issue

Amplifier nonlinearity degrades SNDR to 81 dB DAC transient

mismatch degrades SNDR to 78 dB- DEM does

not help- Could be

improved with dual RZ structure0.1 1.0 10.0 100.0

-200

-180

-160

-140

-120

-100

-80

-60

-40

-20

0

20FFT PLOT

ANALOG INPUT FREQUENCY (MHz)

A

M

P

L

I

T

U

D

E

(

d

B

)

Only VCO Kv

Non-Linearity:

SNDR ~ 95 dB

Selected Noise,

Non-Linearity:

SNDR ~ 78 dB

20 MHz Bandwidth

Conclusion

VCO-based quantization is a promising component to achieve high performance ADC structures- High speed, low power, low area implementation- First order shaping of quantization noise and mismatch- Kv non-linearity was a limitation in previous approaches

Demonstrated a 4th-order CT ADC with a VCO-based integrator and quantizer- Proposed voltage-to-phase conversion to avoid

distortion from Kv non-linearity- Achieved 78 dB SNDR in 20 MHz BW with 87 mW power Key performance bottleneck: transient DAC mismatch

30

A 4th Order Continuous-Time ADC with VCO-Based Integrator and QuantizerISSCC 2009, Session 9.5MotivationA Basic Continuous-Time Sigma-Delta ADC StructureApplication of Ring Oscillator as an ADC QuantizerVCO-Based Quantizer Also Shapes Delay MismatchBenefits of VCO-based QuantizationFrequency Domain Model of VCO QuantizerExample SNDR with 20 MHz BW (1 GHz Sample Rate)Reducing the Impact of Nonlinearity using FeedbackA Second Order Continuous-Time Sigma-Delta ADCHow Do We Overcome Kv Nonlinearity to Improve SNDR?Voltage-to-Frequency VCO-based ADC (1st Order S-D)Proposed Voltage-to-Phase Approach (1st Order S-D)Proposed 4th Order Architecture for Improved SNDRSchematic of Proposed ArchitectureSchematic of Proposed ArchitectureSchematic of Proposed ArchitectureBehavioral Simulation (available at www.cppsim.com) Circuit DetailsVCO Integrator SchematicVCO Quantizer SchematicPhase Quantizer, Phase and Frequency DetectorMain Feedback DAC SchematicBit-Slice of Minor Loop RZ DACOpamp SchematicDEM Architecture (3-bit example)Die Photo (0.13u CMOS)Measured ResultsBehavioral Model Reveals Key Performance IssueConclusion