Transistor-Level Synthesis of Pipeline Analog-to-Digital Converters Using a Design-Space Reduction Algorithm

A novel transistor-level synthesis procedure for pipeline ADCs is presented. This procedure is able to directly map high-level converter specifications onto transistor sizes and biasing conditions. It is based on the combination of behavioral models for performance evaluation, optimization routines...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ruiz Amaya, Jesús, Delgado Restituto, Manuel, Rodríguez Vázquez, Ángel Benito
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2011
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/90825
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/90825
https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSI.2011.2157746
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Design methodology
Pipeline data converters
Descripción
Sumario:A novel transistor-level synthesis procedure for pipeline ADCs is presented. This procedure is able to directly map high-level converter specifications onto transistor sizes and biasing conditions. It is based on the combination of behavioral models for performance evaluation, optimization routines to minimize the power and area consumption of the circuit solution, and an algorithm to efficiently constraint the converter design space. This algorithm precludes the cost of lengthy bottom-up verifications and speeds up the synthesis task. The approach is herein demonstrated via the design of a 0.13 μm CMOS 10 bits@60 MS/s pipeline ADC with energy consumption per conversion of only 0.54 pJ@1 MHz, making it one of the most energy-efficient 10-bit video-rate pipeline ADCs reported to date. The computational cost of this design is of only 25 min of CPU time, and includes the evaluation of 13 different pipeline architectures potentially feasible for the targeted specifications. The optimum design derived from the synthesis procedure has been fine tuned to support PVT variations, laid out together with other auxiliary blocks, and fabricated. The experimental results show a power consumption of 23 mW@1.2 V and an effective resolution of 9.47-bit@1 MHz. Bearing in mind that no specific power reduction strategy has been applied; the mentioned results confirm the reliability of the proposed approach.