The impact of dielectric relaxation on ΣΔ-modulators

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of dielectric relaxation on SigmaDelta-modulators. Unlike the impact on SAR and pipeline ADCs, there seems to be no research reporting on the impact of the phenomenon on SigmaDelta-modulators. Nevertheless, the SC-integrators used in the circuit implementation of SigmaDelta-modulators too rely on the transfer of charge from one capacitor to another. So, there could be an important impact of dielectric relaxation on the performance of the SC-integrator and as such on the complete SigmaDelta-modulators. In this paper, we will show via simulations on a test case that SigmaDelta-modulators are in fact (quite) robust against the parasitic effect of dielectric relaxation. This result will be explained with a theoretical analysis of the phenomenon.