A 13-bit Radiation-Hardened SAR-ADC with Error Correction by Adaptive Topology Transformation

Abstract

A 13-bit radiation-hardened-by-design (RHBD) successive approximation register ADC (SAR-ADC) has been proposed with almost no area overhead. The RHBD SAR-ADC has a differential topology with a couple of radiation detectors, and these radiation detectors are assigned, one for each of the differential data paths. The ADC transforms the topology adaptively from differential to single based on the result of radiation detection for error correction or reduction. Thanks to the error correction or reduction by the Adaptive Topology Transformation (ATT), measurement results show an order of magnitude improvement in cross-section and more than 10 dB SNDR enhancement under over 106 count/cm2 irradiation condition.