Emerging analog-to-digital converters

Abstract

Many analog IC designers and students are naturally drawn to ADCs. While some ADC realizations have had a lasting impact including pipelined ADCs with digital redundancy, flash ADCs with folding and interpolation, and multi-bit delta-sigma modulators with dynamic element matching, there are many more recent and emerging ADC design techniques that are receiving much attention and also gaining momentum in some areas. Many of these ideas are showered with doubts and honest criticism. However, we may also be entering a new era where a few of these developments could help resolve the tough submicron scaling challenge that analog designers face today. This paper will summarize and ponder the impact of a few selective as well as random slices of these emerging ADC designs.