The Design of a Low-Power Pipelined ADC for IoT Applications

This paper proposes a low-power 10-bit 20 MS/s pipelined analog-to-digital converter (ADC) designed for the burgeoning needs of low-data-rate communication systems, particularly within the Internet of Things (IoT) domain. To reduce power usage, multiple power-saving techniques are combined, such as...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Junkai Zhang, Tao Sun, Zunkai Huang, Wei Tao, Ning Wang, Li Tian, Yongxin Zhu, Hui Wang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-02-01
Series:Sensors
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/25/5/1343
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Summary:This paper proposes a low-power 10-bit 20 MS/s pipelined analog-to-digital converter (ADC) designed for the burgeoning needs of low-data-rate communication systems, particularly within the Internet of Things (IoT) domain. To reduce power usage, multiple power-saving techniques are combined, such as sample-and-hold amplifier-less (SHA-less) architecture, capacitor scaling, and dynamic comparators. In addition, this paper presents a novel operational amplifier (op-amp) with gain boosting, featuring a dual-input differential pair that enables internal pipeline stage switching, effectively alleviating the crosstalk and memory effects inherent in conventional shared op-amp configurations, thereby further reducing power consumption. A prototype ADC was fabricated in a 180 nm CMOS process and the core size was 0.333 mm<sup>2</sup>. The ADC implemented operated at a 20 MHz sampling rate under a 1.8 V supply voltage. It achieved a spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of 61.83 dB and a signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) of 54.15 dB while demonstrating a maximum differential non-linearity (DNL) of 0.36 least significant bit (LSB) and a maximum integral non-linearity (INL) of 0.67 LSB. Notably, the ADC consumed less than 5 mW of power at the mentioned sampling frequency, showcasing excellent power efficiency.
ISSN:1424-8220