High-Performance SAR-Assisted Hybrid ADC with Time Domain Signal Processing

Abstract

This dissertation presents types of basic and advanced ADC architectures and raises a high-performance hybrid ADC solution which achieves comparable performance compared with many state-of-the-art ADC architectures. The advantages and disadvantages of all three basic ADC architectures are analyzed in detail as an introduction of the origin and motivation of the hybrid ADCs. Advanced hybrid ADC architecture solutions are also presented for a deeper understanding of all the improvement and challenges of the hybrid ADC. The dissertation then presents advanced SAR ADC design technologies and a high-performance SAR ADC is presented with many fore-mentioned technologies applied. A prototype of a high-performance linearized amplifier is then presented which is applicable for pipelining interface as required by many of the modern hybrid ADC architectures. In the end, a prototype a high-performance hybrid pipelined SAR ADC is presented which uses information from both voltage domain and time domain for quantization.