A 480 mW 2.6 GS/s 10b Time-Interleaved ADC With 48.5 dB SNDR up to Nyquist in 65 nm CMOS

This paper presents a 64-times interleaved 2.6 GS/s 10b successive-approximation-register (SAR) ADC in 65 nm CMOS. The ADC combines interleaving hierarchy with an open-loop buffer array operated in feedforward-sampling and feedback-SAR mode. The sampling front-end consists of four interleaved T/Hs at 650 MS/s that are optimized for timing accuracy and sampling linearity, while the back-end consists of four ADC arrays, each consisting of 16 10b current-mode non-binary SAR ADCs. The interleaving hierarchy allows for many ADCs to be used per T/H and eliminates distortion stemming from open loop buffers interfacing between the front-end and back-end. Startup on-chip calibration deals with offset and gain mismatches as well as DAC linearity. Measurements show that the prototype ADC achieves an SNDR of 48.5 dB and a THD of less than -58 dB at Nyquist with an input signal of 1.4 Vpp-diff. An estimated sampling clock skew spread of 400 fs is achieved by careful design and layout. Up to 4 GHz an SNR of more than 49 dB has been measured, enabled by the less than 110 fs rms clock jitter. The ADC consumes 480 mW from 1.2/1.3/1.6 V supplies and occupies an area of 5.1 mm(2).