Highly-digital voltage scalable 4-bit flash ADC

Abstract

This study describes the highly-digital 4-bit 200 MS flash analogue to digital converter (ADC) whose major part can be digitally synthesised thus achieving low power, reducing the time-to-market and is scalable with technology. The comparators used in the ADC consist of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-based inverter and NAND-NOR as standard cells. The complete flash ADC is designed in 180 nm CMOS technology with 1.8 V supply with the power consumption of 4.51 mW. The signal-to-noise and distortion ratio, signal-to-noise ratio and spurious-free dynamic range are equal to 23.3, 25.2 and 30.1 dB. It provides an effective number of bits equal to 3.5. The differential non-linearity (DNL) of this ADC is ± 0.25 LSB and integral non-linearity (INL) is + 0.6 LSB.