A dynamic reference A/D converter

Abstract

Conventional analog-to-digital (A/D) structure such as flash converter has a ladder of fixed reference voltages and massive number of comparators that grow exponentially with resolution. This paper presents a dynamic reference A/D converter, which requires the same number of comparators as the intended A/D bit resolutions. In addition, the dynamic reference A/D converter has built-in simple digital-to-analog (D/A) converter implementation in the feedforward path to establish the reference voltage dynamically. Furthermore, the conversion time for this technique is limited only by the propagation time of its internal signals. Therefore, the A/D converter can operate up to the maximum speed permitted by a given technology.