A 1-GSPS CMOS flash A/D converter for system-on-chip applications

This paper presents an ultrafast CMOS flash A/D converter design and performance. Although the featured A/D converter is designed in CMOS, the performance is compatible to that of GaAs technology currently available. To achieve high-speed in CMOS, the featured A/D converter utilizes the Threshold Inverter Quantization (TIQ) technique. A 6-bit TIQ based flash A/D converter was designed with the 0.25 /spl mu/m standard CMOS technology parameter. It operates with sampling rates up to 1 GSPS, dissipates 66.87 mW of power at 2.5 V, and occupies 0.013 mm/sup 2/ area. The proposed A/D converter is suitable for System-on-Chip (SoC) applications in wireless products and other ultra high speed applications.