ADEL Hussein
Supervision : Marie-Minerve LOUËRAT
Digital Calibration of pipelined ADCs
High resolution wideband Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) in communication systems are becoming an industrial target to provide consumers with high definition and high data rate services with high degree of flexibility. Technology advances enable high speed operation on the expense of a reduced analog resolution. To benefit from technology scaling and the accompanying digital enhancements, digital calibration can be used to leverage the analog resolution at high speed, and at lower area and power consumption.
In this research, a study of the analog circuit limitations in pipeline ADCs and the possible digital calibration techniques are investigated. A foreground digital calibration technique has been applied on an 11-bit ADC prototype and measurement results prove the efficiency of digital calibration in restoring the linearity of the ADC. Design considerations for digitally calibrated ADCs are then presented and validated by system and circuit simulations to enable efficient mix between analog and digital for a highly robust digital calibration. A fast split background calibration is proposed and validated by system level simulations for pipeline ADCs. The proposed calibration technique is based on a fully deterministic approach to detect and correct the circuit errors, and thus it enables high accuracy with minimum calibration time reported in literature for a background technique. This technique is further extended for a fully deterministic split multi-stage calibration in pipeline ADCs.
To validate the proposed background calibration technique on the circuit level, a 200 MS/s 12-bit split pipeline ADC has been designed in 40 nm CMOS technology. Parasitic extraction simulations of the ADC confirm the accuracy of the proposed technique and validate the very short background calibration time. To further decrease area and power consumption, a circuit technique is proposed to eliminate the front-end sample and hold amplifier without sacrificing the accuracy of split ADC calibration at high frequencies. These demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed calibration technique to achieve high resolution at high speed performance.
Keywords: ADC, Digital Calibration, Background Calibration, Split ADC, Sample and Hold, CMOS
Defence : 12/12/2013
Jury members :
Pr. Boris MURMANN, Université Stanford, USA
Pr. Mohamed DESSOUKY, Université Ain Shams, Le Caire, Egypte
Dr. Andreas KAISER (HDR)
Dr. Hassan ABOUSHADY (HDR)
Marc SABUT (STMicroelectronics)
Pr. Habib MEHREZ
Dr. Marie-Minerve LOUERAT (HDR)
2010-2015 Publications
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2015
- H. Adel, M. Sabut, M.‑M. Louërat : “Split ADC Based Fully Deterministic Multistage Calibration for High Speed Pipeline ADCs”, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers, vol. 62 (6), pp. 1481-1488, (IEEE) (2015)
- H. Adel, M. Sabut, M.‑M. Louërat : “1.1-V 200 Ms/S 12-Bit Digitally Calibrated Pipeline ADC in 40 nm CMOS”, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), Lisbon, Portugal, pp. 2281-2284 (2015)
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2014
- H. Adel, M. Sabut, R. Petigny, M.‑M. Louërat : “Split ADC digital background calibration for high speed SHA-less pipeline ADCs”, International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), Melbourne, Australia, pp. 1143-1146, (IEEE) (2014)
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2013
- H. Adel : “Digital Calibration of pipelined ADCs”, thesis, phd defence 12/12/2013, supervision Louërat, Marie-Minerve (2013)
- H. Adel, M.‑M. Louërat, M. Sabut : “Design Considerations for Low Gain Amplifier in the MDAC of Digitally Calibrated Pipelined ADCs”, IFIP/IEEE 21st International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, VLSI-SoC 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, pp. 23-26, (IEEE) (2013)
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2012
- H. Adel, M.‑M. Louërat, M. Sabut : “Background calibration for pipelined ADCs”, Colloque du GDR SOC-SIP du CNRS, Paris, France (2012)
- H. Adel, M.‑M. Louërat, M. Sabut : “Fast split background calibration for pipelined ADCs enabled by slope mismatch averaging technique”, Electronics Letters, vol. 48 (6), pp. 318-320, (IET) (2012)
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2011
- H. Adel, M.‑M. Louërat, H. Gicquel, M. Sabut : “Low Voltage Techniques for Pipelined A/D Converters”, Colloque GDR SOC SIP, Lyon, France, pp. 1-2 (2011)
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2010
- H. Adel, M. Dessouky, M.‑M. Louërat, H. Gicquel, H. Haddara : “Foreground Digital Calibration of Non-Linear Errors in Pipelined A/D Converters”, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), Paris, France, pp. 569-572, (IEEE) (2010)