A Systematic Design Methodology of Asynchronous SAR ADCs

摘要

Successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are widely used in biomedical and portable/wearable electronic systems due to their excellent power efficiency. However, both the design and the optimization of high-performance SAR ADCs are time consuming, even for well-experienced circuit designers. For system designers, it is also hard to quickly evaluate the feasibility of a given specification in a process node. This paper presents a systematic sizing procedure for asynchronous SAR ADCs based on design considerations. A sizing tool based on the proposed design procedure is also implemented, the sizing results of which are highly competitive in comparison with other state-of-the-art manual works. Moreover, the sizing time is relatively short due to the efficient and effective search algorithms employed. In addition to the simulation results, two silicon proofs with different specifications and process nodes are provided to demonstrate the feasibility of this design methodology.