AN OPTIMIZED LOW POWER PIPELINE ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER FOR HIGH-SPEED WLAN APPLICATION

This paper presents the design and implementation of a 11-bit 160 MSPS analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for next generation super high-speed wireless local area network (WLAN) application. The ADC core consists of one front sample and hold stage and four cascades of 2.5 bit pipeline stages with opamp sharing between successive stages. To achieve low power dissipation at 1.2V supply, a single stage symmetrical amplifier with double transimpedance gain-boosting amplifier is proposed. High speed on-chip reference buffer with replica source follower is also included for linearity performance. The ADC was fabricated in a standard 130-nm CMOS process and an occupied silicon area of 0.95 mm x 1.15 mm. Performance of 73 dB spurious-free-dynamic-range is measured at 160 MS/s with 1 Vpp input signal. The power dissipation of the analog core chip is only 50 mW from a 1.2V supply.