A 6-bit 1.6-GS/s low-power wideband flash ADC converter in 0.13-μm CMOS technology

In this work, a new termination technique for the averaging network of the flash analog-to-digital converter (ADC) input preamplifiers is devised. The proposed technique eliminates the over-range voltage headroom consumed by the dummy preamplifiers and therefore, the input capacitance and power dissipation of the ADC is reduced. This technique is applied to the design of a 6-bit 1.6-GS/s flash ADC in 0.13-mu m CMOS technology. The measured peak INL and DNL are 0.42 LSB and 0.49 LSB, respectively. The ADC achieves an effective resolution bandwidth (ERBW) of 800 MHz and an SNDR of 30 dB at 1.45-GHz input signal frequency while consuming 180 mW.