The Race for the Extra Pico Second without Losing the Decibel: A Partial-Review of Single-Channel Energy-Efficient High-Speed Nyquist ADCs

The development of high-speed analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) continues to be driven by the relentless demand for faster and more precise data conversion across numerous applications. One prominent trend in the evolution is the ever-increasing sample rates and higher resolutions, together with low power consumption, facilitating the energy-efficient capture of finer details from analog signals and reducing the complexity in signal-chain-associated circuits. Over the past decades, various circuit and architectural-level innovations have enabled significant breakthroughs in the speed and energy efficiency trajectories of ADCs. This article serves as a mini-review of recent high-speed ADCs, highlighting those notable energy-efficient approaches that expedite single-channel designs. Simultaneously, these single-channel cores can also be found vital for time-interleaved ADCs.