A 2-GS/s 35.9-fJ/conv.-step Voltage–Time Hybrid Pipelined ADC with Digital Background Calibration in 28-nm CMOS

This paper presents a 2-GS/s voltage–time hybrid pipelined analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with a 14-bit digital output, implemented in a 28-nm CMOS process. To alleviate the gain–bandwidth–power trade-off in deeply scaled technologies, the proposed architecture employs a SHA-less front-end and a low-gain inverter-based push–pull RA for energy-efficient coarse quantization. The residue is then transferred to the time domain via a highly linear constant-current voltage-to-time converter (CC-VTC) and digitized by a four-channel time-interleaved gated-ring-oscillator (GRO) TDC. To recover dynamic linearity degraded by low-gain amplification and interleaving mismatches, a multiplier-less digital background calibration engine is implemented. Leveraging mean absolute value (MAV) statistics and dither-injected least-mean-squares (LMS) algorithms, it effectively compensates for inter-channel and interstage errors with minimal hardware overhead. The prototype occupies an active area of 0.16 mm2. At 2 GS/s, the ADC achieves a Nyquist SNDR of 63.42 dB and an SFDR of 73.71 dB, corresponding to an ENOB of 10.24 bits. Consuming 86.9 mW from a 1-V supply, it achieves a Walden FoM of 35.9 fJ/conv.-step. Measurement results from multiple chips under a wide range of operating conditions verify the robustness of the proposed ADC.