A 90-dB SNR 2.5-MHz output-rate ADC using cascaded multibit delta-sigma modulation at 8/spl times/ oversampling ratio

A 16-b 2.5-MHz output-rate analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for wireline communications and high-speed instrumentation has been developed. A 2-1-1 cascaded delta-sigma modulator (DSM) employing 4-b quantizers in every stage makes all quantization noise sources negligible at 8/spl times/ oversampling ratio, Data weighted averaging with bi-directional rotation eliminates tones generated by multibit digital-to-analog converter (DAC) nonlinearity to increase the spurious-free dynamic-range (SFDR). Switched-capacitor design techniques using low-threshold transistors reduce front-end sampling distortion. The 24.8 mm/sup 2/ chip in 0.5-/spl mu/m CMOS also integrates the decimation filter and voltage reference. The ADC achieves 90-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the 1.25-MHz bandwidth and 102-dB SFDR with 270-mW power dissipation.