A 10 bit 320 MS/s Low-Cost SAR ADC for IEEE 802.11ac Applications in 20 nm CMOS

This paper presents a low-cost successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for IEEE 802.11 ac applications. In this paper, a binary-scaled recombination capacitor weighting method is disclosed. The digital sub-blocks in this ADC are composed of standard library logic cells. The prototype is fabricated in a 1P8M 20 nm CMOS technology. At 0.9 V supply and 160 MS/s, the ADC consumes 0.68 mW. It achieves an SNDR of 57.7 dB and 57.13 dB at low and Nyquist input frequency, respectively, resulting in figures of merit (FoMs) of 6.8 and 7.3 fJ/conversion-step, respectively. At 1 V supply and 320 MS/s, the ADC consumes 1.52 mW. It achieves an SNDR of 57.1 dB and 50.89 dB at low and Nyquist input frequency, respectively, resulting in FoMs of 8.1 and 16.5 fJ/conversion-step, respectively. The ADC core only occupies an active area of 33 mu m x 35 mu m.