The ring amplifier is an energy efficient and high output swing alternative to an OTA for switched-capacitor circuits. However, the conventional ring amplifier requires external biases, which makes the ring amplifier less practical when we consider process, supply voltage, and temperature (PVT) variation. This paper presents a self-biased ring amplifier scheme that makes the ring amplifier more practical and power efficient while maintaining the benefits of efficient slew-based charging and an almost rail-to-rail output swing. We introduce an improved auto-zero scheme that eliminates the gain error caused by the parasitic capacitance across the auto-zero switch. Furthermore, a comparator-less pipeline ADC structure takes advantage of the characteristics of the ring-amplifier to replace the sub-ADC in each pipeline stage. The prototype ADC has measured SNDR, SNR and SFDR of 56.6 dB (9.11 b), 57.5 dB and 64.7 dB, respectively, for a Nyquist frequency input sampled at 100 MS/s, and consumes 2.46 mW.Index Terms-A/D, ADC, analog to digital converter, auto-zero, comparator-less ADC, energy efficient, low power, ring amplifier, self-biased ring amplifier, switched capacitor.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.