A 8X Oversampling Ratio, 14bit, 5-MSamples/s Cascade 3-1 Sigma-delta Modulator

Abstract. A 14-b, 5-MHz output-rate cascaded 3-1 sigma-delta analog-to-digital converters (ADC) has been developed for broadband communication applications, and a novel 4th-order noise-shaping is obtained by using the proposed architecture. At a low oversampling ratio (OSR) of 8, the ADC achieves 91.5dB signal-to-quantization ratio (SQNR), in contrast to 71.8dB of traditional 2-1-1 cascaded sigma-delta ADC in 2.5-MHz bandwidth and over 80dB signal-to-noise and distortion (SINAD) even under assumptions of awful circuit non-idealities and opamp non-linearity. The proposed architecture can potentially operates at much more high frequencies with scaled IC technology, to expand the analog-to-digital conversion rate for high-resolution applications.