An I/Q-multiplexed and OTA-shared CMOS pipelined ADC with an A-DQS S/H front-end for two-step-channel-select low-IF receiver

A pipelined ADC architecture that exhibits both power and area efficiencies is proposed to be accountable for the major baseband functions of the recently introduced two-step-channel-select (2-SCS) low-IF receiver. Such architecture comprises: 1) a sample and hold (S/H) front-end implementing analog-double quadrature sampling (A-DQS) for IF-to-baseband downconversion and IF channel selection; and 2) one OTA-shared pipeline ADC is employed for digitalization both I and Q channels through I/Q-multiplexing. An IC prototype was designed in a 0.35μm CMOS process with 20-MS/s 8-bit resolution, which has been targeted for 2.4-GHz ISM band standards. The key simulated performances achieved 7.7-b ENOB with INL and DNL within ±0.5 LSB and ±0.34 LSB, respectively. A competitive chip area of only 1.34 mm² is achieved, while dissipating an average of 54.5 mW from 2.5 V.