Tutorial: Basics of SAR ADCs: Circuits & Architectures

This tutorial will cover the fundamentals of Successive-Approximation-Register (SAR) Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs), as well as the latest architectural innovations that have led to unprecedented performance metrics. While SAR ADCs have been around for a very long time, a lot of attention has been given to them in recent years in the context of process scaling. Performance gains in submicron processes were expected, but the extent to which improvements in power-efficiency and conversion speed were demonstrated has been somewhat surprising. The tutorial is intended to bring audience members up to speed on this topic at architectural, circuit and algorithm levels.