Analog-digital design in submicrometric digital CMOS technologies

Advanced digital CMOS technologies are poised to become an increasingly important manufacturing platform for mixed analog-digital integrated circuits. This requires that appropriate design methodologies are devised to overcome the main problems facing the design of high performance analog cells. This paper presents an overview of some of those methodologies, giving special emphasis to combined analog and digital circuit solutions for the enhanced performance of the former with little extra cost of the latter. These are discussed in the practical examples of a self-calibrated 300 /spl mu/W, 40 MHz comparator achieving 1 mV resolution, a full 12-bit MOSFET-only /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulator, an alternative /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulator architecture with minimized analog content, and finally a low offset I/Q D/A interface system.