3-bit Flash ADC Using TIQ Comparator

High speed and low power consumption are critical requirements for many applications of an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Implementing flash ADC, the fastest available ADC type, requires a significant amount of (Integrated Circuit)IC real estate. Significant disadvantages include its high power and area requirements. Threshold Inverter Quantization (TIQ) is a comparator that can be used to get around this problem. Using two cascading inverters as a voltage comparator gives this technique its name. Internal reference voltages are compared with the input voltage, which depends on the transistor sizes of the inverters. The priority encoder gives the digital output based on the highest order active input, ignoring all other active input. While TIQ is not as fast as Flash ADC, its small size and power efficiency make it a worthy replacement in situations where every milliwatt and square millimeter counts. The design structures are stimulated using CMOS 180nm technology which uses a Vdd of 1.8V and has a power consumption of
$\boldsymbol{26.39} (\mu \mathbf{W})$
with a delay of
$\boldsymbol{32.96} (\mu \mathbf{s})$
.