Tutorial: Fundamentals of Data Converters

A refreshing review of fundamental data-conversion principles and circuit techniques, ranging from the concepts of sampling and quantization, to flash, pipeline and SAR architectures, to common circuit building blocks, to time- and frequency-domain measurement techniques of converters, will be presented in this tutorial. An emphasis will be placed on performance robustness, digital correctability, and calibration in advanced process nodes. The tutorial will wrap up with a historic remark on and a future perspective of the ADC Figure-of-Merits.