High-Speed and Low-Power Double-Tail Comparator for ADC Applications

Dynamic comparators are essential components in high-speed, high-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) commonly utilized in transmission systems. Typically, dynamic comparators achieve high-speed performance only when the input difference voltages are sufficiently large. However, their performance diminishes with smaller variations in input voltages because of restricted gain of the preamplifier, which is problematic for ADCs with high resolution and speed. To address this issue, a dynamic comparator with cascode cross-coupling is introduced. At low input difference voltages, this design leads to much faster transformation by increasing the preamplifier's differential gain and lowering the common-mode voltage at the latch. The proposed comparator is implemented, assumed, and benchmarked against existing techniques utilizing CMOS technology at 65 nm.