A Circuit-Design-Driven Tool with a Hybrid Automation Approach for SAR ADCs in IoT
Ming Ding1, Guibin Chen1,2, Pieter Harpe2, Benjamin Busze1, Yao-Hong Liu1, Christian Bachmann1, Kathleen Philips1 and Arthur van Roermund2
1Holst Centre/imec
2Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands
ABSTRACT
A circuit-design-driven tool with a hybrid design automation approach for asynchronous SAR ADCs in IoT applications is presented. To minimize the circuit design time while still being able to maintain ADC performance, the hybrid approach allocates automation and manual effort properly for each block: fully-synthesized control logic, highly-automated DAC and S&H circuit, library-based comparator and templatebased layout generation. A user interface governs the automated design flow from specification and circuit implementation to layout generation. Two prototypes are generated using the proposed flow in 40nm CMOS: an 8b 32MS/s and a 12b 1MS/s SAR ADC. The measured and the simulated ADC performance are in good agreement, showing the robustness of the proposed method. At 1V supply, two chips consume 187µW and 16.7µW, achieving 30.7fJ/conversion.step and 18.1fJ/conversion.step respectively.
Keywords: Hybrid, Design Automation, SAR ADC.
