The tiling phenomenon in /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulation

The theoretical error signal analysis of a sigma-delta (/spl Sigma//spl Delta/) modulator is a difficult problem due to the presence of a nonlinear operation (the amplitude quantization) in a feedback loop. In this paper, new deterministic knowledge on the transfer function of a /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulator is established, thanks to some recently observed properties of its state variables. For a large class of typical /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulators with constant inputs, the state variables appear to remain in a tile. We show what characteristics in a /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulator are specifically responsible for this property and give some initial proof of it. Under a constant input, the tiling phenomenon has as fundamental consequence that the output is a fixed and memoryless modulo function of n successive integrated versions of the input. This gives the theoretical knowledge that the modulator has an equivalent feedforward circuit expression. We give some immediate theoretical consequences on error analysis including the case of time-varying inputs.