A 1-V 140-μW 88-dB audio sigma-delta modulator in 90-nm CMOS

A single-loop third-order switched-capacitor Σ-Δ modulator in 90-nm standard digital CMOS technology is presented. The design is intended to minimize the power consumption in a low-voltage environment. A load-compensated OTA with rail-to-rail output swing and gain enhancement is chosen in this design, which provides higher power efficiency than the two-stage OTA. To lower the power consumption further, class-AB operation is also adapted in the OTA design. Due to the relatively low threshold voltage of the advanced technology, no clock bootstrapping circuits are needed to drive the switches and the power consumption of the digital circuits is reduced. All the capacitors are implemented using multilayer metal-wall structure, which can provide high-density capacitance. The modulator achieves 88-dB dynamic range in 20-kHz signal bandwidth with an oversampling ratio of 100. The power consumption is 140 μW under 1-V supply voltage and the chip core size is 0.18 mm².