A 13.5-b 1.2-V micropower extended counting A/D converter

This work presents a study of the extended counting technique for a 1.2-V micropower voice-band A/D converter. This extended counting technique is a blend of ΣΔ modulation with its high resolution but relatively low speed and algorithmic conversion with its higher speed but lower accuracy. To achieve this, the converter successively operates first as a first-order ΣΔ modulator to convert the most significant bits, and then the same hardware is used as an algorithmic converter to convert the remaining least significant bits. An experimental prototype was designed in 0.8-μm CMOS. With a 1.2-V power supply, it consumes 150 μW of power at a 16-kHz Nyquist sampling frequency. The measured peak S/(N+THD) was 80 dB and the dynamic range 82 dB. The converter core including the controller and all reconstruction logic occupies about 1.3×1 mm² of chip area. This is considerably less than a complete ΣΔ modulation A/D converter where the digital decimation filter would occupy a significant amount of chip area