A systematic design automation approach for flash ADCs

This paper presents a simulation-based top-down systematic design procedure for flash ADCs. According to the developed design flow, an automated design tool is constructed for sizing flash ADCs in transistor level by consulting the circuit design experience. In addition to fulfill the user-defined specification, issues such as process variations and power consumption are also taken into consideration. The developed tool provides a fast and easy way for users to design a flash ADC without related experiences. Experimental results show the satisfactory performance flash ADCs can be obtained within ten minutes.