Energy-Efficient A/D Conversion in Wideband Communications Receivers

The energy consumption of wideband communications receivers depends highly on the parametrization of the A/D conversion stage. The design of energy-efficient receivers requires an optimal parametrization. This paper investigates the power dissipation of state-of-the-art A/D converters and studies the optimal parametrization from an information theoretic perspective. The results show that a large sampling rate and very low quantization resolution will usually be most energy-efficient.