Detailed analysis of a phase ADC

This paper presents for the first time a theoretical study of the second order effects of a 4-bit Phase-domain Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) circuit for QPSK demodulation and analyzes its benefits and drawbacks. The study encompasses the phase resolution, dynamic range and robustness of this circuit to circuit non-idealities and noise. Our analysis shows that the phase ADC is extremely robust against circuit non-linearities, offsets and noise while providing a large dynamic range compared to traditional amplitude ADCs.