Synthesis of high-speed A/D converter architectures with flexible functional simulation capabilities

A CAD tool for high-level synthesis of high-speed analog-to-digital (A/D) converter architectures is described, which includes a flexible functional simulation capability taking into account the most relevant electrical parameters. By using the flash quantizer and the charge-redistribution multiplying digital-to-analog converter (MDAC) blocks as the only mixed-signal functional primitives, this tool is capable of synthesizing multiple architectures, including the flash, subranging, two-step flash and pipelined AID converters. The tool analyzes and determines the required high level building block specifications, based on functional models which accurately describe the dominant poles of the electrical behavior of the lowest-level building-blocks, namely arrays of switches, arrays of capacitors, resistor strings, operational amplifiers and comparators. A functional simulation based on such models is included.