A 50-MS/s (35 mW) to 1-kS/s (15 μW) power scaleable 10-bit pipelined ADC using rapid power-on opamps and minimal bias current variation

A novel rapid power-on operational amplifier and a current modulation technique are used in a 10-bit 1.5-bit/stage pipelined ADC in 0.18-μm CMOS to realize power scalability between 1 kS/s (15 μW) and 50 MS/s (35 mW), while maintaining an SNDR of 54-56 dB for all sampling rates. The current modulated power scaling (CMPS) technique is shown to enhance the power scaleable range of current scaling by 50 times, allowing ADC power to be varied by a factor of 2500 while only varying bias currents by a factor of 50. Furthermore, the nominal power is reduced by 20%-30% by completely powering off the rapid power-on opamps during the sampling phase in the pipeline´s sample-and-holds.