Polyphase Nonlinear Equalization of Time-Interleaved Analog-to-Digital Converters

As the demand for higher data rates increases, commercial analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are more commonly being implemented with multiple on-chip converters whose outputs are time-interleaved. The distortion generated by time-interleaved ADCs is now not only a function of the nonlinear behavior of the constituent circuitry, but also mismatches associated with interleaving multiple output streams. To mitigate distortion generated by time-interleaved ADCs, we have developed a polyphase NonLinear EQualizer (pNLEQ) which is capable of simultaneously mitigating distortion generated by both the on-chip circuitry and mismatches due to time interleaving. In this paper, we describe the pNLEQ architecture and present measurements of its performance.