Optimization of Power Dissipation in Pipelined Analog-to-Digital Converter

Power optimization for pipelined analog-to-digital converter(ADC) was studied. Operational principle of pipelined ADC was discussed and noise voltage caused by two important thermal noise sources, sampling switch and amplifier,was quantitatively analyzed. Method used to minimize power and the values under simple model were presented. Power can be saved by making the sampling and feedback capacitors scale down in the pipeline.And the size of capacitors was limited by thermal noise in high resolution ADC.The equivalent circuits of the two important thermal noise sources were established.Thermal noise was optimally distributed among the pipeline stages,and the relationship between scaling factor and closed loop gain was obtained for minimum power dissipation.Typical closed loop gain was 2 or 4 in pipeline ADC, and the corresponding scaling factor was (1.217) and 1.317.These results can serve as useful guidelines for designers to minimize the ADC′s power consumption.