A Charge-Sharing-Based Two-Phase Charging Scheme for Zero-Crossing-Based Integrator Circuits

Abstract

As an effort to improve the energy efficiency of switched-capacitor circuits, zero-crossing- based integrators (ZCBI) that consist of zero-crossing detectors and charging circuits have been proposed. To break the trade-off between accuracy and speed, ZCBI typically employs a two-phase charging scheme that relies on an additional threshold for zero-crossing detection. This paper proposes a simpler realization method of the two-phase charging scheme by means of charge sharing. To demonstrate feasibility of the proposed method, we designed and fabricated a second-order delta-sigma modulator in 180-nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The measurement results show that the modulator exhibits a peak signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) of 46.3 dB over the bandwidth of 156 kHz with the power consumption of 684 µW. We also designed the same modulator in 65-nm CMOS technology and simulation results imply that the proposed circuit is able to achieve a much better energy efficiency in advanced technology.