A Wideband Continuous Time Quadrature Delta Sigma Modulator Based on a Real DSM for Low Power WLAN Receiver

Abstract

Power consumption and bandwidth are two of the most important parameters in design of low power wideband modulators as power consumption is growing with the increase in bandwidth. In this study, a multi bit wideband low-power continuous time feed forward quadrature delta sigma modulator (CT-FF-QDSM) is designed for WLAN receiver applications by eliminating adders from modulator structure. In this method, a real modulator is designed and its excess loop delay (ELD) is compensated, then, it is converted into a quadrature structure by applying the complex coefficient to loop filter. Complex coefficients are extracted by the aid of a genetic algorithm to further improve signal to noise ratio (SNR) for bandwidth. One of the disadvantages of CT-FF-QDSM is the adders of loop filters which are power hungry and reduce the effective loop gain. Therefore, the adders have been eliminated while the transfer function is intact in the final modulator. The system level SNR of the proposed modulator is 62.53[Formula: see text]dB using OSR of 12. The circuit is implemented in CMOSTSMC180nm technology. The circuit levels SNR and power consumption are 54[Formula: see text]dB and 13.5[Formula: see text]mW, respectively. Figure of Merit (FOM) obtained from the proposed modulator is about 0.824 (pj/conv) which is improved (by more than 40%) compared to the previous designs.