A low-power 16-channel AD converter and digital processor ASIC

The extreme particle density in the detectors for high-energy physics experiments set new demands on the readout electronics in terms of resolution, density and power consumption. These requirements are beyond the present capability of commercial-off-the-shelf components and call for ASICs that embed in a single chip the circuits to digitise, process, compress and store the information of a high number of channels. In this paper we present an ASIC that responds to these needs, including in a single chip 16 low-power 10-bit 25-MSPS A/D converters, a data processor and 800-Kbit of memory. The chip, which is implemented in a 0.25 µm CMOS technology, has an area of 64mm²and a power consumption of 320mW when the 16 channels are running at 10MHz rate. The measurements show a resolution better than 9.5 ENOB on all channels and a channel-to-channel crosstalk below -65dB. The techniques adopted in the front-end and back-end design of the circuit, to limit the impact of the digital noise on the ADC performance and the channel-to-channel crosstalk, are also presented.