Clockless asynchronous delta modulator based ADC for smart dust applications

In this paper, design of an asynchronous clockless delta modulator based analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is presented. The ADC employs level-crossing sampling technique. The ADC system is in the context of low speed smart dust sensor applications. For smart dust the benefit with continuous-time clockless system is its reduced hardware and lesser quantization noise power in the frequency band of interest. Further, the unbuffered, segmented resistor-string digital-to-analog converter (DAC) used in the ADC, results in component savings compared to previously reported resistor string DAC. High level simulation results are shown for various ADC resolutions. The signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) achieved for an 8-bit and 4-bit ADC systems are presented. It has been shown that a 4-bit system with the proposed segmented resistor string DAC architecture utilizes hardware for a 3-bit system and achieves an ENOB of more than five bits.