title: A sub-microwatt asynchronous level-crossing ADC for biomedical applications.
abstract: A continuous-time level-crossing analog-to-digital converter (LC-ADC) for biomedical applications is presented. When compared to uniform-sampling (US) ADCs LC-ADCs generate fewer samples for various sparse biomedical signals. Lower power consumption and reduced design complexity with respect to conventional LC-ADCs are achieved due to: 1) replacing the n-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC) with a 1-bit DAC; 2) splitting the level-crossing detections; and 3) fixing the comparison window. Designed and implemented in 0.18 μm CMOS technology, the proposed ADC uses a chip area of 220 × 203 μm(2). Operating from a supply voltage of 0.8 V, the ADC consumes 313-582 nW from 5 Hz to 5 kHz and achieves an ENOB up to 7.9 bits.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Electronics Group, Delft University of Technology, 2628CD Delft, The Netherlands. y.li-1@tudelft.nl
authors.forename: Yongjia
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Duan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Wouter A
authors.initials: WA
authors.lastname: Serdijn
mesh_terms: D000703:Analog-Digital Conversion; D001698:Biomedical Engineering; D011211:Electric Power Supplies; D004562:Electrocardiography; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004576:Electromyography; D004582:Electronics, Medical / Q000295:instrumentation; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio