A new architecture consisting of a time-interleaved array of pipelined
analog-to-digital converters (ADC's) is presented. A prototype has be
en designed consisting of four switched-capacitor (S/C) multistage pip
elined ADC's in parallel. Hardware cost is minimized by sharing resist
or strings, bias circuitry, and clock generation circuitry over the ar
ray. Digital error correction is employed to ease comparator accuracy
requirements. Techniques are employed to minimize the effect of mismat
ches across the array. A key circuit issue is the design of a high-spe
ed sample-and-hold (S/H) amplifier: a fully differential, mostly NMOS,
non-folded-cascode op-amp topology is used. An experimental chip was
implemented in 1-mum CMOS and 8-b resolution at a sample rate of 85 me
gasamples per second (MS/s) was obtained. Signal-to-noise plus distort
ion (S/(N + D)) was 41 dB for an input sinusoid of 40 MHz.