Bubble Correction in a Flash Analog-To-Digital Converter
AssigneeBroadcom Corporation
InventorsMehdi KHANPOUR, Adesh Garg, Bo Zhang
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Embodiments of a flash analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that can detect and suppress bubbles in a thermometer code of a flash ADC are provided herein. Bubbles can result in large sparkle errors, which degrade the bit error rates (BER) of flash ADCs. The present invention utilizes a bubble correction module that is configured to provide a bubble corrected one-of-N code by suppressing at least one of any two tops that are not separated by at least two levels within a one-of-N code.
Claims24
A thermometer to binary module for converting a thermometer code into a binary code, comprising:
- a one-out-of N module configured to provide a one-of-N code based on the thermometer code;
- a bubble correction module configured to provide a bubble corrected one-of-N code by suppressing at least one of any two tops that are not separated by at least two levels within the one-of-N code;
- and
- a ROM encoder module configured to convert the bubble corrected one-of-N code into a binary code.
An analog-to-digital converter (ADC), comprising:
- a voltage reference module configured to generate a plurality of voltage references;
- a comparator module configured to compare an input voltage to the plurality of voltage references to generate a thermometer code;
- and a thermometer to binary module comprising:
- a one-out-of N module configured to provide a one-of-N code based on the thermometer code;
- a bubble correction module configured to provide a bubble corrected one-of-N code by suppressing at least one of any two tops that are not separated by at least two levels within the one-of-N code;
- and
- a ROM encoder module configured to convert the bubble corrected one-of-N code into a binary code.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.