A technique to enable frequency dependent power savings in a level crossing analog-to-digital converter

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel technique for level crossing ADCs that enables frequency-dependent power savings by dynamically trading off power and bandwidth, significantly reducing power consumption.

Contribution

A new method allowing dynamic power-bandwidth trade-off in level crossing ADCs, inspired by synchronous converter principles, demonstrated through simulation.

Findings

Up to 42% OFF time during sine wave conversion

Achieved 45.5% power reduction in simulation

Power savings depend on input signal frequency

Abstract

The level crossing analog-to-digital converters are meant for the effective conversion of sparse signals by construction. In these converters, the bandwidth-power trade-off requires a re-design of the comparators which takes a lot of time and effort to reach the application optimum point. Inspired by synchronous converters that have a dynamic power component that can be traded with bandwidth with the change of a clock frequency, a technique to allow such trade-off in the level crossing converter was developed. The resulting level crossing ADC has an input signal dependent dynamic power which can reach up to 42\% OFF time during the conversion of sine waves, achieving 45.5% power reduction in the simulated design with TSMC 180nm PDK.