Analysing degradation effects in charge-redistribution SAR ADCs

Aging-sensitive technology nodes that are resulting in performance degradations in their electronic system implementations require aging simulations in advance for a more dependable design. Simulating time-domain aging effects in these electronic systems, especially in complex analog and mixed-signal systems like analog-to-digital converters, are time consuming and is often impossible for larger designs. The current paper investigates the degradation effects in the performance parameters of a mixed-signal system, a charge-redistribution successive approximation register (SAR) ADC, by using a system-level approach. In this approach the whole system has been divided into its sub-building blocks and the degradation effects of each individual building block have been incorporated into its system-level models. Furthermore, these system-level models have been simulated in LabVIEW in order to investigate the aging effects in static and dynamic performance parameters of a charge-redistribution SAR ADC due to the degradation in its building blocks. The sensitivity of the different static and dynamic performance parameters of the modelled ADC show that the presented technique is efficient to provide information about the aging effects to mixed-signal system designers and that they can use it to produce a more dependable design.