A Modulo-Based Architecture for Analog-to-Digital Conversion.

Area of Science:

• Signal Processing
• Information Theory
• Electrical Engineering

Background:

• Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are crucial for systems processing analog signals.
• Current ADCs typically match their dynamic range to the input signal, potentially using excessive bits.
• Digital processing can mitigate statistical correlations but doesn't inherently reduce ADC dynamic range requirements.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an analog-to-digital conversion approach that minimizes the number of bits per sample.
• To reduce the dynamic range requirement of the analog-to-digital converter.
• To explore the theoretical performance limits of this new conversion technique.

Main Methods:

• Implementing a modulo operation on the analog signal's amplitude before quantization.
• Developing a decoder that utilizes the signal's statistical structure to unwrap the modulo folding.
• Proposing an architecture for modulo analog-to-digital conversion using ring oscillators.

Main Results:

• The proposed method significantly reduces the dynamic range of the analog signal.
• Performance approaches information-theoretical limits, as defined by the rate-distortion function.
• Numerical demonstrations confirm the merits of the ring oscillator-based architecture.

Conclusions:

• Modulo analog-to-digital conversion offers a promising method for efficient signal acquisition.
• The technique effectively minimizes bits per sample by managing signal dynamic range.
• The approach is versatile, with decoder performance adaptable to signal statistics.