Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 11, 2025

Quantum State Engineering of Light with Continuous-wave Optical Parametric Oscillators
Published on: May 30, 2014
A 174.7-dB FoM, 2nd-Order VCO-Based ExG-to-Digital Front-End Using a Multi-Phase Gated-Inverted-Ring Oscillator
Abstract:
This paper presents a second-order voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO)-based front-end for the direct digitization of biopotential signals. This work addresses the non-linearity of VCO-based ADC architectures with a mismatch resilient, multi-phase quantizer, a gated-inverted-ring oscillator (GIRO), achieving >110-dB SFDR. Leveraging the time-domain encoding of the first integrator, the ADC's power is dynamically scaled with the input amplitude enabling up to 35% power savings in the absence of motion artifacts or interference. An auxiliary input-impedance booster increases the ADC's input impedance to 50 MΩ across the entire bandwidth. Fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS process, this ADC achieves 92.3-dB SNDR in a 1 kHz BW while consuming 5.8 µW for a 174.7 dB Schreier FoM.
Related Concept Videos
Cascaded Op Amps
In a cascaded system, each op-amp is referred to as a stage. The output of one stage drives the input of the subsequent stage. As the input signal passes through...
Inverting and Non-inverting OpAmps
Second-order Op Amp Circuits
The analysis of such circuits follows a systematic approach, similar to the second-order RLC circuits. In practical scenarios, bulky inductors are rarely employed due to their size and weight. This means...
Sum and Difference OpAmps
A summing amplifier, or an adder, utilizes an op-amp to merge multiple input signals into a single output signal. When audio signals are introduced into its input channels, the input resistors initiate currents that traverse feedback resistors, resulting in an output voltage. Applying Kirchhoff's...
Phasor Arithmetics
When the derivative of a sinusoid is taken in the time domain, it transforms into its corresponding phasor multiplied by j-omega (jω) in the phasor domain, where j is the imaginary unit, and ω is the angular...
Design Example: Capacitance Multiplier Circuit
The circuit illustrated in Figure 1 below incorporates two op-amps, with the first operating as a voltage follower and the second acting as an inverting amplifier.

