All-Digital Calibration of Timing Mismatch Error in Time-Interleaved Analog-to-Digital Converters

This paper presents an all-digital background calibration for timing mismatch in time-interleaved analog-to-digital converters (TI-ADCs). It combines digital adaptive timing mismatch estimation and digital derivative-based correction, achieving lower hardware cost and better suppression of timing mismatch tones than previous work. In addition, for the first time closed-form exact expressions for the signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) of a four-channel TI-ADC with timing mismatch after derivative-based digital correction are obtained, which can be used to guide the design. Simulation results of a four-channel TI-ADC behavioral model and measurement results from a commercial 12-bit 3.6-GS/s two-channel TI-ADC show that the proposed all-digital calibration can accurately estimate the timing skew and effectively correct the timing mismatch errors, while also confirming the analytic SNDR expressions.