A Low-Complexity Correlation-Based Time Skew Estimation Technique for Time-Interleaved SAR ADCs

This paper presents a technique to estimate the time skew in time-interleaved ADCs. The proposed method estimates all of the time skew parameters jointly based on observations from a bank of correlators. The proposed method works for an arbitrary number of sub-ADCs. For implementation of the correlator bank, we propose the use of Mitchell's logarithmic multiplier and a hardware reuse mechanism, thereby reducing the complexity and power consumption. Also, we explain why blind estimation techniques alone (including the proposed one) are not always sufficient for time skew estimation for certain classes of input signal; for the proposed approach, however, a simple modification to the analogue circuit (suitable for SAR ADCs) is shown to successfully deal with such problems, with only a minor penalty in power and area. The technique is verified by extensive simulations including a spectrally rich input signal in which an MTPR (multi-tone power ratio) improvement from 29dB to 62dB was achieved for a TIADC system having 16 sub-ADCs.