CAREER: Asynchronous Analog-to-Digital Converters with Non-Uniform Discrete-Time Signal Processing

目标：本项目的目标是实现一种以完全异步的方式执行模数转换和抗混叠滤波的新方法，从而显著提高动态范围、功率效率和放宽模拟滤波器的要求。所提出的方法应受益于由于技术扩展而带来的更快的器件速度和数字计算，但避免了总体上出现的模拟电路设计的新挑战。智能优点：智能优点是一类新的异步模数转换器拓扑结构，它使用所提出的非均匀数字信号处理算法对模拟信号进行异步采样，以重构和过滤所产生的不规则样本。提出的架构通过同时执行电压和时间量化，导致了新的设计范式转变，并创建了一条通往模拟等效数字计算的新途径，其灵活性显著提高。广泛影响：这项研究的更广泛影响是，它将把任何涉及模数转换的电子系统从对性能要求苛刻的应用转变为功率受限的应用，如通信和生物医疗设备。该项目的多学科性质提供了一个极好的平台，将相关的研究生和本科生培养成科学和工程领域的下一代领导者。计划中的K-12外联活动和跨学科课程将进一步加强更广泛的影响。

Objective: The objective of this project is to enable a new way of performing analog-to-digital conversion and anti-aliasing filtering in a completely asynchronous fashion, which leads to substantially improved dynamic range, power efficiency and relaxed analog filter requirement. The proposed approach should benefit from the faster device speed and digital computation due to technology scaling but avoid the emerging challenges of analog circuit design in general.Intellectual merit: The intellectual merit is a new class of asynchronous analog-to-digital converter topologies that asynchronously sample the analog signal with the proposed non-uniform digital signal processing algorithms to reconstruct and filter the resultant irregular samples. The proposed architectures lead to a new design paradigm shift by performing both voltage and time quantization, and create a new path towards the analog-equivalent digital computation that is significantly more flexible.Broader impacts: The broader impact of this research is that it will transform any electronic system involving analog-to-digital conversion from performance demanding to power constrained applications, such as communications and biomedical devices. The multidisciplinary nature of the project provides an excellent platform to cultivate the involved graduate and undergraduate students towards the next generation leaders in science and engineering field. The planned K-12 outreach activities and cross-disciplinary courses will further enhance the broader impacts.