Patent 7362252 was granted and assigned to MStar Semiconductor on April, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A high order continuous-time Sigma-Delta Modulator (ΣΔM) is used for its high carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) performance and low power consumption. The modulator is designed to allow zero-IF, wide-band low-pass or low-IF flexibility. The sigma-delta ADC modulator includes a receiving circuit, a plurality of loop filter transconductors, a plurality of feedforward weighting amplifiers, a first adding element, at least a local feedback circuit, a quantizer, and a feedback DAC. The local feedback circuit includes a feedback weighting amplifier and a second adding element. The feedback coefficient of the feedback weighting amplifier is tunable, and the local feedback circuits can be designed to maximize bandwidth combination.