Time Resolution of NMOS Sampling Switches Used on Low-Swing Signals

A number of recently reported CMOS line receivers and downconversion mixers are based on sampling. A key component in these designs is the NMOS sampling switch. It can sample a very high bandwidth signal, several GHz for a 0.8m transistor. We present an expression for the aperture time for an NMOS switch when the input has low swing. The switch can, under this condition, be modeled as a device that determines a weighted average over time of the input signal. The weight function is derived. The aperture time function shows that the maximum theoretical time resolution for a switch in 0.8m standard CMOS is 21 ps ( 48 Gb/s). SPICE simulations agree with the theory. Transient two-dimensional (2-D) device simulations do not contradict the predicted results. Experiments on a switch made in a 0.8m standard CMOS process show successful sampling of every thirty-second bit of a 5-Gb/s data stream.