IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Summer 2015 - 4

editor's note

R. Jacob Baker

Welcome to the Summer 2015 Issue
of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine!

This issue of IEEE Solid-State Circuits
Magazine focuses on data converters. Guest Editor Boris Murmann has
recruited several world-renowned
engineers and educators to write
articles on the past, present, and
future of data converters. In addition, several articles of interest
to the magazine's readers ranging
from tutorials to technology overviews are included.

Applications Drive Data Converters (and How Changing Data Converter Technology Influences System

Guest Editor
Boris Murmann has
recruited several
world-renowned
engineers and
educators to write
articles on the past,
present, and future
of data converters.

In This Issue
■

■

Walt Kester authors "A Brief History
of Data Conversion." Walt's article
runs the gamut of topics from how
a weighted water metering system
found in Turkey in the 1700s was
an early digital-to-analog converter
to using an electron beam coder
as an analog-to-digital converter
(ADC). The historical discussions,
and perspectives, make for interesting reading.
Following the opening data converter article is Behzad Razavi's
contribution, "A Tale of Two ADCs:
Pipelined Versus SAR," which details
the history and evolution of perhaps
the two most popular Nyquist-rate
ADCs, the pipelined and successive
approximation register (SAR) ADCs.
The article will be of interest to
those who are new to the IC, specifically data converter, design field, as
well as the experienced IC designer.
Next up is Dave Robertson's article, "Problems and Solutions: How

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2015.2449715
Date of publication: 15 September 2015

su m m e r 2 0 15

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Architecture)." Dave's article ponders
the question of whether the market drives technology advances or
if technical breakthroughs actually
create new markets. In addition to
these questions, he discusses limitations and requirements when specifying, or designing, a data converter.
Boris Murmann's article, "The Race
for the Extra Decibel," presents and
documents the development and
progress of ADCs in recent years.
He presents figures of merit and
discusses ADC improvements that
have occurred over time and
trends in ADC design. The information is invaluable to designers
and researchers. The article has
evolved and grown from Prof.
Murmann's often-cited information posted online (which is very,
very, familiar to those engaged in
data converter design).

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

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Prof. Marian Verhelst and Prof. Ahmad Bahai, in "Where Analog Meets
Digital," give an overview of the
emerging field of analog-to-information conversion, which targets
drastic sampling rate reduction
by exploiting heuristic signal attributes to preserve the relevant
signal information. Opportunities,
challenges, and applications when
designing such converters are presented. Those new to this area, like
myself, should find the article extremely useful.
Dr. Earl McCune has contributed
an article, "A Technical Foundation for RF CMOS Power Amplifiers: Part 1: Power Amplifier Key
Issues." In this article series, Earl
will provide a tutorial overview of
the design of CMOS power amplifiers (PAs). This will range from
a discussion of the fundamental
metrics of PA design to the practical design implementations.
In the "Associate Editor's View" column, Dr. Marcel Pelgrom discusses
"The Noble Art of Debugging." Marcel's entertaining column educates
and provokes thought by using an
anecdote to illustrate some specific problem-solving skills that
may be useful, or perhaps familiar,
to you.
Prof. Ali Sheikholeslami continues
his well-received series of articles
in the "Circuit Intuitions" column. In
this issue, he reviews and discusses
Miller's theorem and shares his intuitions and insights for this theorem.
Prof. Behzad Razavi continues
his article series "A Circuit for All

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Summer 2015