A Beam-Forming Track and Hold Amplifier

Abstract:
This paper proposes a novel sampler that performs beam-forming by combining the RX channels in the analog domain. Therefore, several parts from the traditional receiver chain are combined into one beam-forming track and hold amplifier to reduce the overall power consumption and complexity. It directly integrates a true time delay with a phase correct summation unit. The proposed circuit is designed for two RX channels and includes the sampling capacitance of the following time interleaved (TI) analog-to-digital converter (ADC). An overall linearity of 56 dBc together with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) above 52.8 dB at 6 GS/s (one TI lane) is achieved. The proposed circuit obtains a voltage gain of 3.5 dB.