2268 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—I: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 62, NO.
9, SEPTEMBER 2015
Frequency Response Mismatches in 4-channel
Time-Interleaved ADCs: Analysis, Blind
Identification, and Correction
Simran Singh, Lauri Anttila, Michael Epp, Wolfgang Schlecker, and Mikko Valkama
Abstract—This article proposes a novel adaptive architec-
ture for blind identification and compensation of frequency
response mismatches in 4-channel time-interleaved analog-to-dig-
ital-converters (TI-ADCs). Detailed frequency response mismatch
modeling is first carried out elaborating in detail the interleaving
mismatch spurs characteristics. Stemming from the established
mirror-frequency crosstalk nature of the different mismatch
spurs, the interleaving mismatch identification process is then
carried out using complex second-order statistics based methods.
The developed learning algorithm performs the mismatch identi-
fication and learns the mismatch compensation filter parameters
in a blind manner for almost the full digital bandwidth of the
4 TI-ADC system. The proposed solution's efficiency and per-
formance are verified and demonstrated using state-of-the-art
RF-sampling TI-ADC hardware measurements with GHz range
instantaneous bandwidth. In addition to this, the relationship
between a four-channel TI-ADC and an I/Q sampling 2-channel
TI-ADC is explored and an interesting link between the two is
established in this work.
Index Terms—Complex signals and circularity, frequency re-
sponse mismatch identification and correction, Hilbert transform,
I/Q downconversion and mismatches, RF sampling ADC, time-in-
terleaved ADCs.
I. INTRODUCTION
T IME-INTERLEAVED analog-to-digital-converter (TI-
ADC) is a structure that employs multiple analog-to-dig-
ital-converters (ADC) that cyclically sample the analog signal
in parallel at different time instances [2]. Mixed-signal systems,
e.g., radar, communications systems, and measurement instru-
mentation, have an ever growing need for faster analog-to-digital
conversion and larger system bandwidth (BW) at reasonable
power consumption without performance degradation which poses
a challenge to analog circuit developers [3]–[5].
Manuscript received January 04, 2015; revised May 19, 2015; accepted June
22, 2015. Date of current version August 28, 2015. This work was funded in part
by the Academy of Finland (under the project 251138 Digitally-Enhanced RF
for Cognitive Radio Devices) and the Linz Center of Mechatronics (LCM) in the
Austrian COMET-K2 programme. This paper was recommended by Associate
Editor K. Doris.
S. Singh, M. Epp and W. Schlecker are with Airbus Defence, D-89077,
Ulm, Germany (e-mail: simran.singh@airbus.com; michael.epp@airbus.com;
wolfgang.schlecker@airbus.com). S. Singh is also carrying his doctoral
degree with the Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering
at Tampere University of Technology, FI-33101 Tampere, Finland. (email:
simran.singh@tut.fi).
L. Anttila and M. Valkama are with the Department of Electronics
and Communications Engineering at Tampere University of Technology,
P.O. Box 553, FI-33101 Tampere, Finland (e-mail: lauri.anttila@tut.fi;
mikko.e.valkama@tut.fi).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCSI.2015.2459554
1549-8328 © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
The conversion and operation rate of a single ADC with any
given technology is limited in its analog processing path, e.g., due
to the comparator's regeneration time and amplifier's settling time
for a given linearity target [5]. Also the increase in the ADC's
power consumption, e.g., due to the amplifier and comparator, be-
comes non-linear as its operating speed approaches the limit of
the given technology [3]–[5]. Interleaving multiple ADCs helps
alleviate these problems and has achieved record high sampling
rates not achievable with other ADC architectures [3]–[7]. Time-
interleaving multiple ADCs comes, however, not without draw-
backs. Some circuit design challenges that arise are, e.g., multi-
phase clock generation, and more complex input signal and ADC
clock distribution network [3], [5], [8]. An additional strong draw-
back of TI-ADCs is their sensitivity towards the finite analog com-
ponent matching between the parallel ADC paths, which causes
the analog signal sampled in each parallel ADC branch to expe-
rience a different gain, phase change, and channel offset [7], [9].
Upon interleaving, these mismatches between the signals sampled
in the parallel branches cause undesired additional spectral com-
ponents, or spurs, alongside the desired signal. The TI-ADC's spu-
rious-free-dynamic-range (SFDR) decreases and its effective reso-
lution diminishes due to both frequency-independent mismatches
(e.g., static gain, ADC channel offset and timing mismatch) and
frequency-dependent mismatches, e.g., BW mismatch caused by
each parallel ADC's track-and-hold (T/H). [7], [9], [10], [11]. The
static gain, timing, and BW mismatches can be also seen as the fre-
quency response mismatch and exist alongside the ADC channel
offset mismatch.
The potential of TI-ADCs has sparked much research efforts in
their development from the circuit designer community [3]–[5],
[12], and minimizing the mismatches between the interleaved
ADCs is the key to a high performance solution. When interleaved
on chip, careful layout techniques have achieved a 7–8 bits effec-
tive resolution TI-ADC [13]. Hardware (HW) effort can be taken to
further reduce mismatches, e.g., using a two-stage T/H architecture
which reduces dynamic nonlinearity effects and timing mismatch
[5]. However, gain errors are introduced via the sub-ADC T/H's
statistical variance and having a front-rank T/H operating at the
TI-ADC's sampling rate increases power consumption [5], [11],
[13], [14].
As an alternative to increasing the circuit design efforts and
costs, recovering the TI-ADC's lost effective resolution can
be carried out through mismatch correction/calibration. Fre-
quency-selective mismatch correction is critical especially in
applications involving high incoming signal frequencies and high
instantaneous bandwidths which require highly efficient mismatch
identification and compensation for improving the TI-ADC's
SFDR. The frequency response mismatch correction is, in gen-
eral, a task well-suited for the digital domain via digital filters.
However, identifying frequency-dependent mismatches is much
more challenging than static gain, timing and offset mismatch
and is thus of big research interest currently [7], [15], [16]. In an
SINGH et al.: FREQUENCY RESPONSE MISMATCHES IN 4-CHANNEL TIME-INTERLEAVED ADCS 2269

offline procedure, a dedicated measurement setup can be used to

characterize the frequency response mismatches followed by a
filter design procedure to compensate the mismatches [10]. Such
a method is, however, susceptible to any mismatch variation that
may occur over time, causing the effectiveness of the designed
filter to degrade [10]. Therefore, online calibration methods are
of great interest as these can run in the background without inter-
rupting the system's normal operation.
A pioneering example of blind mismatch identification technique
for the 2 TI-ADC case which goes beyond the static gain and timing
mismatch parameter extraction is formulated in [17], which relies
on the assumption of wide sense stationarity of the input signal.
It builds on the polynomial based mismatch modeling from [18]
being fixed to a second order polynomial model to simplify the Fig. 1. A conceptual 4 TI-ADC structure with different branch responses.
iterative mismatch parameter search. The polynomial based mis-
match modeling was also later adopted by compensation solutions
developed in [19], [20]. The polynomial-based compensation struc-
ture in [19] shows promising performance with 4 TI-ADC, how-
ever assuming that the actual mismatch identification has already
been accurately done. The method in [20] attempts to include also
the mismatch identification process in the 2 TI-ADC case via over-
sampling the input signal in order to have a region where only the
interleaving mismatch spurs are present. However, the reference
obtained from this small spectral region does not provide sufficient
information on the frequency response mismatch over the whole
bandwidth. Alternatively, an additional ADC can in principle be
used as reference for detecting the sample value deviation in esti-
mating the frequency response mismatches [21]. This, however, ob-
viously increases the hardware complexity and is also sensitive to
reference ADC characteristics. Recently, two non-blind frequency
response mismatch identification solutions have also been proposed
for 4-channel TI-ADCs [22], [23]. In [22], by feeding a known
signal into the ADC structure, the mismatch estimation and com-
pensation are done using variable digital filter which builds upon
the Gauss-Seidl iteration method. Similarly, [23] uses an internal
reference signal consisting of a band-limited pseudo-random noise
sequence. Least-mean-square algorithm based adaptive filters are
then deployed to minimize the error between the known ideal ref-
erence and the observed TI-ADC output. Fig. 2. Various spectra in the 4 TI-ADC modeling. (d) shows the resulting spec-
Based on the above literature review, blind online frequency re- trum of a real 4 TI-ADC with the response mismatch spurs.
sponse mismatch identification and correction for the full digital
bandwidth of the 4 TI-ADC system is an open research problem,
and thus forms the topic of this paper. Recently, some novel blind The rest of this article is structured as follows. Section II pro-
methods have been proposed for the 2 TI-ADC frequency response vides a real sampling 4 TI-ADC frequency response mismatch
correction based on mapping the TI-ADC problem into the well- modeling, establishing the fundamental nature of the different mis-
known I/Q mismatch problem [24]–[28]. In the 4 TI-ADC case, match spur components and forming the basis for blind mismatch
however, the structure and nature of the mismatch spurs are much identification. Also, the relation to mirror-frequency interference
more complicated than in the basic 2 TI-ADC case [26]. Thus, in and I/Q mismatches in complex I/Q processing is addressed. Sec-
this paper, detailed modeling of the 4 TI-ADC mismatch spurs is tion III then, building upon the developed TI-ADC models and spur
first carried out, with special focus on their spectral characteristics component insight, proposes a novel blind 4 TI-ADC frequency
and mirror-frequency nature. Then, stemming from this modeling, response mismatch identification and correction architecture, to-
a novel blind identification and correction structure, including also gether with practical computing algorithms for parameter learning
the associated blind adaptive learning algorithms, are developed. and tracking. Section IV provides RF hardware measurement
The performance of the proposed solution and algorithms are veri- results, over the 1st and 2nd Nyquist zones, of state-of-the-art GHz
fied using 4-channel TI-ADC RF sampling measurements with in- scale wideband 4 TI-ADC sampling circuit, incorporating also the
stantaneous bandwidth in the order of 1 GHz at both first and second developed identification and correction processing. Also various
Nyquist zones, evidencing high-performance blind correction. As related aspects dealing, e.g., with tracking and convergence are
an additional contribution, the similarity of the frequency response addressed. Finally, in Section V, the relationship between the
mismatch spurs between the considered 4 TI-ADC and an alterna- frequency response mismatch spur characteristics in 4 TI-ADC
tive architecture adopting I/Q sampling and 2 TI-ADCs, consid- and I/Q sampling based 2 TI-ADC structure is established, while
ered in [39], is analyzed and established. It is acknowledged that the concluding remarks are provided in Section VI together with
practical ADCs are commonly also nonlinear in nature, but since possible future research directions.
the TI-ADCs' SFDR performance is typically limited by the mis- II. 4-CHANNEL TI-ADC MISMATCH MODELING
match induced spurs [7], [9], nonlinearities are not considered in
this work. Conceptual structure of a real-sampling 4-channel TI-ADC is
shown in Fig. 1, depicting its operating principle and different fre-
2270 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—I: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 62, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2015

quency responses of the parallel ADCs. Below, its modeling is done with
using an equivalent complex-valued model, being then mapped to
the actual real-valued TI-ADC case, to build better understanding (3)
of the structure of the mismatch induced spurious components and The term in (2), having close
their dependence on the input frequencies. Furthermore, the actual similarity to discrete Fourier transform (DFT), leads to a complex
mismatch identification and cancellation processing, proposed in phasor summation. It is of particular interest as it plays a vital role
this article, deploys complex I/Q processing. Offset mismatches are in the elimination of the aliasing replicas upon interleaving. By
neglected in the analysis as they are independent of the input signal expanding (2) next as
and since methods already exist for their compensation [7], [19].
For notational convenience, all the forthcoming modeling is car-
ried out in discrete-time analog domain, implying impulse-function
based modeling for discrete sequences and omitting the amplitude
quantization step. Due to the periodic nature of the spectrum of
sampled signals, only the region between is
typically considered where and denotes the sam- (4)
pling period after interleaving. In general, and form
a Fourier transform (FT) pair, impulse-function is denoted by it can be seen that there are 4 distinct replica summation patterns,
and denotes the real-part operator of complex quantities. all repeating at intervals of 4 in the summation index . For values
of , the replicas add up while for values of
A. Mismatch-Induced Spurious Components the replicas act to cancel each other out as depicted in Fig. 3.
The continuous-time TI-ADC input signal is denoted by Next, let (4) be re-expressed as
. For modeling purposes, consider the corresponding com-
plex-valued analytic signal with non-zero spectral content (5)
only within as shown in Fig. 2(a), with
denoting a running integer index variable and denoting the where
angular bandwidth. In the special case of first Nyquist sampling,
has its spectral content located between ,
while the higher-order Nyquist zones correspond to . With
4 TI-ADC, the desired aggregate sample rate is achieved
via 4 parallel ADCs, each sampling at rate and different (6)
time-shifts. Modeling-wise, sampling using a single ADC
with rate results in the spectrum of , denoted with Above, and throughout the paper, the notations
, periodically repeating at in the frequency domain and are used. Here, the periodically repeating
as illustrated for in Fig. 2(b). In an individual sampler, replicas are separated into for each value of
aliasing will occur, in general, due to insufficient sampling rate. . As depicted in Fig. 3, for values of the periodic
Then, the insufficient spacing between the periodically repeating spectral replicas of all ADCs are summing up coherently while
spectral replicas in can be increased four fold by inter- for values of they are positioned in a configura-
leaving 4 ADCs as expressed in tion to cancel out one another. In the ideal case, where
, the periodic replicas then cancel
out each other completely for . In practice, however,
(1) the inevitable differences between these responses cause incom-
plete replica cancellation as is illustrated in Fig. 2(c). This spectral
where each ADC samples the signal at the same intervals of illustration shows the most fundamental structure and nature of the
but with relative time shifts , , 1, 2, 3. Furthermore, each mismatch spurs, which will be elaborated further in Section II-C.
ADC branch has its own response, depicted here with impulse re- Next, by taking to finally characterize the actual real-
sponses , or the corresponding frequency responses . valued 4 TI-ADC and its output signal , mirror-frequency con-
The differences between these responses contain the combined ef- tents of all spectral components of are introduced. In gen-
fects of static gain, timing and bandwidth mismatches. As shown eral, the mirror-frequency component of is of the form
in (1), all ADC outputs are multiplexed together to produce a four , and this can be viewed as the unfolding of the spec-
trum as depicted in Fig. 2(d).
times higher output rate, i.e., interleaving the output samples gives
To reflect this, (5) can now be re-expressed as
an effective sampling interval of .
The frequency domain equivalent of (1) can be next shown to
read

(7)

Fig. 4 shows the decomposed spectral content of from Fig.

2(d) where the spectral components are depicted sepa-
rately for better visualization and insight. In the absence of the ADC
mismatches, only the fundamental component is present.
The spur component , in turn, is the same as in the 2-channel
TI-ADC case [1], [26] while and are then addi-
(2) tional spurious components present in the 4-channel TI-ADC case.
SINGH et al.: FREQUENCY RESPONSE MISMATCHES IN 4-CHANNEL TIME-INTERLEAVED ADCS 2271

Fig. 3. Cyclic summation and cancellation of periodically repeating replicas due to the complex phasor term in (4).

C. Mirror-Frequency Nature of Different Mismatch Spurs

Next, the mirror-frequency nature of different mismatch spurs,
established in the previous modeling, is elaborated in more detail
and the similarity of different spur components to the I/Q mis-
match problem known to degrade the SFDR in analog I/Q pro-
cessing based systems [29], [30] is discussed. As established, e.g.,
in [29], [30], I/Q mismatches lead to mirror-symmetric spur compo-
nent, relative to DC, which can be modeled at baseband equivalent
level as an additive complex-conjugate term, generally of the form
. In the 4 TI-ADC case, on the other hand,
the spur is clearly frequency shifted by , when con-
sidering the original positive frequency contents. This then leads
to mirroring type effect, but relative to , which has also been
established in 2 TI-ADC context in [24]–[28]. The spur compo-
nent , in turn, is subject to a frequency translation upwards
by while the spur is subject to corresponding fre-
Fig. 4. Decomposed spectral components of a real-valued 4-channel TI-ADC quency translation downwards. Both and , when
output spectrum. interpreted from the real-valued signal perspective, contain their
own mirror-images as illustrated in Fig. 4. In the next section, these
Furthermore, it can be seen from Figs. 3(b) and 3(d) that if no mis- interpretations and established nature of the spur components will
matches exist between & and between & be used for blind 4 TI-ADC mismatch estimation and correction
, then the spur components and do not exist. purposes. This can be seen as a strong extension of the earlier works
Spur exists when either or has a mismatch reported in [24], [25], [27] which have focused in full on 2 TI-ADC
with or as can be inferred from Fig. 3(c). case.
In general, a first Nyquist IF-sampling scenario was assumed in III. BLIND 4-CHANNEL TI-ADC FREQUENCY RESPONSE
the previous spectral illustrations. The modeling, on the other hand, MISMATCH IDENTIFICATION AND CORRECTION
applies also to higher-order Nyquist zone cases as well, and is thus
of generic nature. It is, however, to be noted that when going to The overall 4 TI-ADC mismatch correction process is divided
higher Nyquist zones, the absolute frequency response mismatch into the mismatch identification and compensation stages. The mis-
levels typically tend to increase [7], [9], hence calling for very match correction principle adopted in this paper involves recre-
efficient mismatch identification and cancellation to enhance the ating accurate estimates of the interleaving mismatch spur compo-
SFDR. nents , and and then subtracting these from
the TI-ADC output . This can be accomplished if estimates
of the effective frequency responses, i.e., , and
B. Replica Rejection Ratio Analysis have been identified.

The replica rejection ratio (RRR) refers to the ratio between A. Proposed 4 TI-ADC Mismatch Processing Architecture
the fundamental component and the interleaving spurious The proposed identification and correction architecture builds
replicas . Stemming from (6), the RRR on the idea of processing the original TI-ADC output signal
which quantifies the TI-ADC's SFDR can then be expressed as such that appropriate complex-valued identification signals are cre-
the logarithmic ratio between and a specific , ated where the selected spur components are in mirror-symmetric
written as nature relative to the fundamental signal terms. After that, circu-
larity-based statistical learning algorithms, developed originally for
(8) blind I/Q mismatch estimation [30], can be deployed for blind mis-
match identification and thereon for spur recreation and correction.
The ADC's complex response can be expressed as Furthermore, the approach of this paper is based on sequential pro-
for with cessing, where identification and correction of spur is car-
denoting the frequency-dependent gain response deviations and ried out first, followed by the processing for spurs and
denoting the phase response deviations from the nominal .
values. Using the above expressions, one can easily evaluate that 1) Spur : First, let an analytic complex-valued signal be
reaching an RRR in the order of, e.g., 80 dB requires already 0.01% generated from , e.g., via Hilbert transform (HT) as
gain and 0.01 phase matching, which is extremely challenging to
achieve by means of any analog circuit matching. The RRR will be (9)
graphically illustrated later in Section III with practical mismatch where denotes a Hilbert filter impulse response. Then, as
values. the spur component is essentially similar to the 2 TI-ADC
2272 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—I: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 62, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2015

case, a mismatch identification signal for its identification can

be constructed as [24], [25], [27]
(10)

with , denoting a complex exponential os-

cillating at . The spectrum of , denoted by , is de-
picted in Fig. 5. The spur component is deliberately placed
at the mirror frequency position of and is essentially con-
structed the same manner as in [27] but contains now also addi-
tional interleaving spurs and as depicted in Fig. 5.
Thus, the spectral components in the mismatch identification signal
can be decomposed as where
the desired spectral component is of the form

(11) Fig. 5. Mismatch identification signal fed into an I/Q mismatch extraction
with and being the desired I/Q signal pair
correction block for blind parameter estimation and thereon for reconstruction
created for the spur mismatch identification as is illustrated of the spur in 4 TI-ADC.
in Fig. 5(a). The bias spectral component , on the other
hand, is given by
2) Spurs and : After suppressing the spur ,
the next processing stages pursue the identification and reconstruc-
tion of the remaining spur components and in . As
can be seen in Fig. 4, this task has an essential difference com-
pared to the previous stage in the sense that and do
not share common frequencies, and hence the bias problem can
be circumvented. Now, a mismatch identification signal can
be constructed for the identification of by highpass filtering
around , followed by a frequency shift
(12) of through multiplication with . This is then added to
to create mirror-frequency pairs where the spur compo-
nents are again in mirror-symmetric manner relative to the
with , , and fundamental signal terms. This is written more formally as
being the bias I/Q signal pairs as is also illustrated in Fig. 5(b).
Here, denotes the first half of the spectral content (15)
originating from while
denotes the second half of the spectral content originating from where denotes the HP filter impulse response. A principal
. spectrum of the identification signal, , is depicted in Fig. 6
Now, feeding into an I/Q mismatch extraction block, as and the spectral content is more formally given by
illustrated in Fig. 5, yields a filter measuring the relative
strength of the spur . This leads to the following frequency
responses of the form
for
(13)
for
with denoting the bias due to the other spur components,
acting as noise from the mismatch identification perspective. More
detailed analysis on the impact of will be carried out in Sec-
tion III-C. Then, filtering with the obtained filter , an (16)
estimate of the spur, denoted by , is obtained. Finally, taking with being the established
yields an estimate of the actual real-valued spur I/Q mirror pairs. Feeding then the identification signal into an
which can be subtracted from giving a compensated signal I/Q mismatch extraction block results in a filter measuring
of the form the relative strength of the spur . This leads to the following
frequency response given by
for
for (17)
for ,
(14) Now, can be filtered with and then frequency shifted
by to reconstruct an estimate of the spur , written
as
where the spur component is considerably reduced. This com-
pensation flow is depicted in Fig. 6. (18)
SINGH et al.: FREQUENCY RESPONSE MISMATCHES IN 4-CHANNEL TIME-INTERLEAVED ADCS 2273

Fig. 6. Proposed 4-channel TI-ADC mismatch identification and compensation structure using complex I/Q signal processing and circularity-based blind param-
eter learning.

Stemming from Fig. 4, the identification of spur can be This signal is the final corrected output signal, having all three in-
accomplished in similar manner, by first constructing a mismatch terleaving spur components , and reduced.
identification signal . The signal is constructed by low- The spur components' removal process, as a complete flow, is de-
pass filtering around using , picted in Fig. 6 which incorporates all the identification and cor-
followed by a frequency shift of through multiplication by rection steps discussed above. Generally speaking, the transition
before adding it with , to form appropriate mirror-fre- regions inherent to the adoption of the digital filters (HT, LPF,
quency pairs where now the spur components are in mirror- HPF) affect the spur references at their edges, i.e., the spur com-
symmetric manner relative to the fundamental signal terms. This is ponents , and in the baseband sampling
written as scenario, and prohibits obtaining a complete spur component ref-
erence over exactly full digital bandwidth of the system. However,
(19)
in an IF-sampling scenario this is not a problem as the usage of
anti-aliasing filters anyhow restrict the usage of the full digital BW
Fig. 6 depicts a principal spectrum of with the spectral con- at the edges [28]. It is also acknowledged that even though the
tent being given by principal processing diagram in Fig. 6 integrates together both mis-
match estimation and mismatch correction stages, also an alterna-
tive processing structure can be adopted where these two stages
are more decoupled. In such an alternative structure, the core mis-
match reconstruction and cancellation can be performed without
any Hilbert transform or LPF/HPF stages, which is thus very suit-
able for on-chip implementations, while the mismatch and correc-
(20) tion filter estimation would be then running on separate processing
platform, e.g., as done in [8]. Next, the exact circularity-based blind
learning algorithms for the 4 TI-ADC mismatch extraction are ad-
Here, denote the I/Q mirror dressed in more details.
pairs indicated in Fig. 6. Next, feeding into an I/Q mismatch
extraction block results in a filter with the frequency re- B. Circularity-Based Blind Learning Algorithms
sponse The proposed novel mismatch compensation structure relies on
for complex-valued identification signals , created as
elaborated in detail above. In all these identification signals, the
for (21) interleaving spur component at hand is placed at the mirror-fre-
quency position of the fundamental signal component and this con-
for , verts the interleaving mismatch problem into an effective I/Q mis-
match problem, allowing second-order statistics (SoS), e.g., circu-
Then, an estimate of the spur can be reconstructed larity/properness [30], to be utilized as an efficient feature when
by filtering with followed by a frequency shift of estimating the filters , and blindly. With an arbi-
as given in trary complex signal , SoS functions of particular importance
(22) in this context are:
• The expected value or mean, .
Finally, by taking and , real-valued spur
estimates and are obtained, respectively, which can be • The auto-correlation function (ACF),
subtracted from to produce as given in , where is the time-lag.
• The complementary auto-correlation function (CACF),
(23) .
2274 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—I: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 62, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2015

In the following developments, the mismatch identification

signal is assumed for presentation purposes. Blind identifi-
cation with and can be carried out in a similar manner. .. .. .. ..
. . . .
Now, let the spectral components in with its I/Q pairs,
given in (16), be first grouped as
(30)

.. .. .. .. (31)
. . . .

(24) As described in (28) this solution requires computing ,

whose computational complexity increases with the number of taps
. An alternative computing method can therefore be used where
with being the desired spectral component, the the above block solution in (28) is iteratively calculated, in the form
filtered mirror frequencies of and the remaining of , by using an internal feedback signal as [29]
frequency components. Note that and are the
same components previously grouped as , (32)
and in (16) but are now only grouped differently. A Here, ,
prerequisite for using circularity to learn is that and its and
underlying components, , and must have zero denotes a diagonal step-size matrix
mean, i.e., . controlling the convergence rate. Then, is applied in the
The second prerequisite is that , and must be next iteration in filtering the identification signal as given by
circular, i.e., the CACF of, e.g., is of the form
(33)
where . The initial
(25) value for can be set to all zeros and its convergence is
indicating that there is no correlation between and for reached when , thus implying that
any given [30]. Now, due to the TI-ADC mismatch, the identifi- [29], [30].
cation signal contains overlayed with a filtered , In general, while the above derivations on utilizing circularity
in the form of . Therefore will have a correlation with are done using , similar findings can be established for mis-
and this leads to as well as more generally match identification signals and . These are, however,
. Furthermore, it is important to note that not explicitly reported due to space constraints. It is also noted that
shares no mirror-frequency relationship with other spectral the circularity-based learning algorithm adopted here is only one of
components, i.e., and , as is also shown in (16), and the different variants presented in the literature [31]–[35]. Further-
thus does not impact the circularity. Therefore, circularity can in- more, the exact algorithm to measure circularity is basically decou-
deed be deployed to measure the content of in and pled from the mismatch identification architecture presented in this
thus to blindly identify the filter needed to reconstruct the as- work, which places the interleaving spur at the mirror frequency
sociated spur. position enabling the use of mirror frequency correlation-based al-
In a simple frequency-independent case, the filter parameter gorithms such as circularity. Therefore the same mismatch identi-
restoring the circularity can be calculated as [30] fication architecture can be used in conjunction with any other cir-
cularity-related computing algorithms with different learning and
(26) tracking capabilities [31].
Overall, one sufficient condition for successful blind identifi-
where , and the compensa- cation that can be established from the analysis reported in this
tion filter impulse response is . In practice, sample- paper can be summarized as follows: when the overall wideband
statistics over a block of samples can be used to approximate the in- composite input signal is composed of multiple modulated carrier
volved ensemble-statistics. An approximated simplified estimator, waveforms, such that the complex baseband equivalents of the in-
stemming from (26), reads dividual modulated carriers are circular (which applies, e.g., to all
typical M-PSK and M-QAM modulated signals) and mutually un-
(27) correlated, the blind identification can be successfully carried out,
even if the original input signal components and spurious compo-
The above frequency-independent solutions can, however, only nents are overlapping. It is also noted here that a notch filter can be
correct for the mean value of the actual frequency-dependent mis- used to remove any DC content from the mismatch identification
matches. In order to accommodate true frequency-dependent mis- signal, before it is fed into the mismatch identification block to ex-
match identification and correction, the above frequency-indepen- tract the mismatch parameters, to fulfill the requirement needed to
dent solution in (26) can be extended as follows. By first expanding utilize second-order statistics based learning methods [36].
the circularity-based cost function into , with
, a frequency-dependent C. On the Influence of Bias in the Mismatch Estimates
identification solution, represented here as an -tap compensation
As depicted already in (13), the estimation of the correction filter
filter , can be calculated as [30]
using the identification signal is subject to bias due to
(28) the I/Q pair formed between spur and , established
where in (12). Fig. 7 depicts a principal spectrum of , which will
be used in the below bias analysis, constructed from the 4 TI-ADC
output signal with a single CW tone located originally at , with
(29) as in the numerical example in Fig. 8. Although
SINGH et al.: FREQUENCY RESPONSE MISMATCHES IN 4-CHANNEL TIME-INTERLEAVED ADCS 2275

TABLE I
EXAMPLE ADC MISMATCH VALUES FOR RRR CALCULATIONS

Fig. 7. Single CW tone example for bias component analysis.

Fig. 9. Simulated multi-QPSK signal spectrum subject to 4 TI-ADC mis-

matches before and after correction.

Fig. 8. Illustration of finite Replica Rejection Ratio (RRR) for real-valued

4-channel TI-ADC spectrum with mismatches from Table I followed by
achievable post correction (RRR) in presence of bias component .

there are two sets of I/Q pairs present in , for this bias anal-
ysis it suffices to take one of the two, e.g., the I/Q pairs located
between , given by

Fig. 10. Simulated multi-tone test scenario to visualize and characterize the
correction performance of the filters obtained with the signal in Fig. 9.

(34)
IV. CONCEPT VERIFICATION VIA SIMULATIONS AND RF
HARDWARE MEASUREMENTS
with . Calculating then using (27) and the iden-
tification signal yields after straight-forward manipulations A. Simulation-Based Verification
First, the proposed correction method is tested in a simulation en-
(35) vironment using a non-contiguous wideband waveform with mul-
tiple different signals at different center-frequencies. Fig. 9 shows
an example multi-QPSK signal scenario, where the weaker sig-
Thus, the bias in the filter response is simply the difference to the nals are clearly subject to interference from the 4 TI-ADC inter-
ideal value obtained in the absence of and , which can leaving mismatch spur components originating from the stronger
now be written as signals. Apart from the 4 TI-ADC spurs, the second and third-order
non-linear distortion terms are also modeled and present in the ob-
(36) served spectrum, in order to have a realistic verification environ-
ment. Using the proposed 4 TI-ADC interleaving mismatch cor-
rection method in Fig. 6 and (28) with 8 tap filters, the interleaving
mismatch spur correction is then performed with an observation
Hence, the bias is a product of two small quantities, and can thus block of 262 k samples for blind parameter estimation. Further-
be concluded small. To quantify this, the limit of the achievable more, the obtained correction filter coefficients are applied to an
post-correction RRR of spur in the presence of additional multitone CW test signal, subject to the same 4 TI-ADC
can be expressed logarithmically as mismatches, but without any additional non-idealities, e.g., non-
linear distortion, to verify and better visualize the interleaving spur
component reduction as illustrated in Fig. 10. This demonstrates
(37) the efficiency of the proposed 4 TI-ADC frequency response mis-
match estimation approach as the residual spur level is now close to
the 80 dBc mark. Also, it is herewith shown that the presence of
A simulated tone-based example using the mismatch values in non-linear distortion does not obstruct the usage of circularity. Fi-
Table I is illustrated in Fig. 8. This shows the 3 different spurious nally, Fig. 11 shows the mean RRR improvement of the interleaving
components, established in the analysis, as well as the negligible spurs , , and achieved in the above verifica-
impact of the bias in post-correction RRR of spur . Next, the tion scenario for various estimation sample lengths, averaged over
actual concept verification simulations and RF measurements are 100 realizations. It clearly shows consistent and increasing mean
carried out. RRR improvement for increasing sample lengths.
2276 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—I: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 62, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2015
Fig. 11. Mean RRR improvement of the interleaving spurs , ,
and for different estimation sample lengths, averaged over 100 real-
izations in the simulation based verification experiments.
B. Measurement Hardware
Next, the proposed correction method is tested using a wide-
band RF sampling ADC, the ADC12D1800RF [37], which has two
main ADCs with a sampling rate of 1.8 GHz that can be inter-
leaved to reach an aggregate sample rate of 3.6 GHz. The main
ADCs both consist of 2 time-interleaved sub-ADCs, making it a
4 TI-ADC as a whole. The ADC has the largest analog BW of
2.7 GHz available when it is operated in the DESIQCLK mode,
but it requires careful analog hardware matching when supplying
the differential input signals to the two ADC channels [37] to en-
sure that the interleaving mismatches are minimized. During the
ADC12D1800RF measurements, a single balun board, the TC1
DESIQ, is used when providing the differential input signals to the
two 1.8 GHz ADCs [38]. This setup is somewhat suboptimal due
to the balun board's limited matching accuracy and the need to use
external carefully matched cables to connect the ADC inputs. Ad-
ditional frequency response mismatch is thus introduced and con-
sequently the interleaving mismatch spurs cannot be significantly
reduced by adjusting the clock phase alone [38], hence making the
setup a good and challenging platform for digital post-correction
performance evaluations. In general, the TI-ADC data is collected
from the ADC12D1800RF evaluation platform and the mismatch
analysis and correction operation that follow are performed on a
PC.
C. Analysis of Measured Frequency Response Mismatches
Without Correction
The ADC12D1800RF is set to operate at a sampling frequency of
2.9 GHz and using single tone CW signals swept across the 1st and
2nd Nyquist zones, an estimate of the frequency response mismatch
for this hardware configuration is first measured for a total of about
100 frequency points at different temperature values, i.e., 40 , 20
, and 0 . The measured strengths of the spurs
and are depicted in Fig. 12. These sparse single-tone mea-
surements are sufficient for obtaining a rough estimate of the fre-
quency response mismatch characteristics of the used HW setup. It
can also be clearly observed in Fig. 12, that the interleaving mis-
match reference, if obtained via oversampling the TI-ADC input
signal, will be limited in its performance as the mismatches vary
considerably outside any such reference region [20], hence moti-
vating for the blind wideband processing solutions.
As can be inferred from Fig. 12, the performance of any offline
designed mismatch correction filter, e.g., [10], will degrade during
the TI-ADC's operation due to mismatch variations, stemming from
temperature changes. This gives a clear indication for the need to ei-
ther regularly recalibrate or utilize adaptive online algorithms [18].
The frequency dependent gain, phase and interleaving mismatch
spur level (the RRR) of the ADC12D1800RF in the DESIQCLK
mode are shown in Fig. 12, where strong variations are observed
in the gain and phase mismatches across the 1st and 2nd Nyquist
zones.
Fig. 12. ADC12D1800RF [37] spurs , , and and
RRR measurements over the 1st Nyquist zone (0 to 1.45 GHz) and 2nd Nyquist
zone (1.45 GHz to 2.9 GHz) in DESCLKIQ mode @ 3 dBFS at 40 , 20
, and 0 with 2.9 GHz sampling frequency.
Fig. 13. Measured ADC12D1800RF multi-tone spectrum at 20 in the 1st
Nyquist zone (0 to 1.45 GHz) zone before and after correction.
D. Measured Performance With Proposed Identification and
Correction Structure
Next, the measured performance of the ADC12D1800RF is eval-
uated and illustrated incorporating the proposed blind mismatch
identification and correction processing. A set of of continuous
wave (CW) sinusoidal signals were injected sequentially into the
first and second Nyquist zones (NZ) of the ADC12D1800RF, re-
spectively, and the TI-ADC output data was collected. Then, a chal-
lenging and suitable test scenario can be created to demonstrate and
evaluate the frequency response mismatch correction by adding to-
gether multiple datasets of the collected single tone measurements.
Such an addition causes an increase in the noise spectral density
but it is not a relevant issue as the purpose is to only evaluate
and demonstrate the interleaving mismatch spur rejection capabil-
ities. Two multi-tone scenarios are experimented upon, one at the
first NZ, between 0 to 1.45 GHz, and another one at the second
NZ, between 1.45 GHz to 2.9 GHz, as depicted in Figs. 13 and
14, with their respective interleaving spurs marked. This wideband
multi-tone signal is next processed using the proposed mismatch
correction architecture, where the blind correction filter estimation
was performed using the iterative solution in (32), with a total of 16
taps per correction filter. The used measured data sample length is
16 k and the corrected signal spectra are illustrated in Figs. 13 and
14, where it is seen that spurs , , and have
all been reduced down to the noise floor.
Next, the mismatch correction taps obtained at 20 were ap-
plied to the set of data measured at 40 , and the corresponding
correction results are shown in Fig. 15. These filter tap values do
provide a certain degree of spur reduction, although the perfor-
mance is clearly not optimal anymore as can be seen in Fig. 15.
Then, an update of the filter coefficients is carried out using the
SINGH et al.: FREQUENCY RESPONSE MISMATCHES IN 4-CHANNEL TIME-INTERLEAVED ADCS 2277

17(b). The signal is simply the signal , shown in Fig. 2(a),

frequency shifted by , i.e., . As
is I/Q downconverted and the resulting I and Q signals are
sampled with 2 TI-ADCs, the I and Q signals are subject to dif-
ferent responses and the final interleaved complex output signal,
denoted here with , contains various spurious components that
again degrade the SFDR. Assuming that the TI-ADCs in the I and
Q branches have an effective sample rate of , the spectrum of
, can be expressed in terms of the ideal complex signal spec-
trum as [39]
Fig. 14. Measured ADC12D1800RF multi-tone spectrum at 20 in the
second Nyquist (1.45 GHz to 2.9 GHz) zone before and after correction.

Fig. 15. Measured ADC12D1800RF multi-tone spectrum at 40 in the

second Nyquist (1.45 GHz to 2.9 GHz) zone. The before update plot shows the
spectrum where mismatch correction is performed using the taps obtained at 20
. The after update plot shows the spectrum where the mismatch correction
is done using the new correction parameters obtained using the iteratively
calculated taps.

(38)
with , , being lin-
early distorted version of , being the interleaving
spur component, being the image spur component, and
being the interleaving spur's image component, as shown
in Fig. 17(c). Due to space constraints, the interested readers are
Fig. 16. Tap convergence characteristic vs time shown for the first tap, for referred to [39] for more information on the frequency responses
tracking and updating the cancellation of the spur due to the temper-
ature change of the measurement scenario shown in Fig. 15. The initial state
, , and .
corresponds to the filter obtained using the data measured at a temperature of Then, for modeling purposes and to establish the relationship
20 while then the data set measured at 40 is fed in to the algorithm, em- between the considered I/Q sampling 2 TI-ADC scenario and the
ulating an abrupt change in temperature, and the filter adaptation is carried out. earlier 4-channel TI-ADC, let the signal be upsampled by a
factor of 2 and then low pass filtered between
iterative algorithm described in the manuscript, using again 16 k with to give an interpolated signal , as depicted in
samples of measured data, after which the interleaving mismatch Fig. 17(d). Next, the interpolated signal can be frequency
spurs are again pushed down to the noise floor. Tap convergence shifted by via multiplication with , as shown in
characteristics vs time are shown in Fig. 16 for the first tap, for Fig. 17(e), and the real part of this complex valued signal is taken
tracking and updating the cancellation of the spur K2 due to the which causes the spectrum to unfold, as shown in Fig. 17(f). The
temperature change of the measurement scenario shown in Fig. 15. resulting signal is deliberately labeled and can be mathemat-
As can be observed, fast and reliable convergence to the new values ically expressed as
are clearly obtained. In practice, temperature changes occur gradu-
(39)
ally, which means that a large time window is available for tracking
such changes. Thus, this explicitly establishes the relationship between the ear-
lier 4 TI-ADC signal, denoted also with , and the complex
V. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN 4-CHANNEL TI-ADC AND I/Q I/Q 2 TI-ADC signal . Notice that in Fig. 17(e), the spectral
SAMPLING 2-CHANNEL TI-ADC components of and between
This section examines the relationship between a four-channel are grouped together as are also the spectral components between
TI-ADC and an alternative I/Q sampling two-channel TI-ADC, . This helps interpreting the nature of the spec-
building on the comprehensive modeling of the I/Q sampling two- tral components as they unfold and, as can be seen in Fig. 17(f),
channel TI-ADC carried out in [39] and [40]. Both converter prin- the structure of the spurs correspond to the structure of the spurs
ciples do in fact adopt 4 ADC units in parallel but the ADCs are of a 4 TI-ADC as shown in Fig. 4. maps into
used in different manner in each converter principle. Now, con- and maps into , similar as in the lowpass-band-
sider an RF signal , as shown in Fig. 17(a), whose ideal com- pass transformation of the direct downconversion receiver and the 2
plex baseband (BB) envelope is denoted by , as depicted in Fig. TI-ADC [27], [28], while the spur components and
2278 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—I: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 62, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2015
Fig. 17. Illustration of a time domain signal transform that links I/Q downconversion based 2-channel TI-ADC conversion to 4-channel TI-ADC scenario. Also
different spectral characteristics of the associated spurious components due to frequency response mismatches are shown.
consist in part of both and . This indicates that a
four-channel TI-ADC and an I/Q sampling two-channel TI-ADC
are indeed linked via a lowpass-bandpass conversion. Thus, this
indicates that the frequency response mismatch correction in these
two alternative converter structures can potentially be carried out
with similar processing principles. This forms an interesting topic
which will be examined in the authors' future work.
VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS
This article addressed the modeling, digital identification and
suppression of the 4 TI-ADC frequency-response mismatch spurs.
The first contribution is related to the modeling of these mismatch
spurs from a complex I/Q signal perspective, where the origin and
nature of the different interleaving spur components were studied
and analyzed analytically. Then, stemming from this modeling, a
novel digital frequency response mismatch estimation and correc-
tion method for a 4 TI-ADC was proposed. By generating appro-
priate complex valued mismatch identification signals from the real
valued TI-ADC output, the mirror frequency nature of different
interleaving mismatch spurs is used to extract the frequency re-
sponse mismatches in a blind manner, where the mismatch param-
eter learning algorithms originally developed for the I/Q mismatch
case can be adopted. This enables the frequency response mismatch
estimation to be carried out in a fully blind manner online, cov-
ering almost the whole digital bandwidth of the 4 TI-ADC, a feature
not available in other methods found in the existing literature. The
proposed method's efficiency was demonstrated and evaluated by
correcting an actual wide-band RF sampling TI-ADC board's mea-
sured data, covering both 1st and 2nd Nyquist zones in challenging
wideband RF sampling scenarios with instantaneous bandwidths of
more than 1 GHz. Also, an interesting lowpass-bandpass relation-
ship between a four-channel TI-ADC and an alternative I/Q sam-
pling two-channel TI-ADC was established in this work. The future
work will focus on generalizing the processing principles to arbi-
trary number of parallel ADCs as well on developing a real-time
prototype of the digital correction processing.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank H. Brugger, U. Schneider and
M. Schlumpp from Airbus Defense and Space for supporting and
enabling this research work.
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Simran Singh received his Dipl.-Ing. (FH) and
M.Sc. degrees from Hochschule Aalen, Germany,
in 2010 and 2012. He has been with Airbus Defence
and Space, Ulm, Germany, since 2009. He is also a
doctoral candidate at Tampere University of Tech-
nology (TUT), Tampere, Finland, at the Department
of Electronics and Communications Engineering.
His field of interests include digital signal processing
algorithm development in particular for mitigating
analog circuit non-idealities to enhance system
performance.
Lauri Anttila received his M.Sc. and D.Sc. (Tech)
degrees from Tampere University of Technology
(TUT), Tampere, Finland, in 2004 and 2011, re-
spectively. Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Research
Fellow at the Department of Electronics and Com-
munications Engineering at TUT. His research
interests include signal processing for communica-
tions, digital front-end signal processing in flexible
radio transceivers, power-efficient transmitter struc-
tures, and full-duplex radio systems.
Michael Epp received his Dipl.-Ing. (FH) from the
Kempten University of Applied Sciences, Germany,
in 1997. Since 1997, he is working at Airbus Defence
and Space, Ulm, Germany, in the Department of Pro-
grammable Hardware as a specialist for analog-to-
digital converters. Since 2008, he works on the topic
Digitally Assisted Analog to increase converter and
Rx/Tx performance and in the same research area he
has filed two patents. He has coauthored 11 articles in
international peer reviewed journals and conferences.
Wolfgang Schlecker received his Dipl.-Ing. and
Ph.D. degrees from University of Ulm, Germany,
in 1999 and 2006, respectively. Since 2006, he
is working at Airbus Defence and Space, Ulm,
Germany, in the Department of Digital Hardware,
FPGAs, and ASICs as a specialist for FPGAs and
ASICs. Since 2008, he works on the topic Digitally
Assisted Analog to increase converter and Rx/Tx
performance.
Mikko Valkama received the M.Sc. and Ph.D.
degrees (both with honors) in electrical engineering
(EE) from Tampere University of Technology
(TUT), Finland, in 2000 and 2001, respectively.
Currently, he is a Full Professor and Department
Vice-Head at the Department of Electronics and
Communications Engineering at TUT. His general
research interests include communications signal
processing, full-duplex radio systems, radio local-
ization, and 5 G mobile cellular radio.