The continued drive toward technology scaling in VLSI design has provided greater integration levels in silicon chips. Thanks to the reduction in minimum feature size and the corresponding decrease in power supply voltage, digital circuits have bene-fited from savings in area and power consumption. This approach presents a number of challenges in Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) analog circuit design. As the gate oxide of transistors becomes thinner and power consumption increases, a lower supply voltage must be used, even though it results in performance degradation of analog circuits. This must be done in order to avoid silicon punch-through. In applications requiring low power consumption and moderate conversion speed, one of the most frequently used analog-to-digital converter (ADC) architec-tures is the successive approximation. As data converters are mixed-signal circuits, containing both analog and digital circuits, they suffer from the same problems just described. This thesis presents the design of a low-voltage successive approximation ADC based on a Switched Opamp comparator. The proposed comparator archi-

Date Approved: August 23, 2011Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-- and a lot of courage-- to move in the opposite direction.-- Albert EinsteinTo all my sweet family and my beloved wife with the most gratitude that I feel stuck that I cannot show it enoughACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to express the most gratitude to my advisor, Prof. John Barry, for his encouragement and support during my time at Georgia Tech. He not only has brightened the way when I was totally lost in finding a lighthouse for my research, but also has continuously inspired me with the guidance for my life. I deeply appreciate every opportunity I had to speak with him and learn from him in person. I learned a lot from his rigorous thought process in defining problems, modeling systems, and solving the problems, which will affect me in one way or another throughout the rest of my research activities. I am also indebted to my co-advisor, Prof. Paul Hasler, who has guided me with his invaluable insights on circuit implementation aspects. Being able to be involved in actual circuit implementation was a great advantage for me to maintain a close distance from practical issues. His advice and directions meant a lot to me whenever I was struggling with