Patent ID: 7541961

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: an analog to digital converter (ADC) that digitally samples a signal at a first clock; a first de-multiplexing stage that includes a first plurality of flip-flops (FFs) and a plurality of thermometer encoders, wherein: a first FF of the first plurality of FFs, that is clocked at a second clock, receives the digitally sampled signal from the ADC; a second FF of the first plurality of FFs, that is clocked at an inverted version of the second clock, receives the digitally sampled signal from the ADC; a first thermometer encoder of the plurality of thermometer encoders transforms thermometer coded data output from the first FF of the first plurality of FFs to binary data; and a second thermometer encoder of the plurality of thermometer encoders transforms thermometer coded data output from the second FF of the first plurality of FFs to binary data; and a second de-multiplexing stage that includes a second plurality of FFs, wherein: a first FF of the second plurality of FFs, that is clocked at a third clock that is generated using the second clock, receives the binary data output from the first thermometer encoder; a second FF of the second plurality of FFs, that is clocked at an inverted version of the third clock, receives the binary data output from the first thermometer encoder; a third FF of the second plurality of FFs, that is clocked at a fourth clock that is generated using the second clock, receives the binary data output from the second thermometer encoder; and a fourth FF of the second plurality of FFs, that is clocked at an inverted version of the fourth clock, receives the binary data output from the second thermometer encoder; and wherein: de-multiplexed binary data are output from the second plurality of FFs.