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An analogtodigital converter (ADC) acts as a bridge between the analog and digital worlds. It is
a necessary component whenever data from the analog domain, through sensors or transducers,
should be digitally processed or when transmitting data between chips through either longrange
wireless radio links or highspeed transmission between chips on the same printed circuit board
(PCB).
The AnalogToDigital ConverterThe conversion of an analog signal to digital quantizes the input in both time and amplitude. Quantization
in time (referred to as sampling) is performed either by an explicit sampleandhold circuit, as is done in
most ADC architectures, or distributed across several comparators as is done in flash ADCs. The
amplitude quantization (referred to just as quantization) approximates the input signal given a set of fixed
reference levels. The number of possible quantization levels determines the resolution of the ADC, which
is typically described with the number of binary bits, n, needed to represent the quantization level.
Nyquist Rate:
The sampling of an input signal with bandwidth fb with a sample rate of fs of twice the signal bandwidth
is referred to as Nyquist sampling and given fixed and equidistant sampling instances this process does
not introduce any error as the signal can be ideally reconstructed.
CHARACTERISTICS:
1. QUANTIZATION ERROR:
In contrast to sampling, the quantization introduces errors which cannot be removed. Figure below how a
normalized input between 0 and 1 is mapped to the corresponding output codes using the midriser
convention given in, where the first transition occurs qs above Vmin. Here, qs correspond to the
quantization step size and Vmin is the lower end of the input range. qs = VFS/2n
Where VFS is the fullscale input range and is defined as:
VFS = Vmax Vmin
If the analog input signal is approximated with a corresponding analog output, Vout where Dout is the
decimal value of the output code then the quantization error, , is described by .
Vout=
= Vout Vin
2. RESOLUTION:
The resolution of the converter indicates the number of discrete values it can produce over the range of
analog values. The resolution determines the magnitude of the quantization error and therefore determines
the maximum possible average signal to noise ratio for an ideal ADC without the use of oversampling.
The values are usually stored electronically in binary form, so the resolution is usually expressed in bits.
In consequence, the number of discrete values available, or "levels", is assumed to be a power of two. For
example, an ADC with a resolution of 8 bits can encode an analog input to one in 256 different levels,
since 28 = 256. The values can represent the ranges from 0 to 255 (i.e. unsigned integer) or from 128 to
127 (i.e. signed integer), depending on the application.
Resolution can also be defined electrically, and expressed in volts. The minimum change in voltage
required to guarantee a change in the output code level is called the least significant bit (LSB) voltage.
The resolution Q of the ADC is equal to the LSB voltage. The voltage resolution of an ADC is equal to its
overall voltage measurement range divided by the number of discrete values:where M is the ADC's
resolution in bits and EFSR is the full scale voltage range (also called 'span'). EFSR is given
bywhere VRefHi and VRefLow are the upper and lower extremes, respectively, of the voltages that can be
coded.Normally, the number of voltage intervals is given bywhere M is the ADC's resolution in bits.[1]
That is, one voltage interval is assigned in between two consecutive code levels.
Example:
..
.
Flash ADCs The most parallel converter architecture. The entire conversion is complete
within one clock cycle.
Folding and Interpolating ADCs These are closely related to flash ADCs but using a
multistep implementation. The conversion is often finished within one clock cycle.
Pipeline ADCs Several algorithmic stages are pipelined to form the pipeline ADC
architecture. The latency is the same as for the algorithmic architecture but the
throughput is increased at the cost of additional area.
Flash ADCs:
The flash ADC architecture offers the highest potential sample rate of all the different architectures . The
correct quantization level is decided through the parallel comparison of the input signal to all 2n1
reference levels. The reference levels are typically generated through a resistor ladder where 2n equally
sized resistor are used to generate the reference voltages. Each comparator will then decide whether the
input signal is larger than this reference level, generating a 1 on the output if this is case and a 0
otherwise. The output from the comparator array will then be thermometer coded, named from the
analogy with the mercury level in a classical thermometer. In the thermometer code, the transition from
1s to 0s is indicating the best approximation of the input signal. A decoder is then used in order to
convert the thermometer code to an nbit digital output word. The flash ADC is most suitable for low
resolutions as the hardware needed doubles for a resolution increase of 1 bit, whereas the power
dissipation increases by more than a factor of two. The flash architecture often results in a high input
capacitance, in comparison with other architectures, due to the high parallelism.
Pipeline ADCs
The pipeline ADC architecture combines the benefits of high throughput and an input capacitance bound
by noise constraints. This is at the cost of extra hardware, power dissipation and the same high latency
associated with the SAR ADCs. The architecture is shown in Figure 3.6. Each stage samples the
inputsignal and generates ak additional bits of information of the input. An output residue is sent to the
succeeding stages with the last stage typically implemented as a flash ADC. Each stage, known as a
multiplying DAC (MDAC), is based on the same principle as the algorithmic ADC and is shown in
Figure. The input signal is sampled and quantized by an abit subADC, this is converted back to analog
and subtracted from the input signal, resulting in the subADC quantization error. This is amplified to
cover the full input range which has the advantage that all pipeline stages can be designed identically,
simplifying the implementation.
As with SAR ADCs, redundancy can be utilized in order to remove the effect of comparator offset and
noise. A common scheme is to use 1.5 bit stages withsignal and generates ak additional bits of information
of the input. An output residue is sent to the succeeding stages with the last stage typically implemented
as a flash ADC. Each stage, known as a multiplying DAC (MDAC), is based on the same principle as the
algorithmic ADC and is shown in Figure. The input signal is sampled and quantized by an abit subADC,
this is converted back to analog and subtracted from the input signal, resulting in the subADC
quantization error. This is amplified to cover the full input range which has the advantage that all pipeline
stages can be designed identically, simplifying the implementation. As with SAR ADCs, redundancy can
be utilized in order to remove the effect of comparator offset and noise. A common scheme is to use 1.5
bit stages withtwo comparators and a gain of two in the multiplier. With this, the architecture is immune
to comparator noise and offsets within a magnitude of VFS/8.