Patent · US Expired

Multistep analog-to-digital converter with successive approximation register circuit for least significant bit resolution

US5287108A · kind A · utility

37Cited by
4References
10Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateJul 2, 1992
Grant dateFeb 15, 1994
Priority date
Expiry dateJul 2, 2012

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH03M1/46
  • WIPO fieldBasic communication processes
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) has at least one resistance ladder circuit for generating a stepped series of reference voltages and set of comparator circuits for comparing an input voltage, or a voltage derived therefrom, with at least a subset of the stepped series of reference voltages. The reference voltages from the resistance ladder circuit are stepped in 4 LSB increments, where 1 LSB is the voltage differential corresponding to a one bit change in the ADC output value. During an initial set of conversion cycles, a ten-bit digital conversion value representing the input voltage is generated. In a last conversion cycle, two additional bits of resolution are added to the conversion value using a "parallel successive approximation register" circuit. This last conversion cycle also corrects errors of up to .+-.6 LSB in the first ten bits of the digital conversion value. A set of successive comparison voltages are generated in the third conversion cycle by selectively switching combinations of reference voltages with binary weighted capacitors. The resulting comparison voltages are stepped in 1 LSB increments, which is one fourth the voltage increment between neighboring ref…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.