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handbook of modern sensors

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5.4 Analog-to-Digital Converters 175<br />

cured by large bypass capacitors (on the order <strong>of</strong> 10 µF) across the power supply or the<br />

so-called Q-spoilers consisting <strong>of</strong> a serial connection <strong>of</strong> a 3–10 resistor and a disk<br />

ceramic capacitor connected from the power-supply pins <strong>of</strong> the driver chip to ground.<br />

To make a driver stage more tolerant to capacitive loads, it can be isolated by a<br />

small serial resistor, as is shown in Fig. 5.22B. A small capacitive feedback (C f ) to<br />

the inverting input <strong>of</strong> the amplifier and a 10 resistor may allow driving loads as<br />

large as 0.5 µF. However, in any particular case, it is recommended to find the best<br />

values for the resistor and the capacitor experimentally.<br />

5.4 Analog-to-Digital Converters<br />

5.4.1 Basic Concepts<br />

The analog-to-digital (A/D) converters range from discrete circuits, to monolithic<br />

ICs (integrated circuits), to high-performance hybrid circuits, modules, and even<br />

boxes. Also, the converters are available as standard cells for custom and semicustom<br />

application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). The A/D converters transform<br />

analog data—usually voltage—into an equivalent digital form, compatible with digital<br />

data processing devices. Key characteristics <strong>of</strong> A/D converters include absolute<br />

and relative accuracy, linearity, no missing codes, resolution, conversion speed, stability,<br />

and price. Quite <strong>of</strong>ten, when price is <strong>of</strong> a major concern, discrete-component<br />

or monolithic IC versions are the most efficient. The most popular A/D converters<br />

are based on a successive-approximation technique because <strong>of</strong> an inherently good<br />

compromise between speed and accuracy. However, other popular techniques are<br />

used in a large variety <strong>of</strong> applications, especially when a high conversion speed is<br />

not required. These include dual-ramp, quad-slope, and voltage-to-frequency (V/F)<br />

converters. The art <strong>of</strong> an A/D conversion is well developed. Here, we briefly review<br />

some popular architectures <strong>of</strong> the converters; however, for detailed descriptions the<br />

reader should refer to specialized texts, such as Ref. [4].<br />

The best known digital code is binary (base 2). Binary codes are most familiar in<br />

representing integers; that is, in a natural binary integer code having n bits, the LSB<br />

(least significant bit) has a weight <strong>of</strong> 2 (i.e., 1), the next bit has a weight <strong>of</strong> 2 1 (i.e., 2),<br />

and so on up to MSB (most significant bit), which has a weight <strong>of</strong> 2 n−1 (i.e., 2 n /2).<br />

The value <strong>of</strong> a binary number is obtained by adding up the weights <strong>of</strong> all nonzero bits.<br />

When the weighted bits are added up, they form a unique number having any value<br />

from0to2 n − 1. Each additional trailing zero bit, if present, essentially doubles the<br />

size <strong>of</strong> the number.<br />

When converting signals from analog <strong>sensors</strong>, because the full scale is independent<br />

<strong>of</strong> the number <strong>of</strong> bits <strong>of</strong> resolution, a more useful coding is fractional binary [4], which<br />

is always normalized to full scale. Integer binary can be interpreted as fractional binary<br />

if all integer values are divided by 2 n . For example, the MSB has a weight <strong>of</strong> 1/2 (i.e.,<br />

2 n−1 /2 n = 2 −1 ), the next bit has a weight <strong>of</strong> 1/4 (i.e., 2 −2 ), and so forth down to the<br />

LSB, which has a weight <strong>of</strong> 1/2 n (i.e., 2 −n ). When the weighted bits are added up,<br />

they form a number with any <strong>of</strong> 2 n values, from 0 to (1 − 2 −n ) <strong>of</strong> full scale.

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