MICROPROCESSOR-ASSISTED CALIBRATION FOR ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER

摘要

Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) can have errors which can affect their performance. To improve the performance, many techniques have been used to compensate or correct for the errors. When the ADCs are being implemented with sub-micron technology, ADCs can be readily and easily equipped with an on-chip microprocessor for performing a variety of digital functions. The on-chip microprocessor and any suitable digital circuitry can implement functions for reducing those errors, enabling certain undesirable artifacts to be reduced, and providing a flexible platform for a highly configurable ADC. The on-chip microprocessor is particularly useful for a randomized time-interleaved ADC. Moreover, a randomly sampling ADC can be added in parallel to a main ADC for calibration purposes. Furthermore, the overall system can include an efficient implementation for correcting errors in an ADC.

主权项

1. A randomized time-interleaved analog-to-digital converter comprising:
two or more analog-to-digital converters for sampling, interleaved in time according to a pseudo-randomized sequence, an analog input signal and generating respective digital output signals; a microprocessor on-chip with the two or more analog-to-digital converters for executing instructions stored on-chip configured to assist the randomized time-interleaved analog-to-digital converter; first circuitry for adjusting the two or more analog-to-digital converters; and second circuitry for processing signals in the two or more analog-to-digital converters to generate and record measurements of the signals in an on-chip memory, and making the measurements accessible to the microprocessor at a rate slower than a clock rate of the microprocessor.