Chapter 1

Introduction

Analog-to-digital conversion is everywhere around us. In all forms of electronic

equipment the analog-to-digital converter links our physical world to digital computing machines. This development has enabled all the marvelous functionality that
has been introduced over the last thirty years, from mobile phone to internet, from
medical imaging machines to hand-held television.
Pure analog electronics circuits can do a lot of signal processing in a cheap and
well-established way. Many signal processing functions are so simple that analog
processing serves the needs (audio amplification, filtering, radio). In more complex
situations, analog processing however lacks required functionality. There digital signal processing offers crucial extensions of this functionality. The most important
advantages of digital processing over analog processing are a perfect storage of
digitized signals, unlimited signal-to-noise ratio, the option to carry out complex
calculations, and the possibility to adapt the algorithm of the calculation to changing circumstances. If an application wants to use these advantages, analog signals
have to be converted with high quality into a digital format in an early stage of the
processing chain. And at the end of the digital processing the conversion has to be
carried out in the reverse direction. The digital-to-analog translates the outcome of
the signal processing into signals that can be rendered as a picture or sound. This
makes analog-to-digital conversion a crucial element in the chain between our world
of physical quantities and the rapidly increasing power of digital signal processing. Figure 1.1 shows the analog-to-digital converter (abbreviated A/D-converter or
ADC) as the crucial element in a system with combined analog and digital functionality.
The analog-to-digital converters and digital-to-analog converters discussed in
this book convert high resolution and high speed signals to and from the digital
domain. The basics of the conversion process is shown in Fig. 1.2. In the analog
domain a ratio exists between the actual signal and a reference quantity. This ratio
is reflected in the digital domain, where the digital code is a fraction of the available
word width. The analog-to-digital converter tries to find an optimum match between
these ratios at any moment in time. However, an essential rounding error must be
accepted.
M.J.M. Pelgrom, Analog-to-Digital Conversion,
DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8888-8_1, Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

1 Introduction

Fig. 1.1 The analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters are the ears and eyes of a digital
system

Fig. 1.2 In analog-to-digital

conversion a connection is
made between the analog
world of physical quantities
and the digital world of
numbers and bits

Fig. 1.3 Functions of the analog-to-digital converter: sampling, quantizing and linking to a reference

Signals in the digital domain differ from analog signals, which exist in the physical world, because digital signal are sampled and quantized, Fig. 1.3. Sampled signals only have meaning at their sample moments as given by the sample frequency.
Moreover digital signals are arithmetic quantities, which are only meaningful in
the physical world while there is somewhere an assignment that relates the digital
number range to a physical reference value. These three main functions characterize
the analog-to-digital converter, see Table 1.1. These functions will be visible in each
stage of the discussion of analog-to-digital conversion and are reflected in the set-up
of this book.

1.1 About this Book

Table 1.1 Key functions in
analog-to-digital conversion

3
Analog-to-digital

Digital-to-analog

Time discretization

Holding the signal

Amplitude discretization

Amplitude restoration

Reference to

Reference from

A conversion unit

A conversion unit

1.1 About this Book

An analog-to-digital converter and a digital-to-analog converter are electronics circuits that are designed and fabricated in silicon IC technology. The main focus in
this book is on CMOS realizations. Chapter 2 summarizes the main physics and
mathematics for understanding the operation of analog-to-digital converters. This
chapter is meant to refresh existing knowledge.
In Chaps. 3 to 6 the three basic functions for conversion are analyzed. Chapter 3
describes the sampling process and give guidelines for the different choices around
sampling in analog-to-digital conversion design. The design challenges around the
sampling process are discussed in the design of sample-and-hold circuits in Chap. 4.
Both sampling and quantization operation are non-linear, resulting in undesired behavior. The combination of sampling and quantization results in a fundamental error: the quantization error. The attainable performance of every analog-to-digital
conversion is fundamentally limited by this error as is described in Chap. 5. Chapter 6 deals with the generation and handling of reference voltages.
The main task of a designer is to construct circuits. Chapter 7 describes the basics
of digital-to-analog converter circuit design and some implementations of digital-toanalog converters. The design of analog-to-digital converters is detailed in Chap. 8.
Oversampling and sigma delta conversion are a special class of conversion techniques and are discussed in Chap. 9.
Next to theory and circuit design, the proper operation of a converter relies on
some additional aspects. The measurement methods for analog-to-digital converters
and specification points are the subject of Chap. 10. Chapter 11 deals with some of
the boundary conditions in conversion due to technological and physical limitations.
Finally Chap. 12 deals with system aspects of the application of analog-to-digital
conversion like sample frequency choices and the various forms of input handling.
This section also introduces a Figure-of-Merit for conversion and compares the various implementation forms. In this way an optimal converter for a given system
situation can be chosen.
Several books have been published in the field of analog-to-digital conversion.
One of the first books was published by Seitzer [1] in 1983 describing the basic
principles. Van der Plassche [2] in 1994 and 2003 and Razavi [3] in 1994 discuss
extensively bipolar and CMOS realizations. Jespers [4] and Maloberti [5] address
the theme on a graduate level. These text books review the essential aspects and
focus on general principles, circuit realizations, and their merits.