ABSTRACT
Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are critical to instrumentation and data acquisition systems, providing the interface and transformation of analog information to a digital format for computation and storage. Multi-channel ADCs are used in space avionic systems to capture information simultaneously from multiple sensor interfaces and process it concurrently. The SiGe BiCMOS multi-channel Wilkinson ADC is designed to provide high-precision, low-power data conversion to enable backend processing of analog sensor inputs. Multiple sensor interface channels can be connected to the ADC and the data can be read out using the channel select signals. The ADC design has incorporated several novel techniques to ensure stable and reliable operation in extreme environment conditions. The low-power ADC incorporates system-level single-event latch-up detection and mitigation using a radiation aware power management scheme. The ADC’s performance across temperature is dependent on the ramp generator and the comparator circuit’s accuracy variation with temperature.
