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THEORY OF OPERATION
OVERVIEW
The ADS5240 is a 4-channel, high-speed, CMOS
ADC.
It
consists
of
sample-and-hold circuit at the input, followed by a
12-bit ADC. The 12 bits given out by each channel
are serialized and sent out on a single pair of pins in
LVDS format. All four channels of the ADS5240
operate from a single clock referred to as ADCLK.
The sampling clocks for each of the four channels are
generated from the input clock using a carefully
matched clock buffer tree. The 12x clock required for
the serializer is generated internally from ADCLK
using a phase lock loop (PLL). A 6x and a 1x clock
are also output in LVDS format along with the data to
enable easy data capture. The ADS5240 operates
from internally-generated reference voltages that are
trimmed to improve matching across multiple devices
on a board. This feature eliminates the need for
external routing of reference lines and also improves
matching of the gain across devices. The nominal
values of REF
T
and REF
B
are 2V and 1V, respect-
ively. These values imply that a differential input of
-1V corresponds to the zero code of the ADC, and a
differential input of +1V corresponds to the full-scale
code (4095 LSB). V
CM
(common-mode voltage of
REF
and REF
) is also made available externally
through a pin, and is nominally 1.5V.
DRIVING THE ANALOG INPUTS
The analog input biasing is shown in Figure 14. The
recommended method to drive the inputs is through
AC coupling. AC coupling removes the worry of
setting the common-mode of the driving circuit, since
the inputs are biased internally using two 600
resistors.
CM Buffer
Internal
Voltage
Reference
Input
Circuitry
IN+
IN
V
CM
600
600
ADS5240
ADS5240
SBAS326C–JUNE 2004–REVISED DECEMBER 2004
a
high-performance
Figure 14. Analog Input Bias Circuitry
The sampling capacitor used to sample the inputs is
4pF. The choice of the external AC coupling capacitor
is dictated by the attenuation at the lowest desired
input frequency of operation. The attenuation re-
sulting from using a 10nF AC coupling capacitor is
0.04%.
The ADC employs a pipelined converter architecture
consisting of a combination of multi-bit and single-bit
internal stages. Each stage feeds its data into the
digital error correction logic, ensuring excellent differ-
ential linearity and no missing codes at the 12-bit
level. The pipeline architecture results in a data
latency of 6.5 clock cycles.
If the input is DC-coupled, then the output com-
mon-mode voltage of the circuit driving the ADS5240
should match the V
CM
(which is provided as an output
pin) to within
±
50mV. It is recommended that the
output common-mode of the driving circuit be derived
from V
CM
provided by the device.
The sampling circuit consists of a low-pass RC filter
at the input to filter out noise components that might
be differentially coupled on the input pins. The inputs
are sampled on two 4pF capacitors, see Figure 15.
The sampling on the capacitors is done with respect
to an internally-generated common-mode voltage
(INCM). The switches connecting the sampling ca-
pacitors to the INCM are opened out first (before the
switches connecting them to the analog inputs). This
ensures that the charge injection arising out of the
switches opening is independent of the input signal
amplitude to a first-order of approximation. SP refers
to a sampling clock whose falling edge comes an
instant before the SAMPLE clock. The falling edge of
SP determines the sampling instant.
The output of the ADC goes to a serializer that
operates from a 12x clock generated by the PLL. The
12 data bits from each channel are serialized and
sent LSB first. In addition to serializing the data, the
serializer also generates a 1x clock and a 6x clock.
These clocks are generated in the same way the
serialized data is generated, so these clocks maintain
perfect synchronization with the data. The data and
clock outputs of the serializer are buffered externally
using LVDS buffers. Using LVDS buffers to transmit
data externally has multiple advantages, such as
reduced number of output pins (saving routing space
on the board), reduced power consumption, and
reduced effects of digital noise coupling to the analog
circuit inside the ADS5240.
The ADS5240 operates from two sets of supplies and
grounds. The analog supply/ground set is denoted as
AVDD/AVSS, while the digital set is denoted by
LVDD/LVSS.
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