Method and apparatus for converting A/D nonlinearities to random noise

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United States of America Patent

PATENT NO 5006854
SERIAL NO

07311237

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ATTORNEY / AGENT: (SPONSORED)

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Abstract

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A method and apparatus for removing the effects of mismatched components in an A/D converter is described. The present invention dynamically rearranges the capacitors of an A/D converter so that physical mismatch is averaged out. In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, an array of equally-sized capacitors is coupled to a switching network. A successive approximation scheme is implemented in which the input signal is coupled through SAR switches to the capacitor array. Each switch is coupled to 2.sup.N-1 capacitors where N is the switch number. For example, in an 8-bit scheme, there are 3 switches with switch 1 coupled to one capacitor, switch 2 coupled to two capacitors, and switch 3 coupled to four capacitors. In this manner, eight levels of capacitance values can be defined. The present invention adds a scramble control code to control the switching array so that the physical capacitors themselves are coupled to different SAR switches at different times. This requires a scramble matrix of switches, which in the present invention requires N.times.2N switches where N equals the number of bits of control code. In this manner, the effects of any variations in the capacitance ratios is averaged out and converted to noise which can be filtered out of the signal.

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Patent Owner(s)

Patent OwnerAddress
SILICON SYSTEMS INCSUITE 220 2460 N FIRST STREET SAN JOSE CA 95131

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Inventor(s)

Inventor Name Address # of filed Patents Total Citations
Negabahn-Hagh, Mehrdad Irvine, CA 1 67
White, Bert Irvine, CA 12 290

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