High bandwidth parallel analog-to-digital converter

An analog to digital converter, comprising:

• a differential resistor ladder pair having N resistors and higher-order and lower-order taps on each ladder,
• 2N+1 comparators with respective inverting and non-inverting inputs, with N+1 of said comparators having their inverting inputs connected to the lowest order tap of one of the differential ladders, and N+1 of said comparators, including all of the remaining comparators and one of said first N+1 comparators, having their non-inverting inputs connected to the lowest order tap of the other differential ladder, said comparators providing thermometer scale outputs,
• respective current sources connected to each ladder to establish a current through each ladder, and
• a pair of differential drivers connected to receive an analog signal and to establish respective voltage offsets for the ladders in said pair which correspond to said analog signal.

A 1/(2N+2) resolution analog-to-digital converter, comprising:

• a differential resistor ladder pair having N resistors and higher-order and lower-order taps on each ladder,
• 2N+1 comparators with respective inverting and non-inverting inputs, with at least N+1 of said comparators having their inverting inputs connected to the lower-order taps of one of the differential ladders, and the same number of said comparators, including all of the remaining comparators and at least one of said first N+1 comparators, having their non-inverting inputs connected to the same lower-order taps of the other differential ladder, said comparators providing thermometer scale outputs,
• respective current sources connected to each ladder to establish a current through each ladder,
• a pair of differential drivers connected to receive an analog signal and to establish respective voltage offsets for the ladders in said pair which correspond to said analog signal, and
• an encoder connected to receive the thermometer scale outputs from said comparators and to produce digital-encoded outputs reflective of said thermometer scale output.

A signal processing system, comprising:

• an analog to digital converter including a differential resistor ladder pair having N resistors and higher-order and lower-order taps on each ladder,
• 2N+1 comparators with respective inverting and non-inverting inputs, with at least N+1 of said comparators having their inverting inputs connected to the lower-order taps of one of the differential ladders, and the same number of said comparators, including all of the remaining comparators and at least one of said first N+1 comparators, having their non-inverting inputs connected to the same lower-order taps of the other differential ladder, said comparators providing thermometer scale outputs,
• respective current sources connected to each ladder to establish a current through each ladder,
• a pair of differential drivers connected to receive an analog signal and to establish respective voltage offsets for the ladders in said pair which correspond to said analog signal,
• an encoder connected to receive the thermometer scale outputs from said comparators and to produce digital-encoded outputs reflective of said thermometer scale output, and
• a processor connected to receive and process said digital signals.