Loading patent…
AssigneeNational Semiconductor Corporation
InventorIon E. Opris
Estimating the term…
A method and circuit for performing a monotonic digital calibration of a pipeline analog-to-digital (A/D) converter calibrates each stage of the pipeline A/D converter while using the actual input A/D converter of the stage then being calibrated. The digital output from the stage is converted to an analog signal (e.g., integrated) and fed back for use as the analog input to the stage. This ensures that the digital output from the stage has a symmetrical waveform and that the analog input voltage to the stage remains at the input threshold level. The remaining downstream pipeline A/D converter stages are then used to measure the levels of the binary residue voltage corresponding to the two states of the binary stage output so that appropriate calibration data can be generated and stored for use in calibrating that stage. By repeating this process for each successive upstream pipeline A/D converter stage the entire pipeline A/D converter can be calibrated to help ensure the monotonicity of its A/D conversion.
A method of performing a monotonic digital calibration of one or more stages of a pipeline analog-to-digital (A/D) converter, said method comprising the steps of:
An apparatus including a pipeline analog-to-digital (A/D) converter with a monotonic digital calibration circuit, comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.