Electronic engineering is all about finding feasible solutions for optimum circuit performance while maintaining cost and space requirements.
Large-scale controllers deal with the transmission of hundreds of signals over large distances. However, signal transmission over large geographical distances exposes them to various environmental aspects—causing attenuation, interference, and distortion.
Designers are always on the lookout for solutions to preserve signal integrity by installing filters, equalizers and signal converters. One such way is to convert analog signals into digital ones, as they’re less susceptible to noise.
Depending on their speed and accuracy, there are several types of ADCs including flash ADC, sigma-delta ADC, and counter ADC.
However, if you’re seeking a fast digitization rate, flash ADC is your best bet.
All There’s to Know About Flash ADC
Also known as the parallel ADC, a flash ADC compares the analog input with a reference voltage—the highest value of your analog signal. Depending on your analog signal, the converter assigns a value between 0s and 1s to your input voltage.
As soon as the input signal exceeds the reference voltage, the converter saturates to a high state, while the priority encoder assigns a binary number to the highest-order input that’s active.
The number of comparators in your ADC depends on the following formula:
2N-1 (where N refers to the number of bits in your converter).
For a 4-bit ADC, you’ll require 15 comparators while for a 6-bit ADC, the number of comparators rises to 63.
Application of Flash ADC
Simplest in design and theoretical understanding, a flash ADC offers the highest speed, limited only by propagation delays. However, compared with their high speed, it seems like a fair trade.
Due to their high sample rate, these converters are used as wideband receivers, radar detectors, and in optical channels.
One of the biggest advantages of flash ADCs is their ability to generate non-linear output. While other ADCs are limited by their response to non-linear input, a flash ADC provides a proportional response to the changing input. But adding equal-value resistors, the circuit serves as a voltage divider network, representing the analog signal increase with the successive binary count.
If you’re looking for ADCs with high speed and less susceptibility to noise, ADSANTEC has got you covered! We provide 4-bit flash ADC with variable frequencies and power requirements. Our range of products includes clock divider, clock phase shifters, multiplexers, Boolean logic gates and much more.
Contact us today for queries or request a customized design!