Product category: Analogue and Mixed Signal ICs
News Release from: Analog Devices | Subject: AD7980
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 03 October 2006
Convertor cuts size and power drain
1Msample/s 16bit ADC consumes 80% less power and board space than the closest competing 16bit ADC in its class.
Analog Devices reckons it can dramatically reduce the power consumption of medical and industrial electronics with its latest precision PulSAR analogue-to-digital convertor (ADC) Designed to increase the portability of patient and industrial monitors and improve the performance and throughput of automated test equipment (ATE) and data acquisition systems, Analog Devices' AD7980 1Msample/s 16bit ADC consumes 80% less power and board space than the closest competing 16bit ADC in its class
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 14 Sep 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
Related stories
Fastest DSP for less than ten bucks
Analog Devices is sampling two new low-cost ADSP-219x models - the ADSP-2195 and ADSP-2196 - expanding the ADSP-21xx family of code compatible digital signal processors.
14bit A/D conversion at 105Msample/s
Analog Devices is claiming another industry breakthrough with the first 14bit ADC to run at 105Msample/s.
"Power consumption is one of the dimensions of data convertor performance that receives a lot of attention at ADI", said Dick Meaney, Vice President of Precision Signal Processing at Analog Devices.
"Offering five times lower power per conversion, combined with outstanding AC and DC linearity, the AD7980 will afford remarkable benefits to end users across many varied applications".
The small package size and reduced power consumption of the AD7980 lends it to the design of lightweight, wearable electrocardiograms (EKGs), blood pressure monitors, oxygen sensors and other medical instruments that wirelessly transmit patient information to a data centre or nurses' station.
Further reading
Chip provides a digital view of temperature
The AD7314 is a complete temperature monitoring system in an 8-lead micro-SOIC package.
DSP needs no ASICs to run software basestations
Analog Devices has unveiled a new DSP equipped with Layer 1 software that together are claimed to reduce system costs of 3G infrastructure equipment by up to 50%.
Single chip keeps lasers cool
Analog Devices has released the optical industry's first single-chip, high-precision thermoelectric cooler (TEC) controller for DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) networking equipment.
Such mobility increases patient comfort by allowing them to wear PDA-sized monitors and eliminating the need to push bulky medical equipment when moving around the hospital.
In industrial equipment, the fast sampling rate and low power consumption of the AD7980 allow designers to place critical components closer together to improve system performance and speed.
In today's ATE systems, for example, hundreds of measurement pins are used to test each semiconductor wafer, with each pin requiring an individual ADC to reduce costly test time.
The wires, switches and multiplexers used to connect the measurement pin to the measurement unit add cost, increase the risk of measurement errors and slow system response time.
Also, the resulting heat dissipation is so great that data conversion must be moved from the test head to a separate mainframe.
The exponentially lower power of the AD7980, relative to existing ADCs, allows designers to place the new devices adjacent to each measurement pin, simplifying the design and increasing overall system accuracy and throughput.
This, in turn, reduces test time, which is a major cost component for users of ATE systems.
Unlike competing devices, the power and size advantages of the AD7980 allow designers to incorporate the new ADC and a digital interface into analogue sensor packages.
This new breed of highly integrated "smart sensors" eliminates the parasitic effects, signalling errors and delayed response time caused when the ADC is physically separated from the sensor using signal cables.
In industrial sensing applications, this allows equipment operators to more easily and accurately measure changes in vibration, pressure and temperature that can degrade system operation.
"At National Instruments, we use ADI's PulSAR convertors on a number of our core measurement and industrial I/O products", said Kurt Mandeville, principal hardware engineer at National Instruments.
"We see the AD7980 introduction extending PulSAR to a new level of combined high speed, low power, and small size, while preserving the performance we've come to expect from the PulSAR architecture".
The AD7980 PulSAR ADC features 7.5mW power consumption at 1Msample/s and 75uW at 10Ksample/s - the lowest power of any 16bit ADC at any sample rate.
Other performance enhancements include 2LSB maximum INL and 91.5dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at 20kHz.
The AD7980 is available in LFCSP/QFN (lead-frame chip-scale package/quad flat no-lead) and MSOP (mini small-outline plastic) packages that, respectively, are five and three times smaller than any competing ADC packages.
The AD7980 is pin-compatible with the AD768x MSOP family of 16bit PulSAR ADCs, for designers looking to upgrade to a 1Msample/s sample rate, and works well with Analog Devices' ADA4841 driver and buffer op amps and ADR42x, ADR43x and ADR44x voltage references.
The AD7980 1Msample/s 16bit PulSAR ADC is sampling now in 10-lead MSOP and LFCSP packages, with production quantities available in the second quarter of 2007.
The AD7980 is priced at $19.50 in 1000-unit quantities.
• Analog Devices: contact details and other news
• Email this article to a colleague
• Register for the free Electronicstalk email newsletter
• Electronicstalk Home Page
Search the Pro-Talk network of sites
