Seeking A/D Converter Recommendations

From: James M. Atkinson <jm..._at_tscm.com>
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:09:16 -0500

I am working on a design project that requires me to sample an unstable
analog signal with 16 bits in parallel, at a rate of 350 MSPs or
greater. The analog input signal must be 175 MHz wide, so I need to
sample at twice this rate. I also need the sixteen bits, and would
prefer to get a two stage AD convertor where there are two of more bits
that indicate it the signal is saturated and if so, by how much (so that
attenuators and filters be applied), and two of more bits dedicated to
the noise to control and gain amps in addition to the 16 bits of data
that I need. Ideally a 20-24 bit AD would be great, but I am willing to
do the noise detection and saturation detection via a dedicated circuit
and just use the 16 bits for the data.

Heat is critical as I need these to be cool when at the full sampling
speed or it is doing to screw up the lower level signals. I have to run
them in the same chassis as several of there brethren, along with some
FPGA's so heat is not my friend right now.

The A/D converter will be for use in a ultra-long FFT engine to digitize
175 MHz blocks of the spectrum in real time (no sweep, but real time),
with 16 A/D circuits on a single daughter board for 2.8 GHz coverage on
a single very small board. I am using a FPGA on the digital side of the
chip to perform the FFT butterflies, and then merging the 16 sets of
data into a single very large real-time spectrum data file and
digitizing 256 bits in parallel for huge chunks of the spectrum.

I am seeking a surface mount A/D chip, and would prefer a chip that is
U.S. made, but would consider a foreign made chip so long as it is
available through major U.S. based supply houses without a lot of
import/export hassles. Would prefer a military or avionics grade A/D
convertor.

Any suggestions woudl be appreciated.

-jma
Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:17 CST