An Approach to Distributed Analog-to-Digital Conversions

摘要

A method for implementing distributed multi-channel A/D conversions is suggested and discussed. It provides for data acquisition from a large quantity of signal sources scattered over a large area with minimized distortions of the original analog signals. This approach to the distributed A/D converter design is based on spatial separating of the signal sampling and quantising operations which typically are integrated within a single chip. To realize this approach, the pulse width modulation techniques are applied. The focus is on structural designing of specilic distributed A/D converters capable of supporting multichannel digitizing of up to few hundreds of signals simultaneously. A specific daisy-chain structure is considered as the basis for realizing this type of A/D converters.