PARALLEL A TOD CONVERSION

Abstract

In nature, signals exist in analog form, while many means of storage, processing and transmission are digital (computers, communication systems, circuits. Today many applications require higher and higher conversion speed and many fast ADC ICs have been produced (called Flash ADC, Video ADC, ...). In this article we present the parallel A to D conversion where a number of popular medium speed and rather cheap 8-bit ADC ICs are connected in parallel to attain higher speed. Stored data can be converted numerically back to analog waveform on monitor screen or outputted to an DAC circuit together with appropriate filtering to restore the analog signal. In order to preserve the correct sequence of converted data from individual ADCs, the number of ADCs is limited to about 5 ie the overall conversion speed can be increased 5 times. We also present a method to increase further the number of parallel ADCs. Assembled circuit worked well and gave results as expected.