
20
ADS1250
LSBWeight
Full ScaleRange
N
2
=
SYSTEM CONSIDERATIONS
The recommendations for power supplies and grounding
will change depending on the requirements and specific
design of the overall system. Achieving 20 bits noise perfor-
mance is a great deal more difficult than achieving 12 bits of
noise performance. In general, a system can be broken up
into four different stages:
Analog Processing
Analog Portion of the ADS1250
Digital Portion of the ADS1250
Digital Processing
For the simplest system consisting of minimal analog signal
processing (basic filtering and gain), a microcontroller, and
one clock source, high resolution can be achieved by pow-
ering all components by a common power supply. In addi-
tion, all components can share a common ground plane.
Thus, there would be no distinctions between “analog” or
“digital” power and ground. The layout should still include
a power plane, a ground plane, and careful decoupling. In
a more extreme case, the design could include: multiple
ADS1250s; extensive analog signal processing; one or more
microcontrollers, digital signal processors, or microproces-
sors; many different clock sources; and interconnections to
various other systems. High resolution will be very difficult
to achieve for this design. The approach would be to break
the system into as many different parts as possible. For
example, each ADS1250 may have its own “analog” pro-
cessing front end, its own analog power and ground (possi-
bly shared with the analog front end), and its own “digital”
power and ground. The converter’s “digital” power and
ground would be separate from the power and ground for the
system’s processors, RAM, ROM, and “glue” logic.
DEFINITION OF TERMS
An attempt has been made to be consistent with the termi-
nology used in this data sheet. In that regard, the definition
of each term is given as follows:
Analog Input Differential Voltage—
For an analog signal
that is fully differential, the voltage range can be compared
to that of an instrumentation amplifier. For example, if both
analog inputs of the ADS1250 are at 2.048V, the differential
voltage is 0V. If one input is at 0V and the other is at 4.096V,
the differential voltage magnitude is 4.096V. This is the case
regardless of which input is at 0V and which is at 4.096V.
The analog input differential voltage is given by the follow-
ing equation:
+V
IN
– –V
IN
A positive digital output is produced whenever the analog
input differential voltage is positive, while a negative digital
output is produced whenever the differential is negative. For
example, with a 4.096V reference and a gain setting of 2, a
positive full-scale output is produced when the analog input
differential is 2.048V. A negative full-scale output is pro-
duced when the differential voltage is –2.048V. In each case,
the actual input voltages must remain within the AGND to
V
S
range (see Table I).
Actual Analog Input Voltage—
The voltage at any one
analog input relative to AGND.
Full-Scale Range (FSR)—
As with most A/D converters,
the full-scale range of the ADS1250 is defined as the “input”
which produces the positive full-scale digital output minus
the “input” which produces the negative full-scale digital
output. For example, with a 4.096V reference and a gain
setting of 2, the differential full-scale range is
2.048V – (–2.048V) = 4.096V.
Least Significant Bit (LSB) Weight—
This is the theoreti-
cal amount of voltage that the differential voltage at the
analog input would have to change in order to observe a
change in the output data of one least significant bit. It is
computed as follows:
where N is the number of bits in the digital output.
Conversion Cycle—
The term conversion cycle, as used
here, refers to the time period between DRDY pulses.