A monolithic charge-balancing successive approximation A/D technique

A new multiple-differential-voltage input, MOS, sampled-data, `charge-balance' comparator which can `weight' or scale each of many input voltage pairs has been developed. This comparator easily allows a differential analog input voltage capability on a monolithic A/D converter and greatly reduces the required number of resistors and decoding switches of a potentiometric successive approximation register (SAR) A/D design. An 8 bit converter has been built which uses 20 Rs and 32 switches as compared to the 256 Rs and 512 switches of a standard 2/SUP N/R ladder design. Measurements made on the 8 bit A/D converter are reported and indicate that at least 12 bit converters are possible with this technique. Therefore, a 13 bit converter has been designed which exhibits even greater component reductions-33 Rs and 64 switches instead of 8192 Rs and 16384 switches. A simple interface to microprocessors is provided for both converters which makes use of the standard logic signals of the control bus where the A/D is designed to appear as memory or an I/O port to the microprocessor. A new flexible reference voltage circuit is presented which, in combination with the analog differential input voltage feature, can accommodate arbitrary analog input voltage spans with any desired zero scale offset.