Highly digital, low-cost design of statistic signal acquisition in SoCs

Presently, the gap between analog and digital processes is ever increasing. Although digital circuits are still obeying Moore's law, their analog counterparts follow far behind. Since signal acquisition, through ADC circuits is an often required feature, for many embedded applications the benefits of Moore's law have not been achieved. This paper presents our approach to take advantage of the increasing integration of technology for analog interfacing in SoC's, by converting the statistics of the signal. Digital self-tuning of the threshold levels, the use of less expensive and highly variable analog blocks, and stochastic convergence of resolution allow a robust acquisition process. We present the mathematics behind the approach, as well as a set of target applications and experimental results validating the concept.