Development of a Low Cost 15-Gsps Analog-to-Digital Converter Board by using a Field Programmable Gate Array Mezzanine Card Connector for FPGA-Based Backends

We designed and fabricated a 4-bit, 15-gigasamples-per-second (Gsps) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) printed circuit board assembly (PCBA). An Adsantec ANST7122-KMA flash ADC chip was used. The developed PCBA provides data acquisition systems with a wide bandwidth, provides an analog bandwidth of up to 10 GHz (3 dB loss), and enables a chip on the board to exhibit an analog bandwidth of up to 20 GHz. The PCBA is equipped with a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) Mezzanine Card (FMC) connector; this type of connector is gaining prominence in the industry. We developed interface code for using a Xilinx KCU105 and VCU118 evaluation boards. A novel channel bonding method has been developed for alignment of the high-speed serial data input. Effective number of bits (ENOB) and signal to noise and distortion (SINAD) characteristics has been examined quickly following the IEEE standard at the sampling rates of 10.0, 12.8 and 13.6 Gsps respectively. The preliminary ENOB are in the range of 3.5-3.9/2.2-2.8/2.2-3.1bits respectively, and SINAD are in the range of 22-25/16-19/16-19 respectively.