Specification Definitions
ACQUISITION TIME is the time required to acquire the input
voltage. That is, it is time required for the hold capacitor to
charge up to the input voltage.
APERTURE DELAY is the time between the fourth falling
SCLK edge of a conversion and the time when the input signal
is acquired or held for conversion.
CONVERSION TIME is the time required, after the input volt-
age is acquired, for the ADC to convert the input voltage to a
digital word.
CROSSTALK is the coupling of energy from one channel into
the other channel, or the amount of signal energy from one
analog input that appears at the measured analog input.
DIFFERENTIAL NON-LINEARITY (DNL) is the measure of
the maximum deviation from the ideal step size of 1 LSB.
DUTY CYCLE is the ratio of the time that a repetitive digital
waveform is high to the total time of one period. The specifi-
cation here refers to the SCLK.
EFFECTIVE NUMBER OF BITS (ENOB, or EFFECTIVE
BITS) is another method of specifying Signal-to-Noise and
Distortion or SINAD. ENOB is defined as (SINAD − 1.76) /
6.02 and says that the converter is equivalent to a perfect
ADC of this (ENOB) number of bits.
FULL POWER BANDWIDTH is a measure of the frequency
at which the reconstructed output fundamental drops 3 dB
below its low frequency value for a full scale input.
FULL SCALE ERROR (FSE) is a measure of how far the last
code transition is from the ideal 1½ LSB below VREF+ and is
defined as:
VFSE = Vmax + 1.5 LSB – VREF+
where Vmax is the voltage at which the transition to the maxi-
mum code occurs. FSE can be expressed in Volts, LSB or
percent of full scale range.
GAIN ERROR is the deviation of the last code transition
(111...110) to (111...111) from the ideal (VREF − 1.5 LSB), af-
ter adjusting for offset error.
INTEGRAL NON-LINEARITY (INL) is a measure of the de-
viation of each individual code from a line drawn from negative
full scale (½ LSB below the first code transition) through pos-
itive full scale (½ LSB above the last code transition). The
deviation of any given code from this straight line is measured
from the center of that code value.
INTERMODULATION DISTORTION (IMD) is the creation of
additional spectral components that are present at the output
and are not present at the input and result from two sinusoidal
frequencies being applied to the ADC input at the same time.
It is defined as the ratio of the power in the intermodulation
products to the total power in one of the original frequencies.
IMD is usually expressed in dB.
MISSING CODES are those output codes that will never ap-
pear at the ADC outputs. These codes cannot be reached with
any input value. The ADC082S021 is guaranteed not to have
any missing codes.
OFFSET ERROR is the deviation of the first code transition
(000...000) to (000...001) from the ideal (i.e. GND + 0.5 LSB).
SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO (SNR) is the ratio, expressed in
dB, of the rms value of the input signal at the converter output
to the rms value of the sum of all other spectral components
below one-half the sampling frequency, not including d.c. or
harmonics included in the THD specification.
SIGNAL TO NOISE PLUS DISTORTION (S/(N+D) or
SINAD or SNDR) is the ratio, expressed in dB, of the rms
value of the input signal at the output to the rms value of all
of the other spectral components below half the clock fre-
quency, including all harmonics but excluding DC.
SPURIOUS FREE DYNAMIC RANGE (SFDR) is the differ-
ence, expressed in dB, between the rms values of the input
signal at the output and the peak spurious signal, where a
spurious signal is any signal present in the output spectrum
that is not present at the input, excluding d.c.
TOTAL HARMONIC DISTORTION (THD) is the ratio, ex-
pressed in dBc, of the rms total of the first five harmonic
components at the output to the rms level of the input signal
frequency as seen at the output. THD is calculated as
where Af1 is the RMS power of the input frequency at the out-
put and Af2 through Af6 are the RMS power in the first 5
harmonic frequencies. Accurate THD measurement requires
a spectrally pure sine wave (monotone) at the ADC input.
THROUGHPUT TIME is the minimum time required between
the start of two successive conversion. It is the acquisition
time plus the conversion and read out times. In the case of
the ADC082S021, this is 16 SCLK periods.
7 www.national.com
ADC082S021