Data Acquisition SOC Houses Programmable Sigma-Delta Converter

To arrive at its status of being a complete, high-precision data acquisition system-on-a-chip (SOC), ADuC824 MicroConverter employs a mixed-signal architecture that integrates on the chip two high-resolution A/D converters, 12-bit D/A converter, temperature sensor, programmable gain amplifier (PGA), 8-bit MCU, flash and random-access memory, and serial ports. The device operates from a 3V or 5V supply and from a 32-kHz crystal with on-board PLL, allowing the MCU operating frequency to be programmed for the specific application. Other features include a 20 µA power-down mode and support of the IEEE 1451.2 sensor interface standard. The converter’s low power requirements qualify the chip for use in calibrating and conditioning analog and digital sensor signals in portable applications, medical instrumentation, power supply management, and intelligent sensor interfacing. And its ability to be programmed permits the SOC to translate many low-level transducer signals into the engineering units sensor systems need, freeing processing capacity at the system level where signal translation usually occurs.