"Devices designed for
wide bandwidth tend
to be less precise than
lower speed devices.
Achieving both speed
and precision requires
tradeoffs between
board space and cost."
Hao Jie Chan
Staff Analog Hardware Engineer,
National Instruments
Of course, achieving precision wide bandwidth signal chains can come with tradeoffs. Optimizing
for wider bandwidths can compromise performance at narrower bandwidths, or DC levels. In
applications that rely on both AC and DC performance, it can be challenging to design signal
chains that can provide precision across the whole spectrum. Hence, design engineers need to
understand their application requirements thoroughly and pay attention to the signal chain and
individual component specifications from DC across the bandwidth of interest to deliver the
performance required.
18 | Optimizing for Highest Precision with Fast Sampling
Achieving precision wide bandwidth is about more than just the
ADC; you're complementing the ADC with other technology that
gives you that fast sampling but with that precision as well. It requires
really looking at the components and seeing that performance over
bandwidth, making sure we understand each of those components in
the signal chain.
Claire Croke
Applications Engineer at ADI
ADI helps engineers achieve fast sampling, high-precision signal chains by doing
the following:
• Providing a range of precision wide bandwidth signal chains, each optimized for different
application requirements
• Offering a portfolio of ADCs, DACs, and signal-conditioning components that are
optimized for precision with speed
• Continually developing educational resources, such as webinars, tools, and technical
articles, for understanding fast sampling signal chain optimizations
