Intersil - Low Power, 16-Bit, High Speed ADCs Provide Excellent SNR and Simplify Multi-Channel System Design

Designed using Intersil's proprietary FemtoCharge technology, the ISLA216P series features sample rates up to 250 Megasamples per second (MSPS) with power consumption of only 786mW - 40% less than competitive devices while maintaining SFDR of 87dBc at a 30MHz input frequency. This new low power series of ADCs significantly reduces heat dissipation and cooling requirements, enabling customers to lower overall system costs and increase reliability. The ISLA216P also requires just 200 microseconds of wake-up recovery time from low power modes, maximizing the utility of its power down features. These features demonstrate Intersil's commitment to low power, ecologically friendly devices that deliver best-in-class performance.

The ISLA216P series are members of Intersil's recently announced 12-, 14-, and 16-bit ADCs, and are pin-compatible with all other single-channel ADCs in the family. Pin-compatibility across sample rate and resolution facilitates design reuse and significantly reduces time-to-market.

The ISLA216P also provides multi-channel support so multiple ADCs can be precisely time-aligned, simplifying the design of simultaneously sampled multi-channel systems. For advanced applications that require multiple input channels, including radar array processing, broadband communications, data acquisition systems, software defined radios, and communications test equipment, the ISLA216P is an ideal choice.

The 250MSPS version of the ISLA216P25 was recently selected by Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, an industry leader in providing innovative and ruggedized product integration services for high density data processing, for use in their new FMC-516 and FMC-518 Quad Channel Analog Input FMC digitizers. The FMC-516 and FMC-518 provide a low-cost, high-performance, modular method of designing embedded, FPGA-based signal processing nodes. Lynn Bamford, Vice President and General Manager of Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, commented, The combination of low power, high performance and support for multiple ADC channels were key features in our decision to select the ISLA216P25. However, the final ingredient was the pin-compatibility between the ISLA216P25 and other members of the ISLA2xx family. The ability to place other members of the family into the same PCB footprint will allow us to bring to market multiple products using a universal underlying design, improving both our time-to-market and cost effectiveness.

Features and Specifications
The ISLA216P25 advances the state-of-the-art in high performance, low-power ADCs by offering best-in-class dynamic performance while consuming significantly less power than competing parts. At a sample rate of 250MSPS, the ISLA216P25 consumes just 786mW from its 1.8V supply and is capable of providing a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 75.0dBFS and spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of 87dBc for fin=30MHz. Furthermore, the ISLA216P25 is the only ADC in its class that is fully specified for input frequencies above 600MHz, allowing designers of undersampled or high IF systems to confidently utilize its 700MHz full-power bandwidth.

The new converters' breakthrough performance is combined with extensive configurability. A serial peripheral interface (SPI) port allows access to the channel gain and offset adjustments as well as several power-saving modes. The internal clock duty- cycle stabilizer and programmable clock divider simplify the challenge of clock distribution, and the programmable built-in test patterns improve reliability by enabling remote signal integrity self-test capability. The combination of performance and usability demonstrates Intersil's commitment to providing an expanding line-up of revolutionary high-speed analog products.

Flexible Evaluation System Aids Development with the ISLA216P
As with each of Intersil's prior ADC families, the ISLA216P is compatible with its existing evaluation system, developed to enable designers to analyze performance in both time and frequency domains. The system features a modular design with one motherboard that supports multiple ADC families. Matlab code is available for hardware-in-the-loop analysis and can capture greater than 1 Megasample in a single, contiguous stream. Users can download captured data to standard CSV files to apply specialized post processing.