Rodger Hosking
Pentek

An A/D converter accepts an analog voltage at the input and produces a digital representation of that voltage at the output that's called a "sample". The two primary characteristics of A/Ds are the rate of conversion or sampling rate, expressed in samples per second, and the accuracy of each digital sample expressed as the number of binary bits or decimal digits per sample.

Sampling rates vary a lot between applications. A digital thermometer may deliver samples to update its readout once every five seconds while a wideband radar may produce 2 billion samples per second. The difference in sample rates between these two examples is a staggering 10 orders of magnitude. Thousands of A/D applications are spread continuously throughout this range.

Now in its 4th Edition, this handbook focuses primarily on A/D converters with sampling rates higher than 100 MHz. Sampling techniques are reviewed, as well as FPGA technology and high-speed serial fabrics. The latest Pentek high-speed A/D products and applications based on such products are also presented.