--------
In message <[email protected]>, Attila Kinali 
writes:

>2) If I look at the documentation of the HP3458, they reach 28bits at
>166ms integration time. Yet the HP Journal article talks about 100nV/√Hz
>input noise. Ie the noise of the HP3458 is over a factor 5 higher, yet the
>ENOB @100ms is 2 bits better. It barely matches up, when I ignore the
>low frequency noise, but the factor of 5 in noise (or 2.3 bits) difference
>remains. Where does this discrepancy come from?

I am not sure why you call your circuit a "multi-slope ADC", I can
only see one pair of current sources ?

HP3458 uses six different slopes (Fig 8/p. 12) in a deviously
smart asymmetric layout: [+1024,+256,+16,+1,-4,-64,-256,-1024]

The trick to multislope is that it can cut down the convergence
time, and that in turn reduces the effect of all the drift/leakage
error sources proportionally.

I suspect you also significantly underestimate the "non-ideal
component" source of errors.

The trick in Fig 7/p.12 is much more important than most people
realize and HP's implementation is significantly more interesting
than Fig 7 lets on, because it involves 8 switches instead of two.

If you want to have any dream of getting performance like HP3458,
you will have to write a lot of code to do the same "auto"-calibrations
as the HP3458, and you will have to run it on a regular basis to
cope with component drift.

There is no free lunches after bit 20...

-- 
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