Industry's fastest 12-bit ADC races to 4 GSPS

DALLAS, USA: Texas Instruments (TI) has introduced the industry's fastest 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The RF-sampling ADC12J4000 clocks in at 4 GSPS and supports the JEDEC JESD204B serial interface standard for data converters up to 8 Gbps, while consuming 50 percent less power than competitive devices.

Measuring 10-mm by 10-mm, it is also the smallest IC in its class. The ADC12J4000 can be used in test and measurement, wireless, and defense applications, such as spectrum analyzers, munitions, digital pre-distortion feedback and radar.

The ADC12J4000 combines TI's existing giga-sample ADC intellectual property (IP) with low-power digital processing blocks that provide digital filtering and down conversion. This enables system designers to sample a large block of frequency spectrum at RF and down convert it to quadrature in the digital domain, which can reduce signal distortion.

As the ADC12J4000 utilizes the JESD204B serial interface standard, it can output data on 1 to 8 lanes, depending on the decimation and link rate settings, while simplifying layout.