Atmel Corporation

Jan Rune Herheim

Trond Jarle Pedersen

Frode Milch Pedersen

Stefan Markus Schabel

Torgeir Fenheim

Fredrik Larsen

Ronan Barzic

Kai Renton

In one embodiment, an apparatus includes a first electrode, one or more processors, and one or more memory units coupled to the one or more processors. The one or more memory units collectively store logic that is configured to cause the one or more processors to control connections of the first electrode by connecting the first electrode to a first reference voltage, then connecting the first electrode to a second reference voltage lower than the first reference voltage, and then connecting the first electrode to a third reference voltage lower than the first reference voltage and the second reference voltage. The second reference voltage is coupled to a capacitor.

Connecting electrodes to voltages

A voltage regulator is configurable to operate in a linear regulator mode or a buck regulator mode. To operate in the buck regulator mode, the voltage regulator is coupled to an inductor. To determine whether an inductor is coupled to voltage regulator, and thus whether the voltage regulator can be configured in the buck regulator mode, a detection circuit determines whether a regulator output of the voltage regulator resists a change in current driven to the regulator output.

Voltage regulator configuration

A low-cost charge injection mechanism may enable oversampling to be used on low frequency signals by injecting dither noise into the ADC input. The dither noise can reduce the quantization noise allowing even direct current (DC) signals to be oversampled correctly. A low-cost charge injection mechanism can also be used to improve the ENOB by characterizing the ADC and digitally correcting the converted signal for non-linearity errors such as INL. Reducing INL errors may also allow a higher degree of oversampling to be used to further improve the ENOB.

Charge injection mechanism for analog-to-digital converters

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Trondheim, Norway

Jan Rune Herheim