The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 20, 1982
Filed:
Jun. 14, 1978
John G Cook, Mytchett, GB;
The Solartron Electronic Group Limited, Farnborough, GB;
Abstract
In a bipolar mark-space analogue-to-digital converter, two opposed-polarity reference voltages are applied to an integrator during a first conversion interval to balance a square-wave forcing-function signal and an input signal whose magnitude is to be measured, and a counter receives clock pulses at up and down inputs during application of the positive and negative reference voltages respectively. Subsequently, zero input signal is applied during a second conversion interval, and the inputs to the counter are interchanged, so that up- and down-counted pulses correspond to the negative and positive reference voltages respectively. At the end of the second conversion interval, the counter contains a digital representation of the input signal, corrected for zero drift. The application of the reference voltages is controlled by two level detectors which compare the integrator output with fixed detector levels, the magnitudes of which are chosen so that at zero input each reference voltage is applied for substantially half the period of the square-wave forcing-function signal. The operation of the converter may be coordinated by a microprocessor which is arranged to aggregate the counts of clock pulses accumulated by the counter during each cycle of the forcing-function signal.