Fujitsu Laboratories developed a ‘digital assist’ technology that internally detects and automatically compensates for malfunctions caused by variations in electronic characteristics, as well as variations in temperature and supplied voltage.
According to the company, this removes the design restriction that had previously mandated elements above a certain size, in order to ensure a reliable degree of precision. SAR A/D converters built with this technology can cut power requirements by some 90%, with only one-tenth (1/10) the surface area for the A/D converter itself.
Fujitsu Laboratories developed a SAR A/D converter with 10-bit resolution and a 50 megasamples-per-second (MS/s) conversion rate. The system LSI device that the A/D converter is a part of can also be made smaller and more power-efficient, having a significant effect on the power efficiency of the device overall, the company said.
Fujitsu will proceed to further develop this technology for application in digital home appliances, mobile phones, and in Japan ‘1seg and Full-Seg’ mobile phone digital TV broadcast tuners. Fujitsu will also work on adapting the technology to further miniaturization processes, and plans to use the technology in various other analog circuits as well.
