A Survey of Analog-to-Digital Converters for Operation under Radiation Environments

In this work, we analyze in depth multiple characteristic data of a representative population of radenv-ADCs (analog-to-digital converters able to operate under radiation). Selected ADCs behave without latch-up below 50 MeV·cm2/mg and are able to bear doses of ionizing radiation above 50 krad(Si). An exhaustive search of ADCs with radiation characterization data has been carried out throughout the literature. The obtained collection is analyzed and compared against the state of the art of scientific ADCs, which reached years ago the electrical performance that radenv-ADCs provide nowadays. In fact, for a given Nyquist sampling rate, radenv-ADCs require significantly more power to achieve lower effective resolution. The extracted performance patterns and conclusions from our study aim to serve as reference for new developments towards more efficient implementations. As tools for this purpose, we have conceived FOMTID and FOMSET, two new figures of merit to compare radenv-ADCs that consider electrical and radiation performance.