ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER CIRCUIT, CORRESPONDING SYSTEM AND METHOD

• Main Authors: FERRARA, Enrico, ERRICO, Nicola, ANNOVAZZI, Marzia, DONZELLI, Gea, TURBANTI, Paolo, CANNONE, Alessandro
• Format: Patent
• Language: English; French; German
• Published: 11.05.2022
• Subjects: BASIC ELECTRONIC CIRCUITRY; CODE CONVERSION IN GENERAL; CODING; DECODING; ELECTRICITY

A circuit (100) for use in transmission control units and braking control units for motor vehicles comprises of plurality of N sensing channels such as BJT-based temperature sensing channels. Each channel includes a first main sensing node (S_CH_1 to S_CH_N) and a second redundancy sensing node (S_CH_1R to S_CH_NR) paired therewith. A plurality of N analog-to-digital converters (ADC_1 to ADC_N) are coupled to the first sensing nodes (S_CF_1 to S_CH_N), with digital processing circuitry (101, 102) coupled to the converters (ADC 1 to ADC N) and configured to perform, e.g. interpolator processing of the N first digital signals. A pair of multiplexers (MUX1, MUX2) are coupled to the second sensing nodes (S_CF_1R to S_CF_NR) and to the N analog-to-digital converters (ADC_1 to ADC_N), with a further analog-to-digital converter (ADC_R) coupled to the output of the second multiplexer (MUX2). Error checking circuitry (103) is coupled to the outputs of the second multiplexer (MUX2) and the further analog-to-digital converter (ADC_R) to compare, at each time window in the sequence of N time windows, a first digital value (TEMP _CODE) and a second digital value (TEMP_CODE_RED) resulting from conversion to digital of: an analog sensing signal at one of the first sensing nodes (S_CF_1 to S_CH_N), and an analog sensing signal at the second sensing paired with the selected one of the first sensing nodes (S_CF_1 to S_CH_N).