A safety circuit for the multi-channel processing of an input signal. The safety circuit includes an analog-to-digital conversion device having a first analog input and a second analog input and at least one digital output for processing the input signal. Furthermore, the safety circuit has a test device which is set up to apply a test signal at the first and/or second input of the A/D conversion device in such a way that the test signal superposes the input signal such that the test signal dominates the input signal.

An error extraction method for foreground digital correction of a pipeline analog-to-digital converter including: acquiring a transmission curve of a pipeline analog-to-digital converter, and controlling an input signal to be within a sub-segment 0 of the transmission curve; during extraction of error information of an ith pipeline stage, setting a magnitude of the input signal according to Formula (I); locking the outputs of all previous-stage comparators in the i.sup.th pipeline stage of the pipeline analog-to-digital converter; and completing, according to original output code of the pipeline analog-to-digital converter, error extraction by means of adaptive iteration, stage-by-stage, sequentially from a last stage to a first stage of a pipeline. During quantization of error value, the invention performs, by means of a fitting-based adaptive algorithm, foreground extraction of a capacitance mismatch error, a gain bandwidth error, and a kickback error in each stage of the pipeline, without any additional circuit.

In an embodiment, a circuit includes N sensing channels. Each channel includes a first main sensing node and a second redundancy sensing node paired therewith. N analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are coupled to the first sensing nodes, with digital processing circuits coupled to the N ADCs. A pair of multiplexers are coupled to the second sensing nodes and to the N ADCs with a further ADC coupled to the output of the second multiplexer. An error checking circuit is coupled to the outputs of the second multiplexer and the further ADC to compare, at each time window in a sequence of N time windows, a first digital value and a second digital value resulting from conversion to digital of: an analog sensing signal at one of the first sensing nodes, and an analog sensing signal at the second sensing node paired with the selected one of the first sensing nodes.

An object of the present disclosure is to prevent an output level of an analog signal from exceeding a predetermined upper limit value, in a module that adjusts a level of the analog signal. According to the present disclosure, there is provided a signal generation apparatus including an RF base module (12) that converts a digital base band signal for testing into an intermediate frequency (IF) signal and outputs the IF signal, and a control unit (18), in which the RF base module is connected to an RF converter (20) which outputs an analog RF signal obtained by frequency-converting the IF signal, and the control unit clips the IF signal output from the RF base module based on an output level of the analog RF signal output from the RF converter.

Provided are an analog-to-digital (AD) converter, a sensor system, and a test system capable of reducing the time for test processing. AD converter includes input part, AD conversion part, first output part, and second output part. The analog signal output from sensor is input to input part. AD conversion part digitally converts an analog signal to generate first digital data and second digital data. First output part outputs the first digital data to control circuit. Second output part outputs the second digital data to test controller before first output part outputs the first digital data. In the test mode, test controller determines whether or not sensor system including sensor is in an abnormal state on the basis of the second digital data.

Methods and devices are provided for circuits. One device includes an adjustment circuit having an adjustable resistor for modifying a resistance value of a resistive device, the adjustment circuit connected to an adjustment terminal of the resistive device. The resistance value of the adjustable resistor changes, when a voltage or charge on the adjustment terminal of the adjustable resistor is changed. The adjustable resistor is a phase change element with an adjusting terminal to which different voltage values are applied for adjusting a conversion device threshold value.

An integrated circuit includes a successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The ADC includes a bit step selector. During testing of the ADC, the bit step selector selects a number of bits to be tested for a next analog test voltage based on digital values that are within an integer delta value of most recent digital value for a most recent analog test voltage.

In one aspect, a transfer function (TF) estimation circuit configured to generate an estimate of a TF undergone by signals between an input of a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) of a feedforward path of a continuous-time (CT) stage of an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and an output of a backend ADC of the ADC is disclosed. The TF estimation circuit includes one or more circuits configured to generate a first cross-correlation output by cross-correlating digital versions of signals based on a test signal provided to the CT stage and an output signal of the backend ADC, generate a second cross-correlation output by cross-correlating digital versions of signals based on the test signal and an output signal of a quantizer of the feedforward path of the CT stage, and generate the estimate of the TF based on the first and second cross-correlation outputs.

The present invention discloses a DAC method having signal calibration mechanism. A first conversion circuit generates a first analog signal according to an input digital signal. A second conversion circuit generates a second analog signal according to the input digital signal and a pseudo-noise digital signal. An echo transmission circuit processes a signal on an echo path to generate an echo signal. A first and a second calibration circuits generate a first and a second calibration signals. A calibration parameter calculation circuit performs calculation according to a difference between the echo signal and a sum of the first and the second calibration signals and related path information to generate a first and a second offsets. The first and the second calibration circuits converge first and second response coefficients and update a first and a second codeword offset tables according to the first and the second offsets.

Methods and devices are provided for circuits. One device includes an adjustment circuit having an adjustable resistor for modifying a resistance value of a resistive device, the adjustment circuit connected to an adjustment terminal of the resistive device. The resistance value of the adjustable resistor changes, when a voltage or charge on the adjustment terminal of the adjustable resistor is changed. The adjustable resistor is a phase change element with an adjusting terminal to which different voltage values are applied for adjusting a conversion device threshold value.