Layout Tips for 12-Bit A/D Converter Application

This Application Note originally started as a “cook book” for a true 12-bit layout. The assumption of this type of approach is that a reference design could be provided, which easily could be used for every layout implementation. But, the notion of this approach is fairly unrealistic. There are a multitude of successful ways to layout out systems with 12-bit Analog-to-Digital (A/D) Converters and each layout is highly dependent on the number of devices in the circuit, the types of the devices (digital or analog) and the environment that the final product will reside in. Given all of these variables, it could easily be demonstrated that one successful layout that provides twelve noise free bits from an analog signal may easily fail in another setting.