Advantages and Application of Display Integrating A/d Converters

In making basic bridge and dc measurements, the integrating A/D converter has become the workhorse for many significant reasons. While cost and the availability of architectures with built in display drivers are certainly among them, the advantage of the integrating converter is its relative immunity to noise that is synchronous with the integrating period, both common and normal mode, and the fact that a true integrator features no missing codes. The purpose of this paper is to acquaint the user with some of the basic idiosyncracies of the popular A/D architectures and to demonstrate why the integrating format is the preferred format for dc and low frequency (generally <1Hz) measurements.