Susceptibility of a Sigma-Delta Converter to EMI

This paper discusses the susceptibility of sigma-delta analog-to-digital converters to disturbances, arising from environmental electromagnetic pollution or from the parasitic coupling with noisy building blocks integrated in the same system-on-chip (SoC) or system-in-package (SiP). The operation of a first-order switched-capacitor sigma-delta converter, which receives at its input nominal signals corrupted by radio-frequency interference is analyzed through time domain computer simulations and the root causes of failures are discussed in detail.