TE design processes for successive-approximation A/D converter registers

Transition equations (TEs) and the associated design processes provide an interesting, and often rewarding, approach to sequential-logic circuit design. However, these processes are ignored in most of the text books and many engineers are thus unaware of them. The paper sets out the salient features of the technique by taking the design of a successive-approximation register as an example. It is hoped to show that TEs allow the designer to formulate device characteristics in a way not so readily possible with the more conventional design procedures. This in turn permits some extra degrees of freedom in design and can help to achieve very economical designs as a result. The register design arrived at by the TE design process is compared with the design achieved by more conventional methods and it will be seen that the TE design presents a quite significant saving in components or component area, as the case may be. Although the design process has been illustrated for a particular application, it will be realised that the TE approach to design has much wider applications.