If you have previously designed in IF-sampling ADC’s having simple LVDS or CMOS interfaces and no on-chip DSP functionality, then the AD6676 may appears like it is more sophisticated and requires much more effort to design-in.
ADI has provided various tools and documentation to support the AD6676 design-in process. Let’s quickly outline them so you feel comfortable moving forward with the AD6676.
- For a limited time, a web-based “live” remote evaluation system actually allows you to evaluate the AD6676’s performance. So visit the AD6676 product page and take a “test-drive” before even taking the next step.
- Download the AD6676 datasheet to gain greater insight into the devices operation while you evaluate it using the remote evaluation tool. If you have any questions, just ask them on EngineerZone and a factory applications engineer will respond.
- Once you feel comfortable that the AD6676 may be a good fit for your application, order an AD6676EBZ evaluation board. Note that you will also need to order the HSC-ADC-EVALEZ data capture card to evaluate it using the Matlab-based software tools. This software tool is used to automatically configure the AD6676 as well as perform various frequency and amplitude sweeps. It also provides the option to save the SPI initialization file so that the device can be easily configured on other development platform.
- To assist in the PCB design, the AD6676EBZ serves as an excellent reference for layout. The EBZ use a low cost, FR-4 design consisting of 6 layers. Both the schematic and Gerber files are available at https://wiki.analog.com/resources/eval/ad6676-wideband_rx_subsystem_ad6676ebz. Other tools such as IBIS and Touchtone models are available to further facilitate PCB layout optimization.