Technologies for designing dependable A/D converters

Although considerable research has been conducted on fault tolerance at the system level and results in system level fault tolerance have been applied to some actual systems, only a few research reports on fault tolerant A/D converters have appeared in the literature. Since A/D converters are extensively used in many actual systems and have important roles as input devices for digital processing in real time systems, it is important to develop technologies for designing dependable A/D converters. We review the technologies for the design of dependable A/D converters, including some of the patents in this area and the results of our research.