For applications that use the AUX input channels at high throughput and high input frequency, a driving amplifier with low output impedance is required to meet the ac performance of the internal 14-bit ADC. Some key specifications of the input driving amplifier are discussed below:
- Small-signal bandwidth. The small-signal
bandwidth of the input driving amplifier must be much higher than the bandwidth
of the AUX input to verify that there is no attenuation of the input signal
resulting from the bandwidth limitation of the amplifier. In a typical data
acquisition system, a low cut-off frequency, antialiasing filter is used at the
inputs of a high-resolution ADC. The amplifier driving the antialiasing filter
must have a low closed-loop output impedance for stability, thus implying a
higher gain bandwidth for the amplifier. Higher small-signal bandwidth also
minimizes the harmonic distortion at higher input frequencies. In general, the
amplifier bandwidth requirements can be calculated on the basis of Equation 1.
Equation 1. 
where:
- f–3dB is the
3dB bandwidth of the RC filter.
- Distortion. To achieve the distortion
performance of the AUX channel, the distortion of the input driver must be at
least 10dB lower than the specified distortion of the internal ADC, as shown in
Equation 2.
Equation 2. 
- Noise. Careful considerations must be made
to select a low-noise, front-end amplifier to prevent any degradation in SNR
performance of the system. As a general rule, to verify that the noise
performance of the data acquisition system is not limited by the front-end
circuit, keep the total noise contribution from the front-end circuit below 20%
of the input-referred noise of the ADC. Noise from the input driver circuit is
band-limited by the low cut-off frequency of the input antialiasing filter, as
explained in Equation 3.
Equation 3. 
where:
- V1 / f_AMP_PP
is the peak-to-peak flicker noise,
- en_RMS is the
amplifier broadband noise density in nV/√ Hz,
and
- NG is the
noise gain of the front-end circuit, which is equal to 1 in a buffer
configuration.