8 Conclusion

Frequency planning is an essential aspect of ADC-based system design, tackling challenges such as spur management, dynamic range optimization and AAF design, as well as efficient data handling. By implementing thoughtful frequency planning upfront, you can avoid common pitfalls such as Nyquist zone overlaps and clock spur contamination, while benefiting from advantages such as improved spurious suppression and dynamic range, a reduction in the ADC’s digital interface or data rate, and FPGA resource savings. Carefully balancing these trade-offs and leveraging features such as ADC decimation make it possible to achieve high-performance, software reconfigurable receiver systems for a range of applications, while avoiding your next sampling hole.