Why Voltage-Reference Noise Matters (.PDF Download)

There’s increasing demand for ultra-high precision measurements that can achieve greater than 24-bit resolution in industries from aerospace and defense and gas exploration to pharmaceutical and medical-device manufacturers. For example, the pharmaceutical industry uses high-precision lab balances that offer 0.0001-mg resolution over a 2.1-g full-scale range that would require an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with greater than 24-bit resolution. Calibration and testing of these high-precision systems challenges the instrumentation industry to offer test equipment that can achieve greater than 25-bit resolution with at least 7.5-digit measurement precision.