Analog-to-Digital Conversion is Key for Deep Space Exploration with the James Webb Space Telescope

Reflect back to your last design project. Did it have leading-edge requirements that seemed impossible at the time to fulfill? Now think about a design that needs to live in the harsh environment of space. A device that has to sip power and function flawlessly for over a decade because there is no opportunity to service it if anything goes wrong. That is the set of requirements that faced Dr. Lanny Lewyn, founder of Lewyn Consulting Incorporated (LCI), when his company was selected to design a key piece of the James Webb Space Telescope: an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for an image system. This case study documents the methodology that he employed to successfully design this ADC using the Tanner design flow.