Experimental characterization of the energy consumption of ADC embedded into microcontrollers operating in low power

Abstract

This work aims to experimentally characterize the energy consumption of analog-to-digital converters (ADC) embedded into microcontroller units (MCU) operating in low power for autonomous sensor applications. The study is carried out at low and high operating frequencies, and for different numbers of conversion bits. In addition, this work not only takes into account the energy to do the conversion, but also the wake-up energy, which is implicit to any conversion performed by an embedded ADC. The contribution of this wake-up energy can be quite significant, especially when the conversion is performed at high frequency. Experimental tests have been done using a commercial low-power MCU (MSP430FR5969 from Texas Instruments) that includes a 12- bit ADC.