Understanding the Effect of Clock Jitter on High Speed ADCs:Digitizing high speed signals to a high resolution requires careful selection of a clock that will not compromise the sampling performance of the Analog to Digital Converter (ADC). In this article we hope to give the reader a better understanding of clock jitter and how it affects the performance of the high speed ADC. As an example we will highlight the latest high performance ADC from Linear Technology, the 16-bit, 160Msps LTC2209. This ADC exhibits a signal to noise ratio (SNR) of 77.4dB, with 100dB SFDR throughout much of the baseband region. Like most high speed ADCs on the market today, the LTC2209 uses a sample-and-hold (S&H) circuit that essentially takes a snapshot of the ADC input at an instant in time. When the S&H switch is closed, the network at the input of the ADC is connected to the sample capacitor. At the instant the switch is opened one half clock cycle later, the voltage on the capacitor is recorded and held. Variation in the time at which the switch is opened is known as aperture uncertainty, or jitter, and will result in an error voltage that is proportional to the magnitude of the jitter and the input signal slew rate. In other words, the greater the input frequency and amplitude, the more susceptible you are to jitter on the clock source. Figure 1 demonstrates this relationship of slew rate proportional to jitter.