JAJU878 November 2022 ADS117L11 , ADS127L11
Synchronization of multiple ADS127L11 devices is essential for this design. Two factors are required to maintain full synchronicity. The reference clock used for all ADCs need to be identical, and the START signal for all ADCs have to be identical and synchronized with the ADC reference clock.
For the reference clock, to verify the minimum skew between different clock inputs, the oscillator is buffered through the LMK1C1106, which is a very low-jitter, 6-channel buffer. Four channels are routed to the four ADCs, one output is sent back to the controller, and the sixth output is used for synchronizing the START signal as explained in this section. On the top of the low-jitter buffering, special care is taken to route the four clock signals to the four ADCs with identical trace length and delays on the PCB.
For the START signal, a small logic synchronizer circuit is used to align the START signal with the ADC reference clock, to make sure all ADCs are receiving the START signal on the same time with regard to the reference clock and avoiding one clock cycle of uncertainty.
For more details about the synchronization see the ADS127L11 in Simultaneous-Sampling Systems application brief.