Many diverse electronic systems contain significant analog functionality. The system might need to interface directly to the real world through sensors to monitor and control the environment, for example, in an industrial automation application. Other applications might need to monitor the operating environment to ensure safe and reliable operation, for example, monitoring temperatures and power supply conditions in a communications infrastructure application. The challenges range from designing the analog conditioning circuits that need to be implemented prior to analog-to-digital conversion to verifying the analog and digital implementation as early as possible in the design phase. There is also the need to reduce costs and shorten time to market.The designer can mitigate many of these challenges by using a combination of the XADC block and programmable logic resources of 7 series FPGAs.

Agile Mixed Signal technology brings flexible digital signal processing and local intelligence to the data acquisition front end. This approach allows large portions of the analog signal processing and conditioning to be moved into the digital domain which can reduce development and product costs. Better support for analog interfaces in the digital or embedded design environment enhances verification early in the development phase and shortens time to market. In addition, the ability to integrate and customize these interfaces can greatly reduce component count and enhance the reliability, safety, and security of the system.