Except being used for electricity meters, this single or multiphase ADC architecture applies also for power quality analyzers and power quality meters, and EV chargers or AC-chargers (also known as wallboxes). This end equipment is used to help utilities and industrial enterprises monitor and control power quality by measuring certain power quality parameters, such as voltage harmonics, current harmonics, supply voltage dips, supply voltage swells, and more. For all equipment, a lot of computation is required for calculating the power quality parameters. Also, meeting the accuracy requirements for the different power quality parameters is important. The requirement for high accuracy and computation power is something well supported by having a standalone ADC and separate host MCU or microprocessor unit (MPU) device, as is done in this design.

A couple of the parameters commonly measured by power quality meters and power quality analyzers are voltage and current harmonics. Implement coherent sampling for the most accurate harmonic calculations. One way of implementing coherent sampling is to dynamically vary the sampling clock based on the measured Mains frequency and thus keep the sampling rate an exact multiple of the line frequency. The standalone ADCs in this design have the ability to take in a varying clock so the design can support coherent sampling. Although the clock to the standalone ADCs in this design can be varied, this design has no support for coherent sampling because the sampling clock from the host MCU to the standalone ADC cannot be varied with the proper fine resolution.