Patent 7466257 was granted and assigned to Panasonic on December, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The output of a first integrator is quantized in a quantizer. The quantized signal is subjected to D/A conversion, successively output to a plurality of output paths by a first switching circuit, sampled and held by a plurality of charge-holding circuits of a first feedback circuit, and successively output by a second switching circuit to one of the input terminals of a subtractor. On the other hand, the output signal of the first integrator is successively output by a third switching circuit to a plurality of output paths, sampled and held by a plurality of charge-holding circuits of a second feedback circuit, and successively input to the other input terminal of the subtractor by a fourth switching circuit along with signals held in an input portion, which samples and holds input analog signals. By doing so, a plurality of signals with different sampling timings are integrated accumulatively by the subtractor and the first integrator. When integration functions used to obtain an n-th order noise-shaping effect are multiplexed and operated using a single integrator, the integrator's current consumption can be suppressed.