ADC integral non-linearity testing with low linearity monotonic signals

摘要

Methods to test the Integral Non-Linearity (INL) of Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) using any monotonic signal with low linearity are proposed. Two methods that estimate the INL of the ADC by removing the error due to non-linearity in the stimulus are described. Signals with linearity dramatically lesser than the ADC under test, can be used to accurately estimate the INL of the ADC. Simulation results show that the maximum INL estimation error for testing 14-bit ADCs using 36 dB pure sinusoids and 7-bit linear exponential signals is under 0.6 LSB.