Histogram-based qualification of data used in background or blind calibration of interleaving errors of time-interleaved ADCS

摘要

An ADC can include a plurality of time-interleaved ADCs to increase the overall sampling rate of the ADC. Such an ADC can have interleaving errors, since the time-interleaved ADCs in the ADC are not always perfectly matched. One way to calibrate for these mismatches is by observing the digital output signals of the time-interleaved ADCs in the background, or more broadly, without knowledge of the input signal to the ADC (often referred to as “blind” calibration). Due to the nature of these calibrations, the performance of the calibration would significantly degrade when the input signal has certain problematic input conditions, such as a certain coherent input frequency. To address this issue, the data being used for calibration of interleaving errors can go through a qualifying process to assess whether to update error estimates based on the data.