ADC characterization by an eigenvalues method

A new method called the eigenvalue method, is introduced in this paper. Here the eigenvalues of the sampling data matrix, directly derived from the sampled input data, are used to characterize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and further to estimate the number of effective bits. Various input signals, such as single-tone, dual-tone, or multi-tone can be used to obtain accurate estimation results. In addition, our new method does not have any of the difficulties and problems of the earlier characterization methods. Extensive simulations indicate that the proposed method provides excellent performance with single-tone, dual-tone, and multi-tone test signals. The proposed eigenvalue method also shows remarkable robustness over a truly wide SNR range (well below 10 dB to somewhat over 160 dB).