Testing high resolution ADCs with low resolution/accuracy deterministic dynamic element matched DACs

This work presents a deterministic dynamic element matching (DDEM) approach which is applied to low precision DACs to generate stimulus signals for ADC testing. Both simulation results and experimental results from a fabricated DDEM DAC are presented to verify the performance. The ADC testing performance of an 8-bit DDEM DAC (linearity less than 5 bits without DDEM) is comparable to or better than the best results reported in the literature using on-chip linear ramp generators. The DDEM technique offers great potential for use in both production test and built-in-self-test(BIST) environments.