Design of a test equipment for DAC's performance assessment

Assessing the dynamic performance of digital-to-analog converters (DAC) is challenging due to the limited resolution of flash analog-to-digital converters (ADC) that are used for the scope. Current solutions are either difficult to be implemented in practice or suffer from serious limitations due to the uncertainty of the hardware utilized. The paper present an innovative method for testing the dynamic performance of a DAC that uses a low resolution ADC just as the other solutions, but exploits it to digitize an amplified version of the error signal, instead of the DAC output signal. The limitations due to the hardware are thus overcome. The results of a number of simulations confirm the feasibility of the proposed method.