Linearity testing of Analog-to-Digital Converters using imprecise sinusoidal excitations

One of the biggest challenges associated with testing the linearity of high performance Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) is generating a test stimulus more linear or spectrally more pure than the device under test. In this paper we propose algorithms that allow easy to generate, imprecise sinusoidal excitations that differ by a constant voltage to characterize the Integral nonlinearity (INL) of high resolution ADCs. Simulation results indicate that sine waves with SFDR<;40dB can be used to accurately identify the INL of 16-bit ADCs with the proposed methods.