A new approach for the nonlinearity test of ADCs/DACs and its application for BIST

This paper describes an algorithm to derive the nonlinearity performances of Analog-to-Digital and Digital-to-Analog Converters (ADCs/DACs) from FFT results. The main advantages of the new approach over conventional ones are that the test stimuli are simpler and the influence of noise on test results decreases. This method is especially useful for the BIST of converters. Experiments have shown the feasibility of this approach.