Frequency domain analysis for dynamic nonlinearity measurement in A/D converters

The paper discusses the problem of measuring the dynamic systematic error, or the dynamic input-output characteristic, of an analog-to-digital converter simulated by a sinusoidal input. First of all, it is shown that the statistical methods, although widely used , yield misleading results in dynamic conditions, i.e., when the converter characteristics presents hysteresis. Secondly, the paper presents a modified version of a frequency-domain method (Chebyshev test), previously developed by the authors for testing static devices. Both simulation and experimental results show that the Chebyshev test for dynamic nonlinearities is a very fast way to measure the input-output characteristic of an ADC affected by hysteresis error.