A novel gain error background calibration algorithm for time-interleaved ADCs

This paper presents a background calibration technique for gain error in Time-interleaved (TI) analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). The presented calibration technique is based on statistical characteristics of the input signal and error information can be obtained by analyzing the statistical properties of the input signal. Compared with conventional calibration algorithm, the presented calibration in this paper has low hardware resource consumption and no restriction on the input signal frequency, and can be extended to arbitrary number of channels. Simulation of the 8-bit 5-channel TIADCs with MATLAB shows that with gain error in the range of ±5% Vref, SNR of the output signal of the TIADCs is only 29.8dBc and reach 47.9dBc after calibration. The TIADCs performance is enhanced significantly by using this calibration algorithm.