Time - Domain Testing of a / D Converters

Abstract: Time-domain testing of A/D converter in single tone mode amounts to the identification of fundamental and harmonic tones in noise. The variable projection method reduces this problem to frequency estimation by minimising a onedimensional function. In this paper it is shown that the bias due to ignoring the harmonic distortion effect is negligible, and this approximation leads to fast frequency estimation algorithms. Three methods are examined (Newton, Gauss-Newton and Golden section search) and compared to the method which takes into account the effect of the distortion through simulations and experimental data. The convergence and implementation issues of the algorithms are also treated.