New Trends in Analog to Digital Converters Testing

In this paper, new state of the art analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) testing techniques both static and dynamic are revised and discussed. Regarding the static test it is shown that a new technique based on the use of small triangular waves superimposed with a variable offset value as input signal, reduces dramatically the test duration. This histogram based technique can be implemented by using low cost generators even for high resolution ADC testing. In relation to the dynamic test, a variant of the traditional histogram test using Gaussian noise as stimulus signal is discussed. It allows the test of high frequency, or high resolution ADCs in those cases where the traditional sinusoidal stimuli are not available with the required spectral purity. New techniques to grant convergence of the traditional four-parameter sine fitting algorithms traditionally used in time domain tests are also revised.