TESTING AND OPTIMIZING ADC PERFORMANCE - A PROBABILISTIC APPROACH

A novel approach to the topic of analog-to-digital converter (ADC) cha racterization is proposed, The key idea is to describe the behavior of the device via a suitable conditional probability function, estimated through a modified version of the popular histogram test. An y tradit ional figure of merit for ADC's can be accurately evaluated from the p roposed probabilistic characterization. Besides, this allows one to op timize the ADC overall performance, determining the best allocation of the output reconstruction levels. The parameters of the modified hist ogram test are determined as a function of the desired accuracy. Final ly, computer simulations illustrate the performance of the method.