A NEW METHOD FOR ESTIMATING THE APERTURE UNCERTAINTY OF A D CONVERTERS/

Aperture uncertainty measurements are strongly influenced by quantizat ion, converter nonlinearity and test setup noise. The proposed method solves the difficulties arising from quantization, and nonlinearity. T he method estimates the noise distribution function by fine adjustment of the input signal offset. The contribution of jitter-induced voltag e noise is separated from additive noise in two different ways. Finall y, the aperture uncertainty, assumed independent of the frequency, is estimated by varying the signal frequency. Experimental results obtain ed on 8 and 10 bit converters are discussed.