Histogram Measurement of ADC Nonlinearities Using Sine Waves

This paper gives results concerning the measurement of differential and integral nonlinearity of ADC’s using the histogram method with a sine wave input Signal. w e specify the amount of overdrive required as a function of the noise level a function of the desired accuracy, the desired confidence level, as to achieve the desired accuracy in individual DNL values with 99% confidence, we expect 1% of the DNL values (or approximately 10 of them) to be out of tolerance. This means Will be measured with an error greater than the and the desired accuracy and the number of samples required as that there is a high probability that the worst DNL and the noise level. An analysis o f the effect on the results of harmonic distortion of the applied signal is given. The error analysis assumes a mixture of coherent and random sampling rather than pure random sampling.