Characterization of an ADC

Abstract: Analog-to-Digital converters, ADCs, introduces the possibility of performing digital computation on real world analog signals by being the interface between thetwo domains. The demands on the performance of the ADC is steadily increasing, which also comes with an increased difficulty of actually being able to guarantee the functionality of the device. Therefore, the art of estimating the characteristics of the ADC has flourished over the years where researchers has sugested ways of performing different test procedures to arrive at the most accurate method suited for a specific application. In this thesis, a measurement device containing an ADC is the subject of investigation. Some of the static characteristics of the ADC were estimated by isolating the ADC in the circuit and putting it through a set of tests developed in a lab environment and analyzing the resulting data offline. By then also carrying out measurements of the whole system, the amount of input referred noise added by the ADC could be estimated.