Arbitrary Waveform Generator Response Shaping Method to Enable ADC Linearity Testing on Very Low Cost Automatic Test Equipment

Mixed signal parametric testing is resource intensive and requires high-precision source and capture instrumentation to screen parametric faults. Analog to digital converters (ADC) require analog sources to provide stimulus while digital instrumentation with digital signal processing (DSP) support is used for output analysis. Precision requirements for test instrumentation are driven by the circuit under test (CUT) specifications and required to ensure minimal test escapes or excessive fallout due to source generated artifacts. Stringent accuracy requirements for the arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) modules on Ate are responsible to high hardware costs. We propose a linearity correction methodology to compensate for linearity distortion present in the analog source generator to eliminate the resulting artifacts that can cause false failures or passes. This method can be used to reduce the linearity requirement criteria for AWGs that are present in the Very-Low-Cost ATE (VLC-ATE) systems.