Pipeline ADC linearity testing with dramatically reduced data capture time

A system identification based method for testing pipeline ADC linearity is presented. In the method, the pipeline ADC is described by an identifier model consisting of a set of nonlinear equations parameterized with some unknown parameters. A small number of input output response data points of the ADC is then used to identify those unknown parameters. The identified model is then used to compute the ADC´s full-code linearity information. Comparing to standard histogram based full-code linearity test methods, the proposed method can reduce the data capture time by a factor of 100 to 1000 without appreciably degrading the testing accuracy. Both simulation results and experimental results are included which demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method.