[ADC Characterization in Time Domain] Frequency Estimation to Linearize Time-Domain Analysis of A/D Converters

Time-domain analysis is a powerful tool for testing A/D converters (ADCs), particularly by incoherent sampling. This sampling is encountered for instance in real application and systems where the clock is generated by an on-board crystal oscillator. In the case of the sine-wave model for ADC output samples, fitting a sine-wave function to the data record is nonlinear with respect to the frequency. To overcome the convergence problem, the authors propose some alternative methods based on frequency estimation by means of fast Fourier transform and eigenanalysis of the autocorrelation matrix. This leads to a simple linear problem. The effectiveness of these methods is proven on both simulation and experimental results