Abstract
Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are among one of the world’s largest volume devices. ADCs are a necessary, vital mixed-signal integrated circuit (IC) component in almost every electrical device and system. One of the challenges is to accurately and cost-effectively test the continually better performance ADCs. For spectral testing of the ADC, one of the goals is to obtain dynamic performance of the ADC under test. The conventional test has become extremely difficult to implement accurately and cost-effectively, since the test stimulus to the ADC must have an even better purity than ADC under test with continuously higher performance. In addition, multi-tone tests require harmonics and spur, as well as the intermodulation must be accurately tested without influence from impure test stimuli. To resolve this issue, this chapter proposes a new method. This method uses the low-purity test stimulus instead of a high-precision test stimulus and passes the signal to two different cost-effective filters, and the output signals are then sampled by the ADC; by separating the nonlinearity from the source, the true ADC nonlinearity is accurately estimated. Then the dynamic performance of the ADC under test can be obtained. Extensive simulation results validate the functionality and robustness of the proposed method with different levels of impure test stimulus and different types or resolutions of the ADC under test. The proposed method greatly reduces the requirements on the test stimulus and is implemented into the board-level or on-chip high-performance ADC spectral testing and characterization.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Y. Zhuang, D. Chen, Accurate Spectral Testing with Impure Source Test Stimulus for Multi-tone Test, submitted to IEEE VLSI Test Symp. (VTS), (2018)
M. Burns, G.W. Roberts, An Introduction to Mixed-Signal IC Test and Measurement (Oxford University Press, New York, 2012)
J. Doernberg, H.-S. Lee, D.A. Hodges, Full-speed testing of A/D converters. IEEE J. Solid State Circuits SC-19, 820–827 (1984)
M. Mahoney, DSP-Based Testing of Analog and Mixed-Signal Circuits (Wiley-IEEE Computer Society Press, Washington, DC, USA, 1987)
Y. Zhuang, D. Chen, New strategies in removing noncoherency from signals with large distortion-to-noise ratios, Accepted by IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, Exp. Briefs, (2017)
IEEE Standard for Terminology and Test Methods for Analog-to-Digital Converters, IEEE Std.1241, (2010)
IEEE Standard for Digitizing Waveform Recorders, IEEE Std.1057, (2007)
Z. Yu, D. Chen, R. Geiger, Accurate testing of ADC’s spectral performance using imprecise sinusoidal excitations. in Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Circuits Systems, vol. 1. (2004), pp. 645–648
D. Slepiˇcka, The estimation of test signal quality by means of two simple filters in ADC testing. Comput. Standards Interfaces 34(1), 156–161 (2012)
B. Magstadt, Y. Zhuang, D. Chen, Accurate spectral testing with impure source and noncoherent sampling. IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas. 65(11), 2454–2463 (2016)
D. Rabijns, W.V. Moer, G. Vandersteen, Spectrally pure excitation signals: Only a dream? IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas. 53(5), 1433–1440 (2004)
A. Maeda, A method to generate a very low distortion, high frequency sine waveform using an AWG, in Proceedings of IEEE International Test Conference, pp. 1–8, 2008
M. Elsayed, E. Sanchez-Sinencio, A low THD, low power, high output-swing time-mode-based tunable oscillator via digital harmonic-cancellation technique. IEEE J. Solid State Circuits 45(5), 1061–1071 (2010)
F. Abe, Y. Kobayashi, K. Sawada, K. Kato, O. Kobayashi, H. Kobayashi, Low-distortion signal generation for ADC testing, in Proceedings of IEEE International Test Conference, pp. 1–10, 2014
Y. Zhuang, A. Unnithan, A. Joseph, S. Sudani, B. Magstadt, D. Chen, Low cost ultra-pure sine wave generation with self calibration, in Proceedings of IEEE International Test Conference, pp. 1–9, 2016
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zhuang, Y., Chen, D. (2018). Accurate Spectral Testing with Impure Test Stimulus for Multi-tone Test. In: Accurate and Robust Spectral Testing with Relaxed Instrumentation Requirements. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77718-4_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77718-4_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77717-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77718-4
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)