Simulating and testing oversampled analog-to-digital converters

Quantities such as peak error and integral or differential nonlinearity are commonly used to characterize the performance of analog-to-digital converters. However, these measures are not readily applicable to converter architectures that use feedback and oversampling. An alternative set of parameters for characterizing the linear, nonlinear, and statistical properties of analog-to-digital (A/D) converters is suggested, and an algorithm, referred to as the sinusoidal minimum error method is proposed to estimate the values of these parameters. The suggested approach is equally suited to examining the performance of A/D converters by means or either computer simulations of experimental measurements on actual circuits. >