A spectral approach to estimate the INL of A/D converter

In this paper, a new method is presented to estimate the Integral Nonlinearity (INL) of an A/D converter. An analytical description of the INL influence combined with a Fast Fourier Transform of actual digitized sine wave allows one to obtain an accurate estimation while requiring small amount of acquired data compared to classical methods. The results are validated using simulations and experiments, and the method clearly showed relevant results when applied to actual A/D converter.