Effects of midpoint linearization and nonsubtractive dithering in A/D converters

In this work, the performance attainable by combining two different methods of linearization algorithms for A/D converters - dithering and static look-up table - are examined. The theory and the simulation results show that: (i) the optimal amplitude of the dither signal must be chosen according to the INL of the converter, and should be greater than the usual value of 0.5 LSB rms; (ii) using both the linearization techniques allows one to attain (in absence of other sources of error) an arbitrary high number of effective bits, proportional to the logarithm of the averaged samples.