High resolution ADC spectral test with known impure source and non-coherent sampling

Spectral testing is important to measure the frequency characteristics of an Analog to Digital Converter. It is an expensive and challenging task to perform coherent sampling and to acquire highly pure signal generators for spectral testing. For the first time, a method that can eliminate the requirements of both coherent sampling and highly pure signal generators to perform accurate spectral test is proposed. Simulation results show the ability of the proposed method to accurately test a 15-bit ADC using a non-coherently sampled input signal with SFDR of 39dB. Furthermore, the robustness of the proposed method over the whole range of non-coherency is presented. The method can be applicable for ADC production test.