Oscillation‐based testing of analog‐to‐digital converters represents a viable option for low‐cost built‐in self‐testing in mixed‐signal design. While numerous papers have addressed implementation issues, little attention has been paid to the measurement accuracy. In this letter, we highlight an inherent measurement uncertainty which has to be considered when deriving the parameters from the oscillation frequency.

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The paper presents the results of a feasibility study of measuring static parameters of ADC cores embedded in a Systemon-Chip. Histogram based technique is employed because it is suitable for built-in self-test. While the theoretical background of the technique has been covered by numerous papers, less attention has been given to implementations in practice. Our goal was the implementation of histogram test in a IEEE Std 1500 wrapper. Two different solutions pursuing either minimal test time or minimal hardware overhead are described. The impact of MOS switches at ADC input on the performed measurements was considered.K e y w o r d s: ADC static parameters, histogram based test, built-in self-test, system-on-chip

Oscillation-based test (OBT) is one of the approaches for measuring static ADC parameters such as differential nonlinearity (DNL) and integral nonlinearity (INL) that can be implemented in a built-in self-test arrangement. When applying the OBT approach in practice we noticed an inherent measurement uncertainty related to the slope of the ADC input signal in OBT test mode. Experimental environment in Matlab has been set up to study the phenomenon. Experiments with varying values of slope were performed to demonstrate the margins of DNL measurement uncertainty.