ADC Characterization

SNR (Signal to Noise ratio): SNR is the ratio of the power of fundamental
frequency component of the signal to the noise signal power present at the output
(excluding DC component and the harmonics).

SNR = 10*log10(powfund/varnoise) dB
Where, powfund represents the power of fundamental frequency component of the
output signal and Varnoise represents Noise power at the output.
SNR of Ideal ADC is the function of no. of bits of bits accounting Quantization noise
only.

SNR(perfect) = (6.023*n + 1.76) dB

THD (Total Harmonic Distortion): Whenever an input signal of a particular
frequency passes through a non-linear device, additional content is added at the
harmonics of the original frequency. So non-linearity in the converter will produce
harmonics. These harmonic frequencies distort the output which degrades the
performance of the system. This effect can be measured using the term called total
harmonic distortion (THD).

THD =20*log(

Where,

Vn

2+ V 3 2+ .Vn2
V 12+ V 2

dB

V 0 represents fundamental frequency component amplitude and

V 1 to

represents the amplitude of 1st harmonic to nth harmonic component

amplitude.
SINAD (Signal to Noise ratio and distortion): Signal to noise and distortion
(SINAD) is a combination of SNR and THD parameters. It is defined as the ratio of
the RMS value of the signal amplitude to the RMS value of all other spectral
components, including harmonics, but excluding DC.

SINAD = -10*log10(10-SNR+10(-THD/10)) dB

ENOB (Effective no. of bits): Effective number of bits (ENOB) is the number of
bits with which the ADC behaves like a perfect ADC(*For perfect ADC SINAD is same
as SNR). It is another way of representing the signal to noise ratio and distortion
(SINAD) and is derived from the formula of SNR of perfect ADC.

ENOB=

SINAD ( dB ) 1.76
6.02

SFDR (Spurious Free dynamic range): (SFDR) is the difference between the
value of the desired output
Signal and the value of the highest amplitude output frequency that is not present
in the input.

MATLAB COMPUTATION
MATLAB have unbuilt functions for SNR, SINAD and SFDR computation that returns
the value in dBc (decibels relative to the carrier) unit but the standard computation
should be in dBFS (decibels relative to full scale). One can understand the relation in
both the units of conversion from fig.1

Figure 1. SFDR in dBc and dBFS

Relation in dBc and dBFS is stated as follows:

full scale vale relative

value
|
dBc|+ career dB =value dBFS

MATLAB SCRIPT
The stated matlab script reads the sample output file of 14 bit ADC sampled at 8
MHz from the file ADC1.txt and generates the binary file containing the computed
parameters.