ADC Based Measurements:a Common Basis for the Uncertainty Estimation

Abstract

In the last years, many Authors have dealt with the uncertainty evaluation of the measurement performed by using an analog-to-digital converter, proposing different approaches to analyze the uncertainty propagation. However, in these studies, in order to identify the uncertainty sources, different sets of parameters are used, and, often, it is not considered that the various uncertainty sources have different modalities of propagation. Obviously, this implies that the various proposed approaches are not directly comparable. One of the main reasons which has caused this situation is the coexistent of various Standards concerning the characterization of the analog-to-digital converters. Therefore, the manufacturers of converters have got a large arbitrariness in choosing and measuring the parameters which specify the performances of their products. With the aim to overtake these limitations and to suggest a common basis, in this paper, we identify, among the large number of parameters proposed by the various Standards, a minimum set of figures of merit which allows a correct uncertainty evaluation of a generic measurement performed by using an analog-to-digital converter. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach we applied the method to real measurements and compared the results with the ones obtained by means of experimental tests.