AD/DA conversion

Which correctly describes the differential nonlinearity (DNL) of an AD converter?

  1. AError in the slope (gain) of the overall transfer characteristic
  2. BDeviation of the width (step size) between adjacent codes from the ideal 1 LSB
  3. CDeviation of the output when the input is 0
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Answer: B. Deviation of the width (step size) between adjacent codes from the ideal 1 LSB

DNL indicates how much the input voltage width corresponding to each output code deviates from the ideal 1 LSB. Deviation of the overall transfer characteristic from the ideal straight line is integral nonlinearity (INL), and the output deviation at zero input is offset error.

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More AD/DA conversion questions

  1. What is the AD converter defect called in which a certain output code never appears no matter how the input changes?
  2. Which is a characteristic of the current-steering architecture often used in high-speed DA converters?
  3. Which metric converts the performance of a real AD converter, including noise and distortion, into the bit count of an ideal ADC?
  4. Which AD converter splits conversion into several stages processed like an assembly line, combining high speed with medium to high resolution?
  5. With simple oversampling and no noise shaping, how much does quantization noise improve when the sampling frequency is quadrupled?