The measurement of digital receiver phase errors associated with analog-to-digital conversion

Abstract

The advantages of digital signal processing techniques have motivated their application in communications, radar and electronic warfare receivers. In practice, the quantization and other error mechanisms associated with analog-to-digital converters often determine the performance of these systems. Phase errors in digital receivers are important for many applications. In practice, they are often determined by analog-to-digital conversion errors. This paper demonstrates a practical method of measuring phase errors in the time domain which is useful for characterizing the performance of analog-to-digital converters and other subsystems in a digital receiver.