A Low-Cost Test Method for the Serial Output of ADC Based on FPGA

In the radio frequency (RF) receiver chips, the parallel data output from the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is transmitted to the external world through a parallel-to-serial conversion circuit. The high-speed serial data brings additional requirements for data acquisition, timing alignment, and serial-to-parallel conversion for ADC testing and analysis. When testing the ADC's serial output using a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), data acquisition errors may occur due to reasons such as DuPont cables, internal FPGA routing, etc. This paper presents a low-cost FPGA-based test platform and designs a timing error correction logic algorithm. The test platform is used to test a 12-bit <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$50 \text{MS} / \mathrm{s} \text{ADC}$</tex>, and the ADC 's serial output rate is <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$600 \text{MS} / \mathrm{s}$</tex>. The platform can correctly acquire and recover the <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$50 \text{MS} / \mathrm{s}$</tex> parallel data from the <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$600 \text{MS} / \mathrm{s}$</tex> ADC serial data. The test platform and timing error correction logic algorithm designed in this paper have the advantages of low cost, small size, and portability.