A Risks Assessment and Conformance Testing of Analog-to-Digital Converters

The conformance test to which electronic devices are subjected after the manufacturing process, indicates if the device complies with an a priori given requirement set. On the basis of the test result, the component is considered to be working or not–working. However, because of the measurement uncertainty introduced by the testing bench assessment and by the chosen estimation algorithm, the manufacturer could include in the production process a component which does not respect the given requirements or could reject a working–device, thus affecting both testing and productivity costs. In this paper, it is considered the problem of the estimation of spectral parameters of analog–to–digital converters (ADCs). In particular, the risks to which both manufacturers and consumers of ADCs are subjected, are explicitly evaluated.