Analysis of the quantization noise effects on the SQNR behaviour in analog to digital conversion

The characterization of the quantization effects due to the conversion of infinite precision quantities to fixed-point arithmetic constitutes a relevant research area. It is of fundamental importance for the development of automatic tools for the transformation of DSP algorithms from floating point to fixed point arithmetic. In this paper a novel approach for the direct computation of the probability density function (PDF) at the output of generic memory-less nonlinear processing blocks is derived. Our analysis has been applied to the modeling of the THA-ADC chain. By using this approach, we are able to determine the exact behavior of the Signal to Noise Quantization Ratio (SQNR) for cases where the well-known Pseudo Quantization Noise (PQN) model does not give accurate results