Application Note: Using Dither In PXI 3030 Series RF Digitizers

When performing measurements of small signals at levels in proximity to noise, dither can be used to improve performance of the Digitizer. Dither is a technique where a noise-like signal, uncorrelated with the wanted signal is added to the Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) input. This has the effect of smoothing out nonlinearities and can give improvements in ADC noise floor, distortion products and level linearity.