What is “dither” with respect to analog-to-digital converters?
An abnormal condition where the converter cannot settle on a value to represent the signal
A small amount of noise added to the input signal to reduce quantization noise✓Correct answer
An error caused by irregular quantization step size
A method of decimation by randomly skipping samples
Explanation
Dither is a small amount of noise deliberately added ahead of the converter so that a slowly changing input keeps crossing quantization thresholds. This randomizes the rounding error, turning quantization distortion that would otherwise be correlated with the signal into a smoother broadband noise floor, which improves resolution of low-level signals.