Characteristics of linear-coded D/A converters

Abstract

We evaluate the performance of flash D/A converters designed with a new approach based on linear coding of the weights. The evaluation is performed by estimating the relative performance of the new, linear-coded converter compared with thermometer coded, binary-scaled, and segmented converters. As a measure of performance we use glitch noise, which is of importance in high-speed D/A converter operation. We also consider linearity measures such as the differential and integral nonlinearities to illustrate the typical impact of matching errors in the different converter types. A bound is given on the converter size at which the glitch performance becomes better for the linear-coded than for the segmented D/A converter.