24-bit Low-Power Low-Cost Digital Audio Sigma-Delta DAC

This paper describes a low-power low-cost 24-bit Σ-Δ digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for portable digital-audio applications. The interpolation filter uses a no-multiplier scheme to implement the arithmetic units and reading-writing common storage scheme for the delay-line to significantly reduce the die area. A 15-level quantizer, third-order, single-stage Σ-Δ modulator is employed to reduce the passband quantization noise, relax the out-of-band filtering requirements, and enhance immunity to clock jitter. A data weighted averaging algorithm is used to mitigate the nonlinearity caused by capacitor mismatch. A direct charge transfer switched-capacitor low-pass filter (DCT-SC LPF) is used to reconstruct the analog signal to reduce the kT/C noise and capacitor mismatch effect with a small increase of the power dissipation. The chip was fabricated in the SMIC 0.13 μm 1P5M CMOS process. The cell area of the digital part is 0.056 mm² and the total area of the analog part is 0.34 mm². The supply voltage is 1.2 V for the digital circuit and 3.3 V for the analog circuit. The power consumption of the analog part is 3.5 mW. The audio DAC achieves a 100 dB dynamic range and an 84 dB peak signal-to-noise-plus-distortion ratio over a 20 kHz passband. The results show that these performances are good enough for high quality portable audio applications.