Abstract
This section presents a method to improve the linearity of current steering (CS) digital-to-analog converters (DACs). The method uses unary functional segmentation to create redundant D/A functions, defined around nominally identical sub-DAC entities. Further, the method uses a digital pre-processor to create phase shifted replicas of the input signal that are fed to the sub-DACs. These represent the input arguments for the redundant D/A functions. The parallel sub-DAC branches convert the input signal replicas to currents. The output currents are combined and their harmonic distortion components mutually suppress each other. In this way, the overall DAC spurious-free-dynamic-range (SFDR) and total-harmonic-distortion (THD) are improved. The method can be applied with either a single conventional CS DAC, based on emulated virtual parallel sub-DACs, or a CS DAC with unary functional segmentation, i.e. based on physically present parallel sub-DACs. The method is particularly suitable for OFDM communication systems and mixed-signal systems-on-a-chip with DACs, e.g. FPGAs with integrated DACs. Recently, a similar method has been developed for the RF field, in an independent research project [61], which further advocates in favor for applying this approach in the field of DACs.
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© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
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Radulov, G., Quinn, P., Hegt, H., van Roermund, A. (2011). New Harmonic-Distortion-Suppression Method. In: Smart and Flexible Digital-to-Analog Converters. Analog Circuits and Signal Processing. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0347-6_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0347-6_13
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Online ISBN: 978-94-007-0347-6
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