A 10-Bit 1.6-GS/s 27-mW Current-Steering D/A Converter With 550-MHz 54-dB SFDR Bandwidth in 130-nm CMOS

This paper presents a 10-bit 5-5 segmented current-steering digital-to-analog converter implemented in a standard 130-nm CMOS technology. It achieves full-Nyquist performance up to 1 GS/s and maintains 54-dB SFDR over a 550-MHz output bandwidth up to 1.6 GS/s. The power consumption for a near-Nyquist output signal sampled at 1.6 GS/s equals 27 mW. To enable the presented performance a design strategy is proposed that introduces a switch-driver power consumption aware analysis of the switched current cell. The analysis of the major distortion mechanisms in the switched current cell allows the derivation of a design strategy for maximum linearity. This strategy is extended to include the power consumption of the switch drivers in function of the switched current cell design. To minimize the digital power consumption, low-power implementations of the thermometer decoder and switch driver circuits are introduced.