In the last years the technology improvement of Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs) has extended the use of digital techniques in a multitude of applications. Consequently, there is an increasing attention to DAC topics, from researchers and manufacturers. The paper is aimed at providing a metrological overview and the leading trends of the research in the field of DACs.

Linearity is a critical measurement for overall performance of digital-to-analog converters (DAC) in mixed-signal system-on-chips (SoCs). Device parameters become more difficult to control due to variations from fabrication process with deep sub-micron technology. Such parameters also continue to degrade after fabrication as time elapses. Process variations of DACs are major source of non-linea...

While Σ∆M techniques [l, 2] are applied widely in analog conversion sub-systems, both analog-to-digital (ADC) and digital-to-analog (DAC) converters. these methods have enjoyed much less exposure in the broader application domain, where flexible and configurable solutions, traditionally supplied via a software DSP (soft-DSP), are required. And this limited level of exposure is easy to understan...

Multibit delta-sigma modulators are widely used in recent analog-to-digital converter (ADC) implementations [1, Chapter 8]. Due to their improved stability, they can achieve the same high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with lower order modulator and lower oversampling ratio (OSR), i.e. higher speed, than their singlebit counterparts. Also, the use of a multibit feedback relaxes slew-rate and settl...

This thesis describes the design and implementation of an optical-electrical subsampling down-conversion receiver that employs EA modulation. Accurate subsampling of an electrical RF signal in the optical domain is achieved by using a low-jitter mode-locked-laser and a high-bandwidth interferometer. The sub-sampled information is then digitized by an optical-electrical continuous-time (CT) EA a...

An ideal radio communication receiver places the analog to digital conversion just after the antenna. It is an objective in a Òsoftware radioÓ perspective. The available silicon technologies do not provide the performance required by this application. We are able to evaluate the present limits and the gap between these limits and the ideal solution proposed. In this paper, we describe the prese...

Abstract: This paper describes a new approach in testing static parameters of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). The input of an ADC to be tested is connected to a generator of saw-tooth impulses. In comparison to ordinary approaches, the measured decision levels are not related to zero potential but to the decision levels of an additional ADC, which is of same type as tested ADC. Approximati...

Multicarrier transmission system such as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a promising technique for high bit rate transmission in wireless communication system. OFDM is a spectrally efficient modulation technique that can achieve high speed data transmission over multipath fading channels without the need for powerful equalization techniques. However the price paid for this ...

There exist measuring devices where an analog input is converted into a digital output. Such converters can have a nonlinear internal dynamics. We show how measurements with such converting devices can be understood using concepts from symbolic dynamics. Our approach is based on a nonlinear one-to-one mapping between the analog input and the digital output of the device. We analyze the Bernoull...