A 14-bit 250-MS/s current-steering CMOS digital-to-analog converter

A 14-bit 250-MS/s current-steering digital-to-analog converter (DAC) was fabricated in a 0.13 μm CMOS process. In conventional high-speed current-steering DACs, the spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) is limited by nonlinear distortions in the code-dependent switching glitches. In this paper, the bottleneck is mitigated by the time-relaxed interleaving digital-random-return-to-zero (TRI-DRRZ). Under 250-MS/s sampling rate, the measured SFDR is 86.2 dB at 5.5-MHz signal frequency and 77.8 dB up to 122 MHz. The DAC occupies an active area of 1.58 mm2 and consumes 226 mW from a mixed power supply of 1.2/2.5 V.