Analysis of the ideal SFDR limit for an N bit digital-to-analog converter

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of digital-to-analog converters (DAC). Starting from the study of the quantization noise of a quantized sinusoidal signal, we derive an expression for the theoretical SFDR achievable with an ideal N bit DAC. The effect of the ratio between the conversion frequency and the signal frequency is investigated, together with the effect of the zero-order-hold introduced by the DAC.