High-resolution low-power CMOS D/A converter

A very low-power, high-resolution, medium-speed D/A converter is described. The converter was realized using a standard analog CMOS technology. It achieved 15-bit monotonicity and less than 0.07-percent overall linearity at a clock frequency of 100 kHz, without requiring any trimming or calibration. The measured SNR was 85 dB, the power dissipation was less than 10 mW, and the distortion for a sinusoidal output was less than 0.04 percent. The D/A converter is intended for battery-powered speech and music synthesis applications where high dynamic range, low power, and low cost are all important.<
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