Sampling jitter and power supply interference in current-steering D/A converters

In this paper, the effect of jitter due to code dependent clock load and power-rail interference on the spectral performance of a current-steering D/A converter is discussed. Code dependent jitter increases the amount of harmonic distortion at the converter output. The effect of jitter becomes more dominant as the sampling rate of the converter increases, and may become the most dominant source of nonlinearity in high-speed converters. Effect of the jitter caused by code-dependent clock loading and power-rail interference on the spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) and total jitter energy of a converter is analyzed with a mathematical jitter model.