Design of a small-area current steering CMOS D/A converter based on a novel layout technique

A 12-b 300MSPS Current-Steering DAC with 0.13um CMOS technology is presented. In order to reduce the chip area, a laminated-step layout technique is proposed. Based on this technique, the occupied DAC core size is only 0.26mm² even in 12-b resolution. Further, a current auto-averaging technique, an output impedance enhancement circuit, and the novel latched switching cell logic are discussed to keep the desired 12-b DAC performance. The measured results are within ±1LSB for DNL. The measured SFDR is 70dB under Nyquist output frequency with 50mW power dissipation at 3.3V power supply.