A rigorous error analysis of D/A conversion with dynamic element matching

Abstract

A known approach to reducing harmonic distortion in D/A converters involves a technique called dynamic element matching, The idea is not to reduce the power of the overall conversion error but rather to give it a random, noise-like structure. By reducing the correlation among successive samples of the conversion error, harmonic distortion is reduced. This paper presents the first rigorous and quantitative theoretical analysis of the conversion error introduced by an important type of D/A converter with dynamic element matching, In addition to supporting previously published experimental results that indicate the conversion error consists of white noise instead of harmonic distortion, the analysis provides an expression for the power of the white noise in terms of the power of the input sequence and the component matching errors. A yield estimation technique based on the expression is presented that can be used to estimate how the power of the white noise varies across different copies of the same D/A converter circuit for any given component matching error statistics.