A low glitch 12-bit current-steering CMOS DAC for CNC systems

A 12-bit, 100-MHz CMOS current-steering D/A converter for CNC (computer number control) systems is presented. To reduce the glitch and increase the SFDR (spurious-free dynamic range), a low crosspoint switch driver and a special dummy switch are applied. In addition, a 4-5-3 segmental structure is used to optimize the performance and layout area. After improvement, the biggest glitch energy decreased from 6.7 pVs to 1.7 pVs, the INL decreased from 2 LSB to 0.8 LSB, the SFDR is 78 dB at a 100-MSPS clock rate and 1 MHz output frequency. This DAC can deliver up to 20.8 mA full-scale current into a 50 Ω load. The power when operating at full-scale current is 163 mW. The layout area is 1.8 × 1.8 mm2 in a standard 0.35-μm CMOS technology. (semiconductor integrated circuits)