Abstract
This letter presents a hardware-efficient technique to scale the power consumption of dynamic element matching (DEM) DACs with the static back-off level of the digital input signal. Unlike previous DEM techniques, the proposed power-scalable approach disables parts of the DEM encoder and DAC elements when the digital signal level is decreased from full-scale, thus resulting in reduced power consumption and lower mismatch noise at the DAC output. Power-scalable DEM is particularly useful in digital-intensive RF transmitters, where 30–50 dB of signal power control may be performed in the digital domain. The concept is demonstrated for a 3.4-GHz 9-bit I/Q RF-DAC, utilizing bandpass delta–sigma modulation and DEM with programmable center frequency. The circuit is fabricated in a 16-nm FinFET process. When changing the digital back-off level of an LTE20 carrier from 0 to −18 dB, measurement results show a 72% reduction in total power consumption and 4.5-dB lower mismatch noise, achieved without performing any bias tuning or gain control in the analog domain. The digital delta–sigma modulator and DEM encoder consume less than 20 mW in full-scale mode.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 126-129 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | IEEE Solid State Circuits Letters |
Volume | 1 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- Modulation
- Power demand
- Solid state circuits
- Gain control
- Multiplexing
- Radio frequency
- Radio transmitters
- Delta–sigma modulation
- digital gain control
- dynamic element matching (DEM)
- power back-off
- RF-DAC