All-Digital High Resolution D/A Conversion by Dyadic Digital Pulse Modulation

In this paper, the limitations of digital-toanalog (D/A) conversion by Digital Pulse Width Modulation (DPWM) are addressed and the novel Dyadic Digital Pulse Modulation (DDPM) technique for all-digital, low cost, high resolution, Nyquist-rate D/A conversion is proposed. Thanks to the spectral characteristics of the new modulation, in particular, the requirements of the filter needed to extract the baseband component of DPWM signals can be significantly released so that to be suitable to inexpensive integration on silicon in analog interfaces for nanoscale integrated systems. After the new DDPM technique and its properties are introduced on a theoretical basis, the implementation of a D/A converter (DAC) based on the proposed modulation is addressed and its performance in terms of noise and linearity is discussed. A 16-bit DDPM-DAC prototype is finally synthesized on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and experimentally characterized.