Rapid Simulation of Current Steering Digital-to-Analog Converters using Verilog-A

The paper presents a technique to drastically reduce the simulation time of current-steering DACs, while maintaining the accuracy of a full transistor level simulation. Time varying current controlled current sources (implemented in Verilog-A) are used to simplify the thermometer portion of the DAC, thereby reducing device count and simulation time. A comparison of the results of the technique with a full transistor level 10-bit DAC operating at 500 Msps shows that a speed-up of 40times is achievable, with no loss of accuracy