A 10-bit current-steering D/A converter for active pixel sensor control

A compact 10-bit current-steering D/A converter in a 0.35 μm CMOS technology is presented. The DAC is designed for active pixel sensor control of a retinal implant. A new current cell has been used to minimize power consumption and reduce glitching. To guarantee monotonicity and to achieve good dynamic and static performance a segmentation level of 4-6 has been used. A triple common-centroid layout technique has been applied and an active area of 0.7 mm² has been used. The measured differential and integral linearity errors are less than ± 0.2 LSB and ± 0.3 LSB, respectively.