New switching sequence for gradient error compensation in thermometer-decoded DAC arrays

This paper discusses switching schemes for gradient error compensation in unary (thermometer-decoded) arrays of digital-to-analog converters (DACs). We present a new optimizing switching sequences which can compensate the gradient error of DAC´s converting arrays. With the new method we can not only get the optimized bound of integral nonlinearity (INL) causing by DAC´s gradient error but also substantially reduce the nonlinear noise energy during the small signal converting so as to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the output signal.