Digital to analog converter architectures are disclosed that enable the binary scaling of transistor sized to be replaced by transistors of substantially the same size. This significantly reduced the size of the Digital to Analog converter on a wafer. As the currents from the lesser bits of the converter may be very small indeed, some of the transistors are operated in a regime where the gate-source voltage applied to the transistor is below the threshold voltage for the device, the threshold voltage generally being regarded as marking the onset of significant conduction through a field effect transistor.

A non-linearity evaluation circuit for use with a signal generator having at least a partly non-linear operation. The non-linearity evaluation circuit may include a detection unit operable to detect a given amplitude attribute in a target signal generated by the signal generator, a time position of the amplitude attribute in the target signal defining a time location of a snapshot time window relative to the target signal, a part of the target signal occupying the snapshot time window being a corresponding signal snapshot, and a presence of the given amplitude attribute indicating that the signal snapshot includes noise due to the non-linear operation of the signal generator. The non-linearity evaluation circuit may further include a controller operable to analyse the signal snapshot rather than a larger part of the target signal and to evaluate the non-linear characteristics of the operation of the signal generator based on the analysis.

A differential digital-to-analog (DAC) circuit that can include a reservoir capacitor and various switches to couple the bottom plates of the input capacitors, e.g., bit-trial capacitors, to reference voltages, e.g., REF+ or REF. In this manner, the reservoir capacitor can be used to provide any differential charge to the input capacitors, e.g., bit-trial capacitors, and the reference voltages, e.g., REF+ and REF, can be used to provide any common mode charge to the input capacitors.

The disclosure provides a circuit. The circuit includes a zone detection block that generates a control signal in response to an input signal. An amplifier generates an amplified signal in response to the input signal and the control signal. An analog to digital converter (ADC) is coupled to the amplifier and samples the amplified signal to generate a digital signal. A digital corrector is coupled to the zone detection block and the ADC, and transforms the digital signal to generate a rectified signal based on the control signal and an error signal. An error estimator is coupled to the zone detection block and receives the rectified signal as a feedback. The error estimator generates the error signal in response to the control signal and the rectified signal.

A differential digital-to-analog (DAC) circuit that can include a reservoir capacitor and various switches to couple the bottom plates of the input capacitors, e.g., bit-trial capacitors, to reference voltages, e.g., REF+ or REF. In this manner, the reservoir capacitor can be used to provide any differential charge to the input capacitors, e.g., bit-trial capacitors, and the reference voltages, e.g., REF+ and REF, can be used to provide any common mode charge to the input capacitors.

A comparator includes a first circuit including first, second, and third transistors, and a second circuit. One of the first transistor and the second transistor in the first circuit is an input transistor to which an input analog voltage is applied. The third transistor is configured to short-circuit a drain and a source of each of the first transistor and the second transistor during a period when the input analog voltage is applied. The second circuit is configured to output a signal indicating a relationship between magnitude of a first output analog voltage and magnitude of a second output analog voltage, the first output analog voltage and the second output analog voltage being output from

Systems and methods for processing and storing digital information are described. One embodiment includes a method for linearizing digital-to-analog conversion including: receiving an input digital signal; segmenting the input digital signal into several segments, each segment being thermometer-coded; generating a redundant representation of each of the several segments, defining several redundant segments; performing a redundancy mapping for the several segments, defining redundantly mapped segments; assigning a probabilistic assignment for redundantly mapped segments; converting each redundantly mapped segment into an analog signal by a sub-digital-to-analog converter (DAC); and combining the analog signals to define an output analog signal.

An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) includes a first ADC stage with a first sub-ADC stage configured to sample the analog input voltage in response to a first phase clock signal and output a first digital value corresponding to an analog input voltage in response to a second phase clock signal. A current mode DAC stage is configured to convert the analog input voltage and the first digital value to respective first and second current signals, determine a residue current signal representing a difference between the first and the second current signal, and convert the residue current signal to an analog residual voltage signal. A second ADC stage is coupled to the first ADC stage to receive the analog residual voltage signal, and convert the analog residue voltage signal to a second digital value. An alignment and digital error correction stage is configured to combine the first and the second digital values.

A stage, suitable for use in and analog to digital converter or a digital to analog converter, comprises a plurality of slices. The slices can be operated together to form a composite output having reduced thermal noise, while each slice on its own has sufficiently small capacitance to respond quickly to changes in digital codes applied to the slice. This allows a fast conversion to be achieved without loss of noise performance. The slices can be sub-divided to reduce scaling mismatch between the most significant bit and the least significant bit. A shuffling scheme is implemented that allows shuffling to occur between the sub-sections of the slices without needing to implement a massively complex shuffler.

Methods and systems for performing analog-to-digital conversion is provided. In one example, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) circuit comprises a leakage compensation circuit and a quantizer. The leakage compensation circuit is configured to: receive an input signal, the input signal being susceptible to a drift due to a charge leakage; receive a reference signal; and generate a leakage-compensated signal pair to compensate for the charge leakage, wherein the leakage-compensated signal pair comprises one of: (a) a leakage-compensated version of the input signal and the reference signal, (b) the input signal and a leakage-compensated version of the reference signal, or (c) a leakage-compensated version of the input signal and a leakage-compensated version of the reference signal. The quantizer is configured to perform a leakage-compensated quantization of the input signal based on the leakage-compensated signal pair to generate a digital output representing the input signal.