Signals-from-Noise Part II: Advanced DAC Techniques
A semi-regular column dedicated to helping engineers make sense of it all
by Dave Van Ess, Principal Application Engineer, Cypress Semiconductor

Introduction

It's my pleasure to introduce Dave Van Ess and his new column Signals-from-Noise. When we published his article "Comparator Hysteresis In A Nutshell" earlier this year, it was pretty apparent that experience as an applications engineer had given his fertile mind some rather unique insights on the art of electronics. So when Dave approached me with the idea of doing a semi-regular column, I jumped at the chance.

I am still not sure of what exactly Dave has in mind for his columns (and I'm not sure that Dave does either), but you'll enjoy his lively, offbeat style and ability to explain subtle technical concepts in plain English. And whatever he decides to write about, you can be sure that he will share the valuable experience he's picked up from his years as a design engineer and an applications engineer, two jobs where you get to know how circuits really work, as opposed to how the text books and specification sheets say they do.

While it's a good bet that some of the topics you'll see here may not appear to be directly related to the digital-heavy environment of the interconnect world, so much of what's essential to making a high-speed digital design work well goes on below the ones-and-zeroes level. That's why I think that whatever their field of expertise is, most readers at connectivityZONE will really enjoy the insights Dave provides.

 Signals-from-Noise
Single-Bit DACs in a Nutshell - Part II: Advanced DAC Techniques
by Dave Van Ess, Principal Application Engineer, Cypress Semiconductor

In our first installment on "DAC Basics," we explored how traditional resistor ladder networks can be replaced with simpler single-bit and ratiometric single-bit DAC elements and how to drive them with a pulse-width modulated (PWM) waveform. In this concluding installment, we'll look at three other ways to drive these networks. Each will have example oscilloscope waveforms and spectral plots for duty cycles of 50% and 14.5%.

...download complete article here (113 KB PDF)