Analysis and Calibration of Nonbinary-Weighted Capacitive DAC for High-Resolution SAR ADCs

This brief analyzes the effect of capacitor variation on the design of high-resolution nonbinary-weighted successive-approximation-register analog-to-digital converters in terms of radix, conversion steps, and accuracy. Moreover, the limitation caused by the one-side redundancy of the nonbinary-weighted network is addressed and a corresponding solution with a mathematical derivation is provided. In order to relax the mismatch requirement on the capacitor sizing while still ensuring enough linearity, a bottom-up weight calibration technique accounting for noise and offset errors is proposed, and its effectiveness is demonstrated. This calibration approach can be easily incorporated into a charge-redistribution converter without modifying its main architecture and conversion sequence.