High speed digital to analog converter

摘要

A high speed D/A converter includes a phase aligner, and a vector summation block. The phase aligner operates to ensure precise phase alignment between corresponding bits of a parallel N-bit digital signal having a data rate of at least 2GHz. The vector addition block performs a vector addition of the phase-aligned bits of the parallel N-bit digital signal. Each bit of the parallel N-bit digital signal can be weighted to ensure a correct additive contribution to the analog signal level appearing at the output of the D/A converter. Vector addition of the weighted bits can be accomplished using a microwave signal combiner network in the form of either a multistage parallel cascade of impedance matched junctions, or a linear cascade of junctions.