Multiport Signal-Flow Analysis to Improve Signal Quality of Time-Interleaved Digital-to-Analog Converters

This letter describes a method that characterizes and improves the performance of a time-interleaved (TI) digital-to-analog converter (DAC) system by using multiport signal-flow graphs at microwave frequencies. A commercial signal generator with two TI DACs was characterized through s-parameter measurements and was compared to the conventional method. Moreover, prefilters were applied to correct the response, resulting in an error-vector magnitude improvement of greater than 8 dB for a 64-quadrature-amplitude-modulated signal of 4.8 Gbps. As a result, the bandwidth limitation and the complex post processing of the conventional method could be minimized.