Combining Advances in Digital-to-Analog Converters with FPGAs to Realize High Direct-IF architectures

摘要

The introduction this year of new CMOS highspeed digital-to-analog converters (DACs) in the range of 14-to-16 bits shows there is no letup in the demand for advances, and, in fact, the advances to higher performance are coming more rapidly than the industry had expected. In terms of raw conversion rate, this new generation of DAC technology now delivers performance of up to 800 MSa/s, a major thrust forward. There are significant benefits from using these high performance DACs, notably system cost reductions and the ability to achieve fundamental performance requirements for multi-carrier/multi-mode communication base station applications. The most obvious performance improvements come from enabling high direct-IF architectures over more traditional direct modulation techniques, while delivering improved performance over wider bandwidths.