ENGR338 2021 Spring
Lab 2: Design an R-2R DAC
Sophie Turner 
sjturner@fortlewis.edu

Design an R-2R DAC

1. Introduction
The purpose of this lab is to use ElectriVLSI to design a R-2R digital to analog converter.  LTSpice was used to verify the DAC.

Task 1:
An ideal ADC/DAC (sim_ADC_DAC{schem}) file was copied to a new library and simulated using LTSpice as seen in Figure 2.


Figure 1. Existing ideal ADC-DAC



Figure 2. Existing ideal ADC-DAC code and simulation.


Task 2
A R-2R ladder was built using n-well resistors, pins and a GND component. An icon for the R-2R ladder was created and adjusted to the given requirements. The R-2R ladder was connected to the 10-bit ideal ADC.

Figure 3. R-2R ladder schematic and icon.


Figure 4. R-2R ladder icon



Figure 5. Existing ideal ADC-DAC code and simulation.

LTSpice was used to simulate the R-2R ladder connected to the 10-bit ideal ADC. A similar wave to Figure 2 was created when using the R-2R ladder.



Figure 6. R-2R ladder LTSpice code and simulation.

Task 3
The time delay from the B9 pin when the DAC drives a 10pF load was tested. B0-B8 pins were connected to ground and a 10pF load was added. LTSpice simulated and verified the time delay to the calculated one.

TD = .7RC
TD = .7 (10k)(10p)
TD = 70ns


Figure 7. R-2R ladder with a 10pF capacitor.

The expected time delay was calculated to be 70ns. The simulation was probed at 1.25V and the output time delay was 72.3ns.



Figure 8. Verifying time delay with LTSpice.

2. Discussion

This lab introduced me to ElectriVLSI and allowed me to become familiar with the program. I gained more of an understanding of ADC and DACs.