Successive-approximation analog-to-digital converters (SA-ADCs) are widely used in ultra-low-power applications. In this paper, the power consumption and the linearity of capacitive-array digital-to-analog converters (DACs) employed in SA-ADCs are analyzed. Specifically, closed-form formulas for the power consumption as well as the standard deviation of INL and DNL for three commonly-used radix-2 architectures including the effect of parasitic capacitances are presented and the structures are compared. The proposed analysis can be employed in choosing the best architecture and optimizing it in both hand calculations and computer-aided-design tools. Measurement results of previously published works as well as simulation results of a 10-bit 10 kS/s SA-ADC confirm the accuracy of the proposed equations. It will be shown that, in spite of what commonly is assumed, although the total capacitance and the power consumption of those architectures employing attenuating capacitors seem to be smaller than conventional binary-weighted structures, the linearity requirements impose much larger unit capacitance to the structure such that the entire power consumption is larger.

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