Spatially oversampled TDC with digital resolution enhancement

A digital resolution enhancement technique for time-to-digital converters (TDC) is proposed. This involves a simultaneous multi-channel measurement of a time interval with low complexity TDC of varying low resolutions. The coarse outputs of each converter are digitally post-processed to obtain an ou...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Analog integrated circuits and signal processing 2012-03, Vol.70 (3), p.311-322
Main Authors: Vengattaramane, Kameswaran, Borremans, Jonathan, Steyaert, Michiel, Craninckx, Jan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Circuits and Systems
Electrical Engineering
Engineering
Signal,Image and Speech Processing
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Summary:A digital resolution enhancement technique for time-to-digital converters (TDC) is proposed. This involves a simultaneous multi-channel measurement of a time interval with low complexity TDC of varying low resolutions. The coarse outputs of each converter are digitally post-processed to obtain an output whose precision is much better than that of the individual converters. Three post-processing algorithms are proposed and their limitations in presence of converter non-idealities are analyzed. A prototype system with 8 channels is implemented in 90 nm CMOS. 40MS/s output of each channel is algorithmically combined to obtain over 2.2–3X measured improvement in the resolution in 4/6/8 channel modes, validating the system principle. The chip occupies 0.3 mm 2 and draws up to a maximum of 4 mA from a 1.2 V supply.
ISSN:0925-1030
1573-1979
DOI:10.1007/s10470-011-9669-7