This paper proposes a time-to-digital converter (TDC) that achieves wide input range and fine time resolution at the same time. The proposed TDC utilizes pulse-shrinking (PS) scheme in the second stage for a fine resolution and two-step (TS) architecture for a wide range. The proposed PS TDC prevents an undesirable non uniform shrinking rate issue in the conventional PS TDCs by utilizing a built-in offset pulse and an offset pulse width detection schemes. With several techniques, including a built-in coarse gain calibration mechanism, the proposed TS architecture overcomes a nonlinearity due to the signal propagation and gain mismatch between coarse and fine stages. The simulation results of the TDC implemented in a 0.18-µm standard CMOS technology demonstrate 2.0-ps resolution and 16-bit range that corresponds to ~130-ns input time interval with 0.08-mm2 area. It operates at 3.3 MS/s with 18.0 mW from 1.8-V supply and achieves 1.44-ps single-shot precision.
Software Implementation:
Tanner EDA
Advantages:
Reduced the speed of transistors with technology basic and also time and voltage resolutions