Time-to-digital converter based on novel time amplifier

Abstract

The invention provides a time-to-digital converter based on a novel time amplifier. The time-to-digital converter comprises: a novel time amplifier circuit which is used for amplifying time differencebetween a rising edge of an asynchronous signal and a rising edge of a synchronous signal; a coarse counter which is used for metering a clock period number between a START signal and a STOP signal which are synchronized by a synchronizer; a fine counter which is used for counting the time margin amplified by a novel time margin amplifying circuit; a calculation module which is used for adding the metering result of the coarse counter and the metering result of the fine counter to obtain a final measurement result; and a crystal oscillator which is used for providing a clock signal. Accordingto the time amplifier, the amplification precision and the amplification dynamic range of the time amplifier can be considered in a limited area, and relatively high measurement precision and measurement range can be achieved under the condition that the required clock frequency is reduced.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to the field of time-to-digital converters, in particular to a time-to-digital converter based on a novel time amplifier. Background technique [0002] The function to be completed by TDC (time-to-digital converter) is to quantify the time interval between the rising edges of two input signals with a specific precision. TDC has a variety of application scenarios, such as lidar, all-digital phase-locked loop, face recognition and nuclear reaction imaging. [0003] TDC has a variety of structures, such as analog TDC, delay line TDC, ring vibration TDC and so on. The analog TDC uses a constant current source to charge a capacitor through the control of the input signal, and then uses an ADC to sample the voltage of the capacitor to obtain the charging time. The dynamic range of this TDC is limited by the size of the capacitor, so the dynamic range is relatively small. Small and of limited utility. Such as figure 1 As shown, the d...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

If you want to achieve a larger amplification range in a smaller area, you need a larger single-stage inverter delay, which will lead to a larger single-stage delay in the inverter chain, resulting in lower accuracy of time amplification

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