Wide-Range Time-to-Digital Converter With 1-ps Single-Shot Precision

A high-resolution time-to-digital converter (TDC) was designed and tested. The converter is based on the fundamental method of counting the full clock cycles of a low-phase-noise reference clock and using a single-stage interpolating method employing time-to-amplitude converters that are based on Miller integrators. Counters and other control logic were implemented on a field-programmable gate array, and the interpolation units were constructed using discrete components. The single-shot precision of the uncompensated converter is about 1.8 ps over a time interval range of 0 to 328 mu s. Single-shot precision is limited by the nonlinearities of the interpolators. These measurement errors caused by the nonlinearities are systematic, and thus, precision can be improved to 1 ps by a simple integral nonlinearity compensation. Other important factors that contribute to single-shot precision are the N-cycle jitter of the reference clock and the noise generated by the TDC circuit itself. By careful design, these errors can be made small enough to achieve picosecond-level precision.