A high-resolution time-to-digital converter based on the relationship of time-space

Abstract

Time to digital converter (TDC) with high resolution is in great demand at present. Transmission delay and its application in a Time to digital technology are studied in this paper. A TDC prototype, mainly contains buffers, delay line and coincidence detection circuit, is designed by this technology. The prototype has a resolution better than 250 ps and a digital range better than 5 ns. The quantization error, integral nonlinearity error and random error of the prototype is analyzed in this paper. Furthermore, technologies for enlarging measurement range and making a TDC has a gapless measurement ability is developed and a new TDC which using the microstrip on a printed-circuit-board as delay line is realized with 500ps single-shot precision and 21s measurement rang.