Current status and applications of time-to-digital converters

Abstract

Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) is widely used to realize time interval measurement. The high-precision time measurement technique has important applications in the fields of laser ranging, particle identification, and radioactive nuclear medicine engineering. Based on the existing literature research and data, this paper studies the application areas of TDC in the present development and analyzes the future prospects of TDC applications. The research results showed that: TDC, based on signal screening, realizes time interval measurement as the ultimate purpose of building the system and, at the same time, completes the function of multi-pulse time interval measurement, which can meet the needs of more diversified measurements in the experiments. In the circuit structure, it can identify the feedback output in the all-digital phase-locked loop (ADPLL) and the reference clock phase and frequency information between the feedback output and the reference clock in an ADPLL. It is also promising for use in other areas of high-precision time measurement and processing of circuit signals.