A Review of New Time-to-Digital Conversion Techniques

• Published in: IEEE transactions on instrumentation and measurement Vol. 68; no. 10; pp. 3406 - 3417
• Main Authors: Tancock, Scott, Arabul, Ekin, Dahnoun, Naim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.10.2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Application specific integrated circuits; Application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC); Calibration; Clocks; Converters; Delay lines; Delays; Distance measurement; Field programmable gate arrays; field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs); Frequency locking; Integrated circuits; Literature reviews; measurement techniques; Performance measurement; Photonics; Positrons; review; time measurement; time-to-digital conversion
• ISSN: 0018-9456; 1557-9662
• DOI: 10.1109/TIM.2019.2936717

Time-to-digital converters (TDCs) are vital components in time and distance measurement and frequency-locking applications. There are many architectures for implementing TDCs, from simple counter TDCs to hybrid multi-level TDCs, which use many techniques in tandem. This article completes the review literature of TDCs by describing new architectures along with their benefits and tradeoffs, as well as the terminology and performance metrics that must be considered when choosing a TDC. It describes their implementation from the gate level upward and how it is affected by the fabric of the device [field-programmable gate array (FPGA) or application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)] and suggests suitable use cases for the various techniques. Based on the results achieved in the current literature, we make recommendations on the appropriate architecture for a given task based on the number of channels and precision required, as well as the target fabric.