TIME TO DIGITAL CONVERTER (TDC) CIRCUIT WITH SELF-ADAPTIVE TIME GRANULARITY AND RELATED METHODS

A time-to-digital converter (TDC) circuit generates a digital output indicating a time, known as a phase difference, from a phase of the generated signal to a corresponding phase of a reference signal. The digital output is used by the digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) to correct for the phase/f...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors LU, Ping, CHEN, Minhan
Format Patent
LanguageEnglish
Published 30.11.2023
Subjects
AUTOMATIC CONTROL, STARTING, SYNCHRONISATION, OR STABILISATIONOF GENERATORS OF ELECTRONIC OSCILLATIONS OR PULSES
BASIC ELECTRONIC CIRCUITRY
ELECTRICITY
HOROLOGY
PHYSICS
TIME-INTERVAL MEASURING
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Summary:A time-to-digital converter (TDC) circuit generates a digital output indicating a time, known as a phase difference, from a phase of the generated signal to a corresponding phase of a reference signal. The digital output is used by the digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) to correct for the phase/frequency difference to synchronize the generated signal with the reference signal. In an aspect, an adaptive TDC circuit generates a first digital indication in a coarse mode when the offset time is above a threshold and generates a second digital indication in a fine mode when the offset time is below the threshold. The first digital indication and the second digital indication each comprise a same number of bits, and the first digital indication is normalized to the second digital indication for the digital output of the adaptive TDC circuit. A fractional bit may be employed to compensate for a quantization error.
Bibliography:Application Number: US202217828538