A low power time-of-arrival ranging front end based on a 8-channel 2.2mW, 53ps single-shot-precision Time-to-Digital converter

A ranging front end for low power cm-accurate ranging applications, based on an 8-channel Time-to-Digital converter, is presented. The implementation, fully digitizing pulses with a pulse rate up to 33MHz, contains 8 non-strobed comparators attached to an 8-channel, low power, 74ps resolution, 53ps single shot precision TDC-array, interconnected through 200mV low swing bit line signaling. The complete system consumes 4.7mW in active mode and the integrated TDC is competitive to state-of-the-art sub-100ps resolution multiple TDC-core integrations in terms of power per core and area. The complete pulse digitization enables implementation of a wide variety of time-of-arrival estimation techniques in the digital back end.

[1]  J. Nissinen,et al.  Integrated Receiver Including Both Receiver Channel and TDC for a Pulsed Time-of-Flight Laser Rangefinder With cm-Level Accuracy , 2009, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[2]  Michiel Steyaert,et al.  Multiple Event Time-to-Digital Conversion-Based Pulse Digitization for a 250 MHz Pulse Radio Ranging Application , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[3]  A. Mantyniemi,et al.  An integrated 9-channel time digitizer with 30 ps resolution , 2002, 2002 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers (Cat. No.02CH37315).

[4]  Juha Kostamovaara,et al.  Synchronization in a Multilevel CMOS Time-to-Digital Converter , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[5]  Michiel Steyaert,et al.  All-digital differential VCO-based A/D conversion , 2010, Proceedings of 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

[6]  Juha Kostamovaara,et al.  An Integrated Laser Radar Receiver Channel Utilizing a Time-Domain Walk Error Compensation Scheme , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.

[7]  Jerker Delsing,et al.  Level-Crossing ADC Performance Evaluation Toward Ultrasound Application , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[8]  Juha Kostamovaara,et al.  A 2-channel CMOS time-to-digital converter for time-of-flight laser rangefinding , 2009, 2009 IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference.

[9]  Edoardo Charbon,et al.  A 128x128 Single-Photon Imager with on-Chip Column-Level 97ps 10bit Time-to-Digital-Converter Array , 2008, ISSCC 2008.

[10]  Y. Jay Guo,et al.  Peak and leading edge detection for time-of-arrival estimation in band-limited positioning systems , 2009, IET Commun..