All-Digital CMOS Time-to-Digital Converter With Temperature-Measuring Capability

This brief presents an all-digital CMOS pulse-shrinking time-to-digital converter (TDC) with temperature-measuring capability for higher circuit value and cost saving. A pulse generator is proposed to generate either a time-added pulse or a temperature-sensing pulse. A cyclic delay line (DL) composed of a temperature-sensing DL and a pulse-shrinking DL becomes area efficient and achieves sufficiently wide dynamic range. A time subtractor that eliminates the effect of the offset error enhances accuracy. The proposed TDC is fabricated with TSMC 0.35- $\mu \text{m}$ CMOS process and has a small area of approximately 0.019 mm2. The effective time resolution is approximately 45 ps, with an integral nonlinearity of −0.5 to 0.85 least significant bit (LSB). The achieved temperature resolution is nearly 0.1 °C/LSB, with an inaccuracy of −1.35 °C to 0.7 °C for a range of 0 °C–90 °C. Experimental results prove that we have proposed the first TDC that successfully measures time and temperature.

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