Picosecond Resolution Time-to-Digital Converter Using <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">Gₘ -C</tex></formula> Integrator and SAR-ADC

A picosecond resolution time-to-digital converter (TDC) is presented. The resolution of a conventional delay chain TDC is limited by the delay of a logic buffer. Various types of recent TDCs are successful in breaking this limitation, but they require a significant calibration effort to achieve picosecond resolution with a sufficient linear range. To address these issues, we propose a simple method to break the resolution limitation without any calibration: a Gm-C integrator followed by a successive approximation register analog-to-digital converter (SAR-ADC). This translates the time interval into charge, and then the charge is quantized. A prototype chip was fabricated in 90 nm CMOS. The measurement results reveal a 1 ps resolution, a -0.6/0.7 LSB differential nonlinearity (DNL), a -1.1/2.3 LSB integral nonlinearity (INL), and a 9-bit range. The measured 11.74 ps single-shot precision is caused by the noise of the integrator. We analyze the noise of the integrator and propose an improved front-end circuit to reduce this noise. The proposal is verified by simulations showing the maximum single-shot precision is less than 1 ps. The proposed front-end circuit can also diminish the mismatch effects.