
In this chapter architectural aspects of time-to-digital converters are discussed in detail. The design challenges are a high dynamic range, small offset and gain error, high linearity, a small die area, and finally a low power consumption. The time resolution is independently addressed in Chapter 5. Several architectures are proposed that particularly focus on at least one of the design challenges. A bipolar TDC allows for signed measurement without offset error. A loop architecture enables long measurement times with reasonable area consumption. A linear loop extension improves the linearity impairments of the basic loop architecture. For long measurement times a hierarchical TDC system can further reduce the power consumption. For complex measurement tasks that would require multiple time-todigital converters a multi-event TDC can be used to reduce the number of converters and to improve matching. An on-chip measurement and characterization engine allows for low cost TDC characterization. Finally, a time domain quantizer is discussed that maps a discrete valued continuous time signal to a discrete time raster.
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 1 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Average | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Average | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Average |
