A fully-digital and fully synthetizable TDC for high energy physics experiments

Bifulco, Paolo; Izzo, V.; Mastroianni, S.; Aloisio, A.; Giordano, R.; Ameli, F.; Bocci, V.; Cadeddu, S.; Casu, L.; Lai, A.; Loi, A.

doi:10.1109/ebccsp.2016.7605283

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…One major application of the TDC is to participate in Time-of-flight (TOF) measurements for physical experiments [1] and pulse range finding [2] . In a laser ranging system, the laser firing moment is defined as the start signal, and the time of detecting the reflected photons is denoted as a stop signal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

FPGA-Based Time-to-Digital Converter for Pulsed Laser Ranging

Zhang²

2023

J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper implements a Time-to-digital Converter (TDC) in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), which is made for a single-photon-counting-based pulsed laser ranging system. The fine time is measured by the Tapped Delay Line (TDL) constructed in an internal dedicated carry chain of the FPGA. The length of the TDC is longer than one clock period, and the whole CARRY4 is utilized as a delay unit. The proposed TDC is made up of the fine time measurement module, encoder, coarse time counter, and data transport module, which are achieved in a resource-tensed FPGA Xilinx-ZYNQ. As this paper is done in a shared FPGA, the presented TDC can replace the ASIC-TDC GP22 as the TOF measurement module. By measuring the same time interval and modifying the fixed error in TDC, the results show that the time resolution can reach 53 ps. Compared with the ASIC-TDC GP22, both linearity and measurement range are improved in the proposed TDC, which makes the pulsed laser ranging system more flexible and integrated.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

FPGA-Based Time-to-Digital Converter for Pulsed Laser Ranging

Zhang²

2023

J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…High-resolution time-to-digital converters (TDCs) are widely used in medical time-of-flight (TOF) positron emission tomography (PET) cameras [1][2][3], light detection and ranging (LiDAR) [4][5][6], large high-altitude air shower observatory systems (LHAASO) [7][8][9], and high-energy physics (HEP) experiments [10]. Many applications have a requirement for temperature-insensitive high-performance TDCs that will provide stable and reliable operation over a wide range of temperatures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An 8.8 ps RMS Resolution Time-To-Digital Converter Implemented in a 60 nm FPGA with Real-Time Temperature Correction

Song

Zhao

et al. 2020

Sensors

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presented a non-uniform multiphase (NUMP) time-to-digital converter (TDC) implemented in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) with real-time automatic temperature compensation. NUMP-TDC is a novel, low-cost, high-performance TDC that has achieved an excellent performance in Altera Cyclone V FPGA. The root mean square (RMS) for the intrinsic timing resolution was 2.3 ps. However, the propagation delays in the delay chain of some FPGAs (for example, the Altera Cyclone 10 LP) vary significantly as the temperature changes. Thus, the timing performances of NUMP-TDCs implemented in those FPGAs are significantly impacted by temperature fluctuations. In this study, a simple method was developed to monitor variations in propagation delays using two registers deployed at both ends of the delay chain and compensate for changes in propagation delay using a look-up table (LUT). When the variations exceeded a certain threshold, the LUT for the delay correction was updated, and a bin-by-bin correction was launched. Using this correction approach, a resolution of 8.8 ps RMS over a wide temperature range (5 °C to 80 °C) had been achieved in a NUMP-TDC implemented in a Cyclone 10 LP FPGA.

show abstract

“…Time-to-digital converters (TDCs) convert input time interval into digital output code utilising the delayed effect of logic circuit cell to quantify time interval. Owing to the most potential in processing time-domain signals, it is mainly used for time-related measurement and functional expansion including laser range finder [1], physical experiments [2,3], position emission tomography and some currently frequently used mixed-signal circuits [4,5] such as analogue-to-digital converter [6][7][8][9][10][11], phase-locked loop [12][13][14] delay-locked loop [15] etc. It is well known that the time resolution of TDC is the major indicator for evaluating precision.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

9 ps TDC based on multiple sampling in 0.18 μm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor

Jin

Chai

et al. 2020

IET Circuits, Devices & Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A high-precision measurement method, based on multiple sampling, is proposed for the time interval of two signals in this study. A time interval measurement circuit integrated into the time-to-digital converter (TDC), is designed based on this highprecision measurement method. In the TDC, the authors use two identical delay lines as the holding module to ensure the two signals with a constant time interval. The TDC samples the two signals multiple times by a clock signal, whose period is shorter than that of the delay line. Consequently, the problem of limited resolution caused by a mismatch between delay lines in the delay-line structure can be avoided, and the precision of the output can be improved. The proposed TDC is designed and simulated in Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) 0.18 μm complementary metal-oxidesemiconductor process. Simulation results show that the differential non-linearity and the integral non-linearity are always less than one least significant bits. The proposed TDC achieves input dynamic range of 0-32.13 ns and time resolution of 9 ps.

show abstract

A fully-digital and fully synthetizable TDC for high energy physics experiments

Cited by 6 publications

References 4 publications

FPGA-Based Time-to-Digital Converter for Pulsed Laser Ranging

FPGA-Based Time-to-Digital Converter for Pulsed Laser Ranging

An 8.8 ps RMS Resolution Time-To-Digital Converter Implemented in a 60 nm FPGA with Real-Time Temperature Correction

9 ps TDC based on multiple sampling in 0.18 μm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About