Cross Talking TDC Demo

A Pulse Stretching Time to Digital Converter(TDC) exploits the crosstalk effect on FPGA. The principle idea is to superpose an induction voltage on the sense line to lower its logic toggling voltage while maintaining the other parameters intact.

The focus of this cross-talking TDC is to ameliorate the delay variation caused by temperature effects on conventional TDCs. Theoretical analysis regarding temperature stability on pass-transistors, track buffers and metal wires are conducted. Detailed calculations are performed using an α power law based transition delay model with device parameters obtained from previous studies.

At the same time, the impact of error accumulation on series connected transistor line is emphasized. To compare its magnitude with a cross talk stretched interconnect, a numerical assessment is performed.  In order to bridge the gap between theoretical analysis and practical implementations,  several design strategies and delay adjustment methods are presented.   

Experiments have been conducted at different temperatures. And their single shot-precision, non-linearity, and measurement range have all reached the state-of-the-art. Surely, improvements in temperature stability has been confirmed.