A new delay line loops shrinking time-to-digital converter in low-cost FPGA

The article provides the design and test results of a new time-to-digital converter (TDC) based on delay line loops shrinking method and implemented in a low-cost field programmable gate array (FPGA) device. A technique that achieves high resolution with low cost and flexibility is presented. The technique is based on two delay line loops which are used to directly shrink the measured time interval in the designed TDC, and the resolution is dependent on the difference between the entire delay times of the two delay line loops. In order to realize high resolution and eliminate temperature influence, the two delay line loops consist of the same delay cells with the same number. A delay-locked loop (DLL) is used to stabilize the resolution against process variations and ambient conditions. Meanwhile, one method is used to accurately evaluate the resolution of the implemented TDC. The converter has been implemented in a general-propose FPGA device (Actel SmartFusion A2F200M3). A single shot resolution of the implemented converter is 63.3 ps and the measurement standard deviation is about 61.7 ps within the measurement range of 5 ns.