Title
Metastability-Aware Memory-Efficient Time-to-Digital Converters
Abstract
We propose a novel method for transforming delay-line time-to-digital converters (TDCs) into TDCs that output Gray code without relying on synchronizers. We formally prove that the inevitable metastable memory upsets (Marino, TC'81) do not induce an additional time resolution error. Our modified design provides suitable inputs to the recent metastability-containing sorting networks by Lenzen and Medina (ASYNC'16) and Bund et al. (DATE'17). In contrast, employing existing TDCs would require using thermometer code at the TDC output (followed by conversion to Gray code) or resolving metastability inside the TDC. The former is too restrictive w.r.t. the dynamic range of the TDCs, while the latter loses the advantage of enabling (accordingly much faster) computation without having to first resolve metastability. Our all-digital designs are also of interest in their own right: they support high sample rates and large measuring ranges at nearly optimal bit-width of the output, yet maintain the original delay-line's time resolution. No previous approach unifies all these properties in a single device.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1109/ASYNC.2017.12
2017 23rd IEEE International Symposium on Asynchronous Circuits and Systems (ASYNC)
Keywords
Field
DocType
time-to-digital converter,metastability-containing,metastability
Sorting network,Synchronization,Dynamic range,Sampling (signal processing),Algorithm,Gray code,Converters,Metastability,Engineering,Computation
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
1522-8681
978-1-5386-2750-1
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.37
8
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Matthias Függer116721.14
Attila Kinali240.79
Christoph Lenzen358440.61
Thomas Polzer4498.43