A 5GS/s voltage-to-time converter in 90nm CMOS

A voltage-to-time converter (VTC) is presented for use in a time-based analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The converter runs with a 5 GHz input clock to provide a maximum conversion rate of 5 GS/s. A novel architecture enables the VTC to provide an adjustable linear delay versus input voltage characteristic. The circuit is realized in a 90 nm CMOS process. After calibration, the converter achieves better than 3.7 effective bits for input frequencies up to 1.75 GHz, making it suitable for use in a time-based ADC with up to 4-bit resolution.