Time-to-Digital Converters: A Literature Review and New Perspectives

Time measurements with time resolution achieving picosecond accuracy are required in many fields such as high-energy physics, satellite positioning, or medical imaging. Time-to-digital converters (TDCs) are widely used for this purpose. In addition to accuracy, a high dynamic range and a good linearity are often requested for most applications. This paper presents a state-of-the-art of the recent CMOS structures of TDCs. Furthermore, usual key performance metrics are described in order to compare and to study TDCs.