A Wide Input Range 8/16x Time Amplifier with Gated Ring Oscillator Based Time Registers

In this paper, an 8/16× time amplifier (TA) using ring oscillator (ROSC) is presented. For a wide input range, a time register (TR) based on gated ring oscillator (GRO) is proposed which has a variable capacity and can realize the accumulation and subtraction of time. Together with the proposed double multiplication phase detector (PD), the TA is implemented, which achieves a wide input range of more than ±200ps, and programmable gain without any calibration. The gain error is less than ±4.5% in all gain modes under various process, voltage, and temperature (PVT), while consuming 477uw with a 30MHz sampling frequency. The TA has no areaintensive passive devices and occupies an area of 0.0068mm
²
in 130nm CMOS process. In addition, by adjusting the capacity of TR, a higher throughput rate or a wider input range can be selected for TA according to the actual requirement.