Oversampled Time Estimation Techniques for Precision Photonic Detectors

The use of oversampling to reduce I/O requirements of time-to-digital converters for arrays of high precision photonic detectors is considered. Simulation results show that the high linearity offered by oversampled converters can be applied to time estimation. The averaging and lowpass filtering inherent in these techniques reduce jitter and enhance estimates of mean time delay. Various sigma-delta TDC architectures are studied in the presence of background illumination noise with reference to time-of-flight Ladar and time-correlated fluorescence detection applications