A time to digital converter for use in ultra wide band Radar sensor nodes

Author

Genschow, D.

Author_Institution

IHP, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany

fYear

2015

fDate

25-28 Jan. 2015

Firstpage

38

Lastpage

40

Abstract

This paper introduces a time to digital converter (TDC) architecture for use with ultra wideband (UWB) radar systems. The basic functionality is interfacing UWB RF-Frontends to standard microcontrollers (μC) without the need of high-speed, high precision analog to digital converters, high performance memories or large high speed logic. The device achieves asynchronous conversion of multiple successive events from time domain to digital domain with picosecond resolution. Primary fields of application include short range, low power UWB Radars like ground penetrating Radars, LIDAR systems or other localization tasks. Secondary fields are ultrasonic measurements and mid range radars. A self-calibration feature is implemented to correct certain nonlinearities and imperfections inherent to the conversion method.

Keywords

ground penetrating radar; microcontrollers; optical radar; time-digital conversion; time-of-arrival estimation; ultra wideband radar; ultrasonic measurement; wireless sensor networks; LIDAR systems; TDC architecture; UWB RF-frontends; UWB radar systems; asynchronous multiple successive event conversion; digital domain; ground penetrating radars; localization tasks; microcontrollers; mid range radars; self-calibration feature; time domain; time-of-arrival; time-of-flight; time-to-digital converter architecture; ultra wide band radar sensor nodes; ultrasonic measurements; Analog memory; Capacitors; Clocks; Radiation detectors; Standards; Ultra wideband radar; LIDAR; TDC; UWB Radar; multiple target detection; picosecond resolution; time of arrival; time of flight; time to digital converter;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Wireless Sensors and Sensor Networks (WiSNet), 2015 IEEE Topical Conference on

Conference_Location

San Diego, CA

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WISNET.2015.7127419

Filename

7127419