Extended modelling for time-encoding converters

Amplitude-quantized time-encoding is beneficial in terms of Shannon capacity, a.o. for data converters. In case of asynchronous, it can be used too for power converters and amplifiers, with extra advantages in terms of power efficiency, power control, in-band quantizer distortion, and absence of both clock-induced noise and power dissipation. This paper fills in the lack of analysis and synthesis tools, for random inputs, with special focus on not yet addressed spectral-domain metrics. The strongly-non-linear quantizer function is translated to a weakly-non-linear one; Hermite expansion is used to achieve an analytical expression for the Shannon-defined SNR; and a 3-step insightful and fast synthesis approach, including a tradeoff between SNR and efficiency, is proposed. The approach is universal and can also be applied to synchronous converters.