A delay line based CMOS time digitizer IC with 13 ps single-shot precision

This paper introduces an integrated digital CMOS time-to-digital converter which measures time periods with picosecond-level resolution. The circuit was fabricated in a 0.35 μm standard digital CMOS process. 13 ps rms single-shot precision was achieved by using a counter and a two-level nested DLL interpolation. Interpolators, which divide the cycle time of the 145 MHz reference clock to 512 pieces, provided 13.5 ps LSB width. The temperature drift was below 0.05 ps/°C. The power consumption with a 3.3 V operating voltage was 55 mW.