A novel synchronizer for a 17.9ps Nutt Time-to-Digital Converter implemented on FPGA

Abstract

The evolution of Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology triggered the appearance of FPGAs with higher operating frequencies and large number of resources. Simultaneously, the evolution of the FPGAs design tools has simplified the development process, reducing the time to market. These factors made FPGA platforms attractive for several applications, including time-of-flight applications that require the implementation of Time-to-Digital Converters (TDC). This work presents a Nutt TDC, based on a coarse counter and a Tapped Delay Line, with 17.9 picoseconds resolution and 5.4 LSB differential nonlinearity (DNL), implemented in a Xilinx Zynq-7000 FPGA, to be used on LiDAR applications and pull-in time measuring in MEMS accelerometers systems.