Fully-integrated multifunctional fast time to amplitude converter for high-performance timing applications

Abstract

Timing measurements with single photon detectors have acquired a prominent role in many applications, especially where they allow the recovery of faint light signals in harsh environments. We present a new fully-integrated multifunctional Time-to-Amplitude Converter (TAC), featuring 8 channels with a full scale range up to 100ns and a linearity better than 1% of the LSB peak to peak. The maximum speed of the converter is obtained in the Fast-TAC configuration (80MHz), while the precision of the converter can be maximized by exploiting multiple channels to perform the same conversion, achieving an overall jitter as low as 1.4ps.