High-speed differential frequency-to-voltage converter

Abstract

This paper proposes a high-speed integrating frequency-to-voltage converter. It overcomes the deficiencies of previous converters by removing 2 of their main bottlenecks: event sequencing using pulses and the use of full-swing signals. By using a single-phase algorithm and circuit-level improvements a frequency-to-voltage converter can operate up to 5 GHz and is able to discriminate between signals whose periods differ by as little as 0.5ps.