Novel Modified Method of the Dependent Count for High Precision and Fast Measurements of Frequency-Time Parameters of Electric Signals

Novel patented modified method of the dependent count for precision and fast frequency-time measurements are described in the paper. The method can be used for measurement in wide ranges of frequency and periods of input signal with constant quantization error in all frequency range, non-redundant time of measurement scalable resolution and a possibility to measure a frequency that is exceeded the reference frequency f_x>>f₀ without additional hardware and time. The proposed modified method of the dependent count was used at design of integrated universal frequency-to- digital converters (UFDC-2) and Universal Sensors and Transducers Interface (USTI). Both integrated circuits have a programmable relative error from 1 to 0.0005 %, scalable resolution, non-redundant conversion time from 0.00016 to 0.32 s and a wide frequency range from 0.05 Hz to 9 MHz without prescaling and up to 144 MHz with prescaling.