A low-power, 9-Bit, 1.2 ps resolution two-step time-to-digital converter in 65 nm CMOS

This paper presents the design of a low-power, 9-bit, two-step time-to-digital converter (TDC) in 65 nm CMOS. Instead of using an array of time amplifiers (TAs) to amplify the time residue, the proposed TDC reduces the power and area consumptions by using only one TA. The designed TDC achieves a resolution of 1.2 ps with a conversion range of 0.614 ns while consuming 0.602 mW at 10 MHz and 8.299 mW at 150 MHz. The achieved figure-of-merit (FoM) of the TDC is 0.108 pJ/conversion at a frequency of 150 MHz.