Dual-mode fpga-based triple-tdc with real-time calibration and a triple modular redundancy scheme

This paper proposes a triple time-to-digital converter (TDC) for a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) platform with dual operation modes. First, the proposed triple-TDC employs the real-time calibration circuit followed by the traditional tapped delay line architecture to improve the environmental effect for the application of multiple TDCs. Second, the triple modular redundancy scheme is used to deal with the uncertainty in the FPGA device for improving the linearity for the application of a single TDC. The proposed triple-TDC is implemented in a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA platform and has a time resolution of 40 ps root mean square for multi-mode operation. Moreover, the ranges of differential nonlinearity and integral nonlinearity can be improved by 56% and 37%, respectively, for single-mode operation.