A Picosecond-Resolution Digitally-Controlled Timing Generator With One-Clock-Latency at Arbitrary Instantaneous Input

This brief presents an open-loop all-digital burst-mode digital-to-time converter (DTC). The output timing is converted in one-clock latency in response to any instant change of input which is a time range with a digital code. The given time range is coarsely estimated using a ring oscillator based edge-counting. It is then processed with a self-referenced phase interpolation which greatly reduces the actual input range for interpolation and achieves a good linearity in the whole conversion range. The implemented DTC in 28nm LP CMOS shows the maximum peak INL error of 5.34ps in a seamless conversion range of from 16ps to 2850ps.