Delay Time Characterization on FPGA: A Low Nonlinearity, Picosecond Resolution Time-to-Digital Converter on 16-nm FPGA using Bin Sequence Calibration

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Park, Sunwoo, Park, Byungkwon, Kim, Eunsung, Yune, Jiwon, Han, Seungho, Nam, Seunggo
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Park, Sunwoo
Park, Byungkwon
Kim, Eunsung
Yune, Jiwon
Han, Seungho
Nam, Seunggo
author_facet Park, Sunwoo
Park, Byungkwon
Kim, Eunsung
Yune, Jiwon
Han, Seungho
Nam, Seunggo
contents We present a Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) implemented on a 16 nm Xilinx UltraScale Plus FPGA that achieves a resolution of 1.15 ps, RMS precision of 3.38 ps, a differential nonlinearity (DNL) of [-0.43, 0.24] LSB, and an integral nonlinearity (INL) of [-2.67, 0.15] LSB. This work introduces two novel hardware-independent post-processing techniques - Partial Order Reconstruction (POR) and Iterative Time-bin Interleaving (ITI) - that significantly enhance the performance of FPGA-based TDCs. POR addresses the missing code problem by inferring the partial order of each time bin through code density test data and directed acyclic graph (DAG) analysis, enabling near-complete recovery of usable bins. ITI further improves fine time resolution by merging multiple calibrated tapped delay lines (TDLs) into a single unified delay chain, achieving scalable resolution without resorting to averaging. Compared to state-of-the-art FPGA-based TDC architectures, the proposed methods deliver competitive or superior performance with reduced hardware overhead. These techniques are broadly applicable to high-resolution time measurement and precise delay calibration in programmable logic platforms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_05583
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Delay Time Characterization on FPGA: A Low Nonlinearity, Picosecond Resolution Time-to-Digital Converter on 16-nm FPGA using Bin Sequence Calibration
Park, Sunwoo
Park, Byungkwon
Kim, Eunsung
Yune, Jiwon
Han, Seungho
Nam, Seunggo
Hardware Architecture
Instrumentation and Detectors
Quantum Physics
We present a Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) implemented on a 16 nm Xilinx UltraScale Plus FPGA that achieves a resolution of 1.15 ps, RMS precision of 3.38 ps, a differential nonlinearity (DNL) of [-0.43, 0.24] LSB, and an integral nonlinearity (INL) of [-2.67, 0.15] LSB. This work introduces two novel hardware-independent post-processing techniques - Partial Order Reconstruction (POR) and Iterative Time-bin Interleaving (ITI) - that significantly enhance the performance of FPGA-based TDCs. POR addresses the missing code problem by inferring the partial order of each time bin through code density test data and directed acyclic graph (DAG) analysis, enabling near-complete recovery of usable bins. ITI further improves fine time resolution by merging multiple calibrated tapped delay lines (TDLs) into a single unified delay chain, achieving scalable resolution without resorting to averaging. Compared to state-of-the-art FPGA-based TDC architectures, the proposed methods deliver competitive or superior performance with reduced hardware overhead. These techniques are broadly applicable to high-resolution time measurement and precise delay calibration in programmable logic platforms.
title Delay Time Characterization on FPGA: A Low Nonlinearity, Picosecond Resolution Time-to-Digital Converter on 16-nm FPGA using Bin Sequence Calibration
topic Hardware Architecture
Instrumentation and Detectors
Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.05583