1486 IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 44, NO.

5, MAY 2009

Integrated Receiver Including Both Receiver

Channel and TDC for a Pulsed Time-of-Flight Laser
Rangefinder With cm-Level Accuracy
Jan Nissinen, Ilkka Nissinen, and Juha Kostamovaara, Member, IEEE

Abstract—An integrated receiver that includes both the time-to-

digital converter (TDC) and the receiver channel and is intended
for a pulsed time-of-flight laser rangefinder with a measurement
range of approximately 10 m has been designed and fabricated in
a standard 0.13 m CMOS process. The receiver operates by de-
tecting the current pulse of an optical detector and producing a
stop timing mark for the TDC by means of a leading edge timing
discriminator. The TDC is used to measure the actual time interval
between the start and stop pulses and the slew-rate of the stop
pulse, to compensate for a walk error produced in the discrimi-
nator. The single-shot precision of the whole receiver is 250 ps for a
minimum detectable signal, and its accuracy and power consump-
tion are 37 ps with compensation within a dynamic range of at
least 1:10,000 and less than 45 mW, respectively. The size of the die
is 1300 m 1300 m including pads.
Index Terms—Laser radar, optical receiver, time interval mea-
surement.
I. INTRODUCTION
A PULSED time-of-flight (TOF) laser rangefinder operates
by measuring the flight time of a light pulse from a
laser transmitter to the target and back to an optical detector,
as shown in Fig. 1. It typically consists of a semiconductor
laser diode transmitter, two receiver channels, for start and stop
timing pulses, respectively, a time interval measurement unit to
measure their time difference and a control unit. These devices
are widely used in many industrial applications, e.g., for mea-
suring levels in tanks and containers, for profiling and scanning
surfaces and as proximity switches [1]–[6]. The measurement
ranges involved typically vary from a few meters to tens of
meters in industrial applications and even to several kilometers
in military applications. The required precision can vary from a
few millimeters to some centimeters or even meters, depending
on the specific application. Pulsed time of flight has advantages
over other optical distance measurement techniques with re-
spect to accuracy, especially when fast measurement is needed
and when the variation in the received echo (pulse amplitude)
is large. An example of such an emerging new application for
these devices is velocity control in traffic, for example. It is
obvious that this application, like many others, would benefit
Manuscript received June 30, 2008; revised February 11, 2009. Current ver-
sion published May 01, 2009. This work was supported by the Finnish Funding
Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES), the Academy of Finland and
STMicroelectronics.
The authors are with the Electronics Laboratory, University of Oulu, Finland
(e-mail: jan.nissinen@ee.oulu.fi; ilkka.nissinen@ee.oulu.fi; juha.kostamovaara
@ee.oulu.fi).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSSC.2009.2017006
0018-9200/$25.00 © 2009 IEEE
Fig. 1. Block diagram of a pulsed time-of-flight laser rangefinder.
greatly if the laser radar could be realized as an integrated
microsystem of small size and with low power consumption
and costs.
In order to achieve a high enough signal-to-noise ratio with
non-cooperative measurement objects, laser pulses with a peak
power of several watts or even tens of watts are typically used,
but at this peak power level the available laser diode pulsing
techniques limit the pulse length to a few nanoseconds [7], [8].
The dynamic range of the received optical echoes, and thus the
current pulses from the optical receiver, depends on the specific
application and is affected by the maximum range, reflectivity
and orientation of the object and the exact construction of the
transmitter/receiver optics. In some applications such as traffic
velocity control it may reach up to 1:100,000 due to the large dif-
ference in reflection properties between clean, mirror-like metal
plates and muddy parts of a car’s surface, for example. When
aiming at a centimeter-level accuracy in a single measurement
this dynamic range poses a challenge for the detection of the
time position of the received echo, bearing in mind the relatively
long pulse length used (nanoseconds). In fact, this continues to
be a problem even when successive measurement results are av-
eraged, since averaging improves only the effect of statistical
errors such as noise in the preamplifier.
A wide dynamic range can be achieved by means of leading
edge timing detection [9], but without any other measures a large
timing walk error ( in Fig. 2) will then be caused by the ge-
ometry of the pulse, as shown in Fig. 2. This error may be as
large as the rise time of the laser pulse ns ns . Since
one cm in distance corresponds to 67 ps in time, an error of this
kind is generally not acceptable.
Several suggestions have been put forward for reducing the
walk error, including measurement of the signal amplitude and
use of such data to compensate for the walk and the use of gain
control in the receiver to absorb the amplitude variations [9],
[10]. Although operative in principle, a restricted dynamic range
NISSINEN et al.: INTEGRATED RECEIVER INCLUDING BOTH RECEIVER CHANNEL AND TDC FOR A PULSED TIME-OF-FLIGHT LASER RANGEFINDER
Fig. 2. Walk error in the leading edge timing discriminator.
of less than 1:3000 has typically been achieved if the walk error
budget is limited to less than a few cm.
The aim of this work was to develop a “laser radar chip” that
would include the optical receiver needed to produce a logical
timing mark from the detected optical echo and the time-to-dig-
ital converter needed to digitize the time interval between the
transmitted and received echoes, both located on the same die
realized in a standard 0.13 m CMOS technology (ST Micro-
electronics). Moreover, we set out to minimize the walk error in
timing discrimination by measuring the slew rate of the detected
pulse with the on-chip time-to-digital converter. This technique
has the advantage that it can also compensate for the walk error
when the receiver channel is saturated, since the slew rate for
large signals continues to increase even then. The other advan-
tage is that this method is consistent with the main principle
of pulsed time-of-flight measurement and induces only a small
modification in the time-to-digital converter that is in any case
needed in the system. Due to the high level of integration, such
a laser radar chip is believed to be especially beneficial in prox-
imity switch-type laser radar applications, which typically call
for compact construction of the measuring device and may need
a wide dynamic range.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II introduces the
structure and operation of the receiver chip, and Section III
presents the structures and operation of the amplifier channel
and its subcircuits. Section IV presents the structures and op-
eration of the timing discriminator and the principle of walk
error compensation. Section V then presents the structure and
operation of the time-to-digital converter and Section VI the
measurement results achieved with the whole receiver. Finally,
Section VII summarizes the findings.
II. RECEIVER CHIP
A simplified block diagram of the receiver chip for a pulsed
TOF laser rangefinder is shown in Fig. 3, where a single-ended
receiver channel is shown for clarity instead of the fully differ-
ential structure that was used in the final realization. The optical
pulse is first converted to a current pulse in an external photode-
tector (avalanche photodiode, APD; is a coupling capacitor
realizing a lower cut-off frequency of about 1 MHz with the bias
1487
resistor ) and then amplified in a transimpedance preampli-
fier (preAmp) and further amplified in a voltage-type postampli-
fier (A). Two timing comparators with different thresholds,
and , were used to generate the logic-level timing marks
STOP and STOPtr. The TDC has separate channels to measure
the START-STOP time interval used to calculate the distance to
the target and the STOP-STOPtr time interval (proportional to
the slew rate) used to correct the timing walk error caused by
the varying amplitude of the received pulse. This, of course, ne-
cessitates the use of a look-up table or a fitting calibration curve
which contains time walk information collected during calibra-
tion of the receiver. It should be noted, however, that calibration
may not be needed for every circuit, depending on the accuracy
required.
III. AMPLIFIER CHANNEL
The transimpedance preamplifier (preAmp) shown in Fig. 3,
which is used to convert the current to a voltage signal, in-
cludes a core amplifier and feedback resistors. Optimization of
the preamplifier is important because it limits the performance
of the whole receiver. Contrary to modern fiber-optic commu-
nications, a photo detector with a relative large active area is
needed in laser radar applications due to the large emitting area
of the high-power pulsed laser diodes. This results in a large
input capacitance, in our case 2 pF, which has a sig-
nificant effect on the performance of the preamplifier, as is well
known from the theory of optical preamplifiers [11].
Due to the fact that the input capacitance is relatively large,
the dominant pole is located at the input to the receiver channel.
Thus, the transfer function of the preamplifier can be approxi-
mated as
(1)
where , and are the feedback resistance, total input
capacitance and DC gain of the core amplifier, respectively. The
bandwidth of the preamplifier is designed to be wide enough
to preserve the rising edge of the pulse without increasing the
noise too much. The laser pulses used (see Fig. 2) have a rise
time of 1–2 ns, which results in a bandwidth of about 250 MHz
[10], [12].
The predominant noise sources in the CMOS transimpedance
preamplifier, as shown in Fig. 4, are the thermal noise of the
feedback resistors and the input-referred voltage noise of the
core amplifier. Ignoring the 1/f noise due to the high bandwidth,
the equivalent input-referred current noise power spectral den-
sity can be written as
(2)
The second term in (2) represents the equivalent voltage noise of
the input transistor. As seen, there is a zero in the transfer func-
tion which causes the noise gain to peak at high frequencies.
To minimize the noise, and should be large, but any in-
crease in will increase the input capacitance as well, which
means that there is an optimum size for the input transistor, as
discussed in [13]. In general, the input capacitance should match
1488
Fig. 3. Block diagram of the receiver chip.
Fig. 4. Predominant noise sources in the preamplifier.
the detector capacitance but in reality the optimum is not sharp.
In our case the detector capacitance is 1.5 pF and
of the input transistors is approximately 300 fF (width 200 m),
which lowers the current consumption and increases the speed
without deteriorating the noise performance. As seen from (1),
a larger will result in a lower bandwidth, but this can fortu-
nately be compensated for by a larger gain in the core amplifier
of the preamplifier to keep the ratio unchanged. It should
also be remembered that the total rms noise at the output of the
receiver matters in a laser radar application, since the signal will
be corrupted by it. It is therefore also important to limit the band-
width of the core amplifier (within the bounds of stability) so
that voltage noise of (2) will be attenuated at higher frequen-
cies [11].
The final detailed circuit diagram of the preamplifier, as
shown in Fig. 5, is based on the above design principles and
achieves an input-referred total noise current of 100 nArms (in
parallel with the avalanche photodiode) with an estimated total
input capacitance of 2 pF. Its signal bandwidth is approximately
250 MHz. Note that, contrary to the typical realizations shown
in a literature, this circuit is already fully differential at the
input to the preamplifier, which means, for example, that its
effective transimpedance is . This configuration was used
in order to suppress any cross-talk from the laser transmitter.
The gain in the amplifier is based on the ratio of ’s, and it
can consequently be designed quite accurately using a constant
gm bias [14]. Due to the large input capacitance, an effective
gain of 30 is needed with a bandwidth of 700 MHz to achieve
the specified bandwidth with the given transimpedance and an
acceptable stability margin, and this is achieved here with three
cascaded gain stages.
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 44, NO. 5, MAY 2009
The purpose of the postamplifier, shown in Fig. 6, is to am-
plify the output pulse of the preamplifier further to a suitable
level for a timing discriminator. The postamplifier is based on a
differential pair with diode and cross-coupled diode loads [15].
The gain can be chosen using the ratio of to .
Since the gain in the postamplifier is approximately 3, the effec-
tive transimpedance of the whole channel is 30 k . The band-
width of the postamplifier is designed to be sufficiently wide that
it does not degrade the bandwidth of the whole receiver channel
too much.
IV. TIMING DISCRIMINATOR
The width of the optical pulse used in laser radar applica-
tions is approximately a few nanoseconds and the amplitude
of the reflected pulse can vary within a dynamic range of
1:10,000 100,000 in some demanding applications where
distances in the range of twenty meters or so are to be measured.
A straight-forward method for identifying the timing point of
the detected signal is to use leading edge timing detection,
as shown in Fig. 7. Here the constant threshold to be used in
the timing comparator is typically selected to correspond to
the signal strength at an SNR (peak amplitude of the current
signal pulse of the detector versus input-referred rms current
noise) of 10, which minimizes triggerings caused by noise. The
responses of the amplifier channel to small and large signals
are also shown in Fig. 7. As can be seen, a total timing walk
of is induced even with an ideal comparator (no
slew rate dependent delay). The first part of the walk error, ,
arises from the finite rise in the laser pulse and occurs even
with an ideal receiver (infinite bandwidth), while the latter part,
, arises from the difference in the delays affecting small
and large signals [9], [16], and the total extent of this error is
approximately proportional to the RC of the receiver. To be
more specific, if the rise time of the laser pulse is 1.5 ns and
the receiver bandwidth is 250 MHz, a total walk error of about
2 ns (or 30 cm in distance) will be achieved (1.25 ns 650 ps).
This error is not acceptable in accurate ranging.
As mentioned above, gain control and/or unipolar-to-bipolar
conversion techniques can be used to produce a walk-free timing
signal from the detected pulse, but only in a limited range of less
than about 1:3000 [10], [17], [18]. The compensation techniques
proposed in this work are based on measuring the slew rate of the
front edge of the receiver pulse using two comparators with sep-
arate threshold settings, resulting in two separate timing marks
for the TDC. Walk compensation can be achieved through the
NISSINEN et al.: INTEGRATED RECEIVER INCLUDING BOTH RECEIVER CHANNEL AND TDC FOR A PULSED TIME-OF-FLIGHT LASER RANGEFINDER
Fig. 5. Schematic diagram of the three-stage core amplifier.
Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of the postamplifier.
Fig. 7. Walk error in leading edge timing detection.
known relationship of the walk error to the slope of the timing
pulse, which is determined as the time difference between the
outputs of the two timing comparators [19]. The compensation
principle is shown schematically in Fig. 8(a) with three different
amplitudes. As may be seen, the measured becomes shorter
when the amplitude of the pulse is increased, and thus there is a
monotonic dependence between and the timing error . for a certain permitted walk error can be achieved by increasing
1489
The advantage of the time domain compensation proposed
here over traditional amplitude measurement is that this com-
pensation is operative even when the output of the receiver is
saturated in the amplitude domain. This is also consistent with
the fact that a pulsed time-of-flight laser radar will eventually
need a time-to-digital converter anyway and actually induces
only a slight modification in the architecture of the TDC, as ex-
plained below. In some sense the proposed technique can be
considered as “time-domain AD conversion” where instead of
trying to measure the amplitude of the received pulse (which
would be limited by the linear dynamic range of the receiver)
and use that information for walk error compensation, the signal
strength is determined in the time domain. This approach is quite
consistent with the development of modern submicron IC tech-
nologies in which speed is increased at the cost of reduced am-
plitude resolution.
In order to obtain a more accurate understanding of the effect
of the threshold settings and time interval measurement reso-
lution and uncertainty on the accuracy of walk compensation,
a rough analysis based on idealized waveforms, as shown in
Fig. 8(a), was carried out next. It can be shown straightforwardly
by geometrical analysis that the measured time interval between
the two threshold settings is
(3)
where C is the ratio of upper and lower thresholds, the rise
time of the receiver output pulse and the ratio between
the signal amplitude and the lower threshold setting. This equa-
tion shows that the minimum resolution in time interval mea-
surement limits the maximum detectable ratio. For ex-
ample, assuming is 10 ps, is 1.5 ns and , the
maximum detectable ratio will be 150. This means that
even with otherwise ideal electronics the residue walk induced
by ratios larger than this would be
(4)
amounting to 10 ps. The accuracy needed in the time interval
1490
Fig. 8. (a) Compensation principle of a walk error and (b) the jitter in two threshold detection.
Fig. 9. Schematic diagram of the comparator.
[as shown in (4)], but this unfortunately also increases the
minimum SNR needed and thus limits the maximum range.
It is also instructive to look at the jitter properties of this de-
tection scheme. The jitter is proportional to the ratio of the re-
ceiver noise to the slew rate of the timing signal at the timing
point and to the jitter of time interval measurement electronics:
(5)
where SNR is approximated by the ratio of the pulse ampli-
tude to total rms noise. With small signals, where the jitter is
at its maximum, it is dominated by the noise of the receiver. As-
suming that the noise values at the two thresholds are uncorre-
lated, which is not entirely true in reality, we can estimate from
geometrical considerations according to Fig. 8(b) that the jitter
in two-threshold detection will be
(6)
where corresponds to the jitter in one-level thresh-
olding. In order to achieve a compromise between the minimum
signal to noise ratio, the necessary time interval measurement
resolution and the permitted jitter impairment, a C of 2 was se-
lected. In practise this means that the threshold settings corre-
spond to SNRs of 10 and 20.
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 44, NO. 5, MAY 2009
The timing comparator used in this work, as shown in Fig. 9,
consists of three identical amplifying stages, in order to max-
imize the gain-bandwidth product, a latch and a CMOS-level
output stage, not shown in Fig. 9. The advantage of the used
latch is that the outputs of the comparator change state only
once, which reduces switching noise. The gain stages comprise
a differential pair with a pMOS diode load and an extra current
source connected to the output of each stage, in order to increase
the gain. The threshold of the comparators is set by two separate
on-chip 6-bit DACs by adjusting the current .
V. TIME-TO-DIGITAL CONVERSION
Time interval measurements can be made easily using just a
counter to count the pulses from a stable oscillator during the
time interval to be determined. The resolution of such an ar-
rangement is nevertheless limited by the period of the reference
oscillator. Thus, to achieve a single-shot precision of one cen-
timeter (67 ps) in distance measurement, for example, a refer-
ence oscillator with a frequency of 15 GHz is needed. If the
timing signals are asynchronous with the measuring instants,
the precision can be improved by averaging several results for
the same distance, but only at the cost of increased measurement
time. To achieve better single-shot precision, some sort of inter-
polation is needed to determine the position of the timing signal
within the clock period. This interpolation is typically realized
by means of analogue time-to-amplitude converters, or more
NISSINEN et al.: INTEGRATED RECEIVER INCLUDING BOTH RECEIVER CHANNEL AND TDC FOR A PULSED TIME-OF-FLIGHT LASER RANGEFINDER
Fig. 10. Timing diagram of the operation of a ring oscillator-based TDC.
often recently, with digital delay lines [20]–[22]. These tech-
niques enable a wide measurement range of several microsec-
onds and a single-shot precision of about 10 ps to be achieved
at best [23]–[25].
Although the TDCs referred to above give excellent results in
time interval measurements over a wide measurement range, it
would be beneficial in some laser radar applications to avoid a
complicated multiphase interpolation structure with an off-chip
reference delay-locked loop, for reasons of cost, power budget
and robustness, for example. Starting from this observation, we
describe here an attempt to develop time interval measurement
techniques in which the heart of the TDC is a free running multi-
phase ring oscillator which operates as a flash type of converter
when sampled by means of a timing signal. This type of TDC
cannot compete with the state-of-the-art precision achievable
over a measurement range of a few microseconds with realiza-
tions based on the use of an external frequency reference, but
there are many industrial proximity switch-type distance mea-
surement applications (with measurement ranges of 15 m or
100 ns in time) for which the utmost in precision over a wide
measurement range is not needed whereas minimization of the
circuit area, power and number of components is important from
a cost point of view.
A. Ring Oscillator-Based Interpolation
A multiphase ring oscillator-based time-to-digital converter
operates by counting the pulses of the ring oscillator and
recording the state of its phases at the moments of arrival of the
timing signals. Hence, this structure automatically performs
an interpolation function. The resolution of the TDC (LSB,
width of bin) can be derived by dividing the period of the ring
oscillator by the number of phases [26].
The CLK signal in the timing diagram of the operation of
the 8-phase ring oscillator-based TDC, shown in Fig. 10, corre-
sponds to one phase of the ring oscillator. A counter (COUNT)
is started by the next rising edge of the CLK after the START
signal and stopped by the next rising edge of the CLK after
the STOP signal, giving the result . The double synchro-
nization scheme is used to control the counter to avoid possible
metastability problems [26]. In addition, the state of the ring
oscillator (PHASE) is stored by these asynchronous timing sig-
nals START and STOP, giving the results and , respec-
tively. The resolution of the counter is equal to the period of the
1491
Fig. 11. Block diagram of a multiphase ring oscillator-based TDC.
ring oscillator , but the resolution of the TDC is im-
proved by the multiphase structu{T}_re of the ring oscillator so
that it is . The input time measurement result can
be derived in the form
(7)
The result in Fig. 10 can be now written, for example, as
.
The structure of the multiphase ring oscillator-based TDC is
presented in Fig. 11. This realization consists of an 8-phase free
running ring oscillator (OSC), a counter, registers (START and
STOP REGISTER) to store the states of the ring oscillator and
a calibration counter (CAL_COUNTER) to compensate for the
temperature and the supply voltage drifts in the frequency of the
ring oscillator. The TDC also contains various buffers to control
the output of the result (RESULT). The counter is enabled by a
start signal to calculate the full clock cycles of the ring oscillator
(CLK(q1)) and is disabled by a stop signal, whereupon the result
is stored in the counter’s registers. The states of the eight phases
of the ring oscillator within the period of the clock signal are also
stored in the start and stop registers by the timing signals.
The maximum possible resolution of the ring oscillator is
achieved by allowing it to operate in free-running mode, so that
its frequency is not limited by any control signal. One disad-
vantage of this is that its frequency is inversely proportional to
the ambient temperature and directly proportional to the supply
voltage, but these dependences can still be compensated for by
means of the calibration counter. Before the actual time interval
measurement the frequency of the ring oscillator, and hence the
resolution of the TDC, is determined by enabling (EN_CAL)
a reference signal (REF), and measuring the resulting accurate
time base of the calibration counter by means of the TDC. On the
other words, the resolution of the TDC is thus allowed to change
along the temperature and the supply voltage, but this change is
known after the calibration and it does not affect the accuracy
achieved. The accurate time base (e.g., 10 MHz) is intended to
be produced by the controller of the laser radar micromodule.
B. Sub-Gate Delay Line
The maximum achievable resolution is limited by the gate
delay of the technology used in the ring oscillator-based TDC.
The interpolation ratio can be increased further by means of ad-
ditional RC delay line-based timing signal interpolators, the de-
lays in which can be less than a gate delay [27]. Timing signal
interpolators can also be realized by means of parallel elements
operating effectively as a sub-gate delay line [28], [29], as the
1492
Fig. 12. Principle of using parallel sub-gate delay lines for the timing signal
interpolator.
delay difference between them can be scaled to be much less
than the gate delay. In that case the timing signals generated
can be used to sample the state of the ring oscillator in order
to improve the resolution of the TDC. As shown schematically
in Fig. 12 (where the number of phases is set at 4 to keep the
figure simple), the states of the phases (q1, q2, q3 and q4) of
the 4-phase ring oscillator (4-PHASE OSC) are stored in the
present case by four timing signals , , and gener-
ated from the start signal (START) by means of a timing signal
interpolator (T-S INTERPOLATOR). The period of the ring os-
cillator, , is the time difference between the adjacent rising
edges of q1, when the delay in the adjacent phases of the ring
oscillator is . Hence, a resolution of
is achieved in this example.
The parallel scaled delay line, or T-S interpolator, presented
with its timing diagram in Fig. 13 consists of four voltage-con-
trolled buffers scaled by different capacitive loads. The scaling
factor (number of unit C loads) is indicated inside each buffer,
and each has a different delay of , where n is a scaling
factor, is the basic delay and is the adjusted delay of the
sub-gate delay line. Even if the absolute delay in each parallel
buffer is larger than the basic gate delay, the delay between ad-
jacent elements will only be . This kind of sub-gate delay line
can be locked to the time elapsing between adjacent phases of
the ring oscillator ( in Fig. 12) by means of a
replica delay line in a delay-locked loop. In that case, given that
the control voltage of the delay-locked loop is used to adjust the
control voltage in the structure presented in Fig. 13, is
locked to time divided by four.
C. A Ring Oscillator-Based TDC With Timing Signal
Interpolators
The time-to-digital converter presented here and realized in a
0.13 m CMOS technology is used as part of an integrated re-
ceiver in a pulsed time-of-flight laser radar. The block diagram
of the TDC, as shown in Fig. 14, consists of a 16-phase free-run-
ning ring oscillator, three timing channels (START, STOP and
STOPtr used for walk compensation), sub-gate delay lines
, a counter, an accurate time generator (CAL_COUNTER)
and a delay-locked loop (DLL). The ring oscillator consists of
eight differential delay cells based on basic CMOS inverters and
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 44, NO. 5, MAY 2009
small coupling inverters to improve the common-mode sensi-
tivity [30]. Time-to-digital conversion is based on counting full
clock cycles in the ring oscillator and storing its state by means
of the interpolated timing signals. The sub-gate delay lines, con-
sisting of four adjustable buffers, are locked to the delay be-
tween two adjacent phases of the ring oscillator by the control
voltage controlled by the DLL and the replica circuits (
and ). The resolution of this TDC can be derived by
dividing the period of the ring oscillator by the number of its
phases and the number of parallel elements in the sub-gate delay
line . The temperature and the supply voltage
dependences of the resolution of the TDC are compensated for
by using an accurate time generator to measure that resolution
before the actual time interval measurement.
VI. MEASUREMENT RESULTS
A photograph of the receiver for a pulsed TOF rangefinder,
including both the TDC and the laser radar receiver channel,
fabricated in a standard 0.13 m CMOS process (ST Microelec-
tronics), is shown in Fig. 15. The size of the layout of the whole
receiver, including the pad ring, was m m and
the maximum power consumption of the four receiver chips was
less than 45 mW from the 1.2 V power supply (2/3 consumed
by the receiver channel) when the operation frequency of the
ring oscillator was approximately 1.2 GHz, giving a resolution
(LSB) of 13 ps for the TDC.
Additionally Fig. 16 shows a block diagram of the whole con-
structed receiver chip with I/O-pads (excluding supply voltage
and ground pads) to clarify the test setup. The receiver channel
is programmed by using a serial-in-parallel-out register (SIPO).
This programming consists of setting the threshold values of
comparators by means of digital-to-analog converters (DAC1
and DAC2), choosing a bias structure (on-chip or off-chip) and
controlling different switches (measuring different part of the
receiver, for example just the TDC or the receiver channel).
A. Measurements of the Receiver Channel
The bandwidth of the receiver channel was measured by
means of a spectrum analyzer. The magnitude response is
shown in Fig. 17, where the y axis shows the exact tran-
simpedance of the whole receiver channel measured with a
differential current pulse. The bandwidth and transimpedance
of the channel were 300 MHz and 23 k , respectively.
Noise was measured with a spectrum analyzer. The rms
output voltage noise was calculated by integrating the power
spectral density up to 5 GHz, resulting in an rms output
voltage noise of 2.2 mV. The input-referred rms noise current
can be calculated by dividing the rms noise voltage by the
transimpedance of the channel, and is 95 nA, confirming the
simulation results. The bandwidth and noise were measured
with a photodetector (Silicon Sensor AD230-8 1.5 pF)
connected at the input.
B. Walk Error and Accuracy of the Receiver
The walk error measurements were performed on a test bench
where the amplitude of the optical pulse could be varied in a
range 1:10,000 by means of a neutral density filter to corre-
spond to input current pulse amplitudes ranging from 2 A to
20 mA at the input to the preamplifier. The input current of 2 A
NISSINEN et al.: INTEGRATED RECEIVER INCLUDING BOTH RECEIVER CHANNEL AND TDC FOR A PULSED TIME-OF-FLIGHT LASER RANGEFINDER
Fig. 13. A parallel scaled delay line and its timing diagram.
Fig. 14. Block diagram of the TDC.
Fig. 15. Photograph of the receiver for a pulsed TOF rangefinder.
corresponds to an SNR of 20 and represents the minimum signal
here, since two threshold levels (SNR 10 and SNR 20) were
used for walk compensation. The pulse amplitude was varied
over a range of 1:10,000 during measurement, and 5000 mea-
surements were made for each amplitude in order to achieve ad-
equate statistical reliability. The on-chip TDC was used to mea-
sure the time intervals between the start and stop and the start
1493
and stoptr signals, where stop and stoptr are the timing marks
from the first and second comparators and the start pulse was
generated electrically. The walk error (change in the timing mo-
ment at the lower threshold value) shown in Fig. 18 was about
2.2 ns, which corresponds to 33 cm in distance, over a range of
2 A to 20 mA without any compensation.
Compensation was performed by means of a compensation
curve which shows the walk error as a function of the measured
(STOP-to-STOPtr). This compensation curve, which can be
extrapolated using walk error measurement results and the re-
sults of STOP-to-STOPtr measurements in a range of 2 A to
20 mA, is shown in Fig. 19. Compensation is performed using
a look up table after the measurement by a computer.
The compensated walk error was less than 30 ps (corre-
sponding to a distance of 4.5 mm) in the same amplitude range
as shown in Fig. 20 for the worst and best of the receiver chips.
The deviation in compensated walk error is caused by quanti-
zation noise that occurred when using the compensation curve.
This noise is dependent on how many points are used to extrap-
olate the compensation curve.
The total accuracy of the receiver is affected by the walk error
of the receiver channel and the nonlinearity of the TDC. In order
to estimate the effect of the latter on the total accuracy of the re-
ceiver, the linearity of the TDC was measured separately as a
1494 IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 44, NO. 5, MAY 2009

Fig. 16. Block diagram of the receiver with I/O-pads.

Fig. 17. Magnitude response of the receiver channel.

Fig. 19. Compensation curve for the walk error.

Fig. 18. Walk error without compensation. Fig. 20. Compensated walk errors of the receiver chips.

function of the input time interval by stepping the input time and the results were compared with those for a calibrated TDC
interval from 0 to 100 ns (0 m–15 m targeted distance range) (a delay generator was used to step the input time interval). The
NISSINEN et al.: INTEGRATED RECEIVER INCLUDING BOTH RECEIVER CHANNEL AND TDC FOR A PULSED TIME-OF-FLIGHT LASER RANGEFINDER
Fig. 21. Nonlinearities of the TDC chips.
Fig. 22. Temperature dependence of the walk error.
nonlinearities of the worst and best of four TDC chips as a func-
tion of the input time interval are shown in Fig. 21. The nonlin-
earities of the TDCs were less than 7 ps when measuring time
intervals from 5 ns to 100 ns. The linearity of the TDC is affected
by crosstalk from the start channel when measuring time inter-
vals shorter than 5 ns, causing a nonlinearity of approximately
15 ps. Hence, the total accuracy of the receiver is estimated
to be less than 37 ps ( 5.5 mm) over a distance and dynamic
range of 0.75–15 m and 1:10,000 (SNR 20), respectively.
C. Temperature Dependence
Walk error measurements were also performed over a tem-
perature range of 10 C to 70 C, using the compensation
curve at 30 C to compensate for the walk error generated in the
temperature range 10 C to 70 C. The maximum temperature
dependence of the walk error, shown in Fig. 22, is about 150 ps
over the whole temperature range. This temperature dependence
includes the temperature drift of the receiver channel and the
residual temperature drift of the TDC. As explained in Section V,
the drift of the TDC was compensated for by measuring with the
TDC constant time intervals generated by the controller before
the actual distance measurement. In reality some residual drift is,
however, still generated by non-equal electrical delays in the start
and stop timing channels, for example. This offset-like drift was
measured to be 0.27 ps C in the temperature range from 10 C
to 70 C. Thus, the measured drift of the walk error is dominated
by the temperature dependence of the receiver channel.
D. Precision of the Receiver
The single-shot precision of the receiver is determined by the
noise over the slew rate of the timing pulses at the detection
threshold and the precision of the TDC, as shown in (5), and
should in principle be improved at higher signal amplitudes. In
1495
Fig. 23. Single-shot precision of the receiver over a dynamic range of 1:10,000.
Fig. 24. Single-shot precisions of the TDC chips.
this specific realization, however, the walk error compensation
technique also affected the jitter, due to the interpolation error
in the walk error compensation curve. This is seen in Fig. 23,
which shows the measured jitter (standard deviation of mea-
sured single shot time intervals of 100 ns, corresponding to the
maximum range) as a function of the input pulse current. As
seen, contrary to the general expectation, the jitter increases at
higher amplitudes due to the increasing steepness, and thus due
to uncertainty in the walk error compensation curve (Fig. 19) at
higher signal slew rates.
The worst-case single-shot precision of the whole receiver,
including the precision of the TDC, jitter in the receiver
channel, jitter in the laser pulses and jitter in the compensation,
was approximately 250 ps ( 38 mm in distance) at the min-
imum usable signal level, corresponding to an SNR of 20. The
single-shot precision (standard deviation, -value) over a dy-
namic range of 1:10,000, corresponding to a STOP-to-STOPtr
range of 70 ps–2.6 ns, is shown in Fig. 23.
The single-shot precision of the TDC was measured sepa-
rately from 0.8 ns to 100 ns to see its effect on the single-shot
precision of the receiver. 10,000 separate measurements were
made for each input time interval in order to achieve adequate
statistical reliability. Each timing pulse was split into start and
stop pulses by means of a power splitter in order to achieve
jitter-free timing marks, and the stop pulse was then delayed
with an adjustable coaxial delay unit to sweep an input time in-
terval over the range of 0.8–100 ns. The single-shot precisions
( -values) of the worst and best of four TDC chips over a period
of 0.8–100 ns are shown in Fig. 24, where the single-shot pre-
cision is seen to deteriorate on account of the cumulative jitter
in the free-running ring oscillator when measuring time inter-
vals longer than approximately 20 ns. The single-shot precisions
1496
TABLE I
MEASUREMENT RESULTS OBTAINED WITH THE RECEIVER
(a) SNR = 25, (b) best case, (c) dynamic range of receiver amplitude, (d) TDC’s drift compensated for
( -values) of the four TDCs were better than 20 ps (3 mm) over
a period of 0.8–100 ns (0.1–15 m).
VII. CONCLUSION
The integrated CMOS receiver consisting of a receiver
channel and a time-to-digital converter (TDC) presented
here for use in a micromodule-type pulsed time-of-flight
laser rangefinder is based on a leading edge timing discrim-
inator in which the walk error is compensated for by using
the time-to-digital converter to measure the slew-rate of the
received pulse. The time-to-digital conversion is based on
counting full clock cycles of a ring oscillator between the
timing signals by means of a counter and storing the state of the
16-phase ring oscillator at the moment of arrival of the original
timing and delayed timing signals and using these states to
interpolate the location of the timing pulses within the full
clock cycles.
The maximum power consumption of the receiver was less
than 45 mW, and the bandwidth and transimpedance of the
channel were 300 MHz and 23 k , respectively. The measured
input-referred rms noise current was 95 nA. The bandwidth
and noise were measured with a photodetector ( 1.5 pF)
connected to the input.
The total accuracy of the receiver with walk error and tem-
perature compensation was better than 37 ps ( 5.5 mm) over
a dynamic range of 1:10,000. The worst-case single-shot preci-
sion of the whole receiver, including that of the TDC, the jitter in
the receiver channel, the jitter of the laser pulse and the compen-
sation jitter, was approximately 250 ps ( 38 mm in distance)
with a minimum usable signal corresponding to an SNR of 20.
The main measurement results are summarized in Table I.
The integrated receiver is intended for use in laser rangefinders
that aim at an accuracy of a few centimeters over a distance mea-
surement range of less than 10 m, and the results show that this
accuracy can be achieved. Additional advantages of the present
technique are the small circuit area and the low power consump-
tion, which are both very important from cost and total system
integration points of view, especially in the laser radar micro-
module applications for which the technique is intended.
REFERENCES
[1] B. S. Goldstein and G. F. Dalrymple, “Gallium arsenide injection laser
radar,” Proc. IEEE, vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 181–188, Feb. 1967.
[2] J. Kostamovaara, K. Määttä, and R. Myllylä, “Pulsed time-of-flight
laser rangefinding techniques for industrial applications,” in Proc. SPIE
Conf. Intelligent Robotic Systems, Boston, MA, Nov. 10–15, 1991, vol.
1614, Optics, Illumination and Image Sensing for Machine Vision, pp.
283–295.
[3] K. Määttä, J. Kostamovaara, and R. Myllylä, “Profiling of hot surfaces
by pulsed time-of-flight laser range finder techniques,” Appl. Opt., vol.
32, no. 27, pp. 5334–5347, Sep. 1993.
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 44, NO. 5, MAY 2009
[4] T. Araki and H. Yoshida, “Optical distance meter using a pulsed laser
diode and fast avalanche photo diode for measurements of molten steel
levels,” Trans. ASME, vol. 118, pp. 800–803, Dec. 1996.
[5] I. Kaisto, J. Kostamovaara, M. Manninen, and R. Myllylä, “Laser radar
based measured system for large scale assembly applications,” in Proc.
SPIE, Brighton, U.K., Oct. 5–7, 1993, vol. 2088, Laser Dimensional
Metrology: Recent Advances for Industrial Application, pp. 121–130.
[6] T. C. Ng, J. I. Guzmàn, and J. C. Tan, “Development of a 3-D LADAR
system for autonomous navigation,” in Proc. IEEE Conf. Robotics, Au-
tomation and Mechatronics, Singapore, Dec. 1–3, 2004, vol. 2, pp.
792–797.
[7] S. N. Vainshtein, J. T. Kostamovaara, A. J. Kilpelä, and K. E. A. Määttä,
“High speed, high current driver for operation with low ohmic load,”
Electron. Lett., vol. 33, pp. 904–906, May 1997.
[8] R. J. Baker, “High voltage pulse generation using current mode second
breakdown in a bipolar junction transistor,” Rev. Sci. Instrum., vol. 62,
no. 4, pp. 1031–1036, Apr. 1991.
[9] P. Palojärvi, T. Ruotsalainen, and J. Kostamovaara, “A 250-MHz
BiCMOS receiver channel with leading edge timing discriminator for
a pulsed time-of-flight laser rangefinder,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits,
vol. 40, no. 6, pp. 1341–1349, Jun. 2005.
[10] T. Ruotsalainen, P. Palojärvi, and J. Kostamovaara, “A wide dynamic
range receiver channel for a pulsed time-of-flight laser radar,” IEEE J.
Solid-State Circuits, vol. 36, no. 8, pp. 1228–1238, Aug. 2001.
[11] E. Säckinger, Broadband Circuits for Optical Fiber Communication.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2005.
[12] R. Ziemer and W. Tranter, Principles of Communications: Systems,
Modulation and Noise, 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin,
1985.
[13] A. A. Abidi, “On the noise optimum of gigahertz FET transimpedance
amplifiers,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 1207–1209,
Dec. 1987.
[14] J. M. Steininger, “Understanding wideband MOS transistor,” IEEE Cir-
cuits and Devices, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 26–31, May 1990.
[15] D. J. Allstot, “A precision variable-supply CMOS comparator,” IEEE
J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 1080–1087, Dec. 1982.
[16] R. J. Plassche and P. Baltus, “An 8-bit 100-MHz full-Nyquist
analog-to-digital converter,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 23, no.
6, pp. 1334–1344, Dec. 1988.
[17] J. Pehkonen, P. Palojärvi, and J. Kostamovaara, “Receiver channel with
resonance-based timing detection for a laser range finder,” IEEE Trans.
Circuits Syst. I: Reg. Papers, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 569–577, Mar. 2006.
[18] S. Kurtti and J. Kostamovaara, “An integrated optical receiver with
widerange timing discrimination characteristics,” in Proc. 31st ESS-
CIRC’05, Grenoble, France, Sep. 2005, pp. 435–438.
[19] J. Nissinen and J. Kostamovaara, “An integrated laser radar receiver
channel with wide dynamic range,” in Proc. 14th IEEE Int. Conf.
Electronics, Circuit and Systems, Marrakech, Morocco, Dec. 2007,
pp. 10–13.
[20] D. Porat, “Review of subnanosecond time-interval measurements,”
IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. NS-20, pp. 35–51, 1973.
[21] R. Nutt, “Digital time intervalometer,” Rev. Sci. Instrum., vol. 39, no.
9, pp. 1342–1345, 1968.
[22] J. Kostamovaara and R. Myllylä, “Time-to-digital converter with an
analog interpolation circuit,” Rev. Sci. Instrum., vol. 57, no. 11, pp.
2880–2885, Nov. 1986.
[23] K. Määttä and J. Kostamovaara, “A high-precision time-to-digital con-
verter for pulsed time-of-flight laser radar application,” IEEE Trans.
Instrum. Meas., vol. 47, no. 2, Apr. 1998.
[24] R. B. Staszewski, S. Vemulapalli, P. Vallur, J. Wallberg, and P. T. Bal-
sara, “1.3 V 20 ps time-to-digital converter for frequency synthesis in
90-nm CMOS,” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II: Expr. Briefs, vol. 53, no.
3, pp. 220–224, Mar. 2006.
[25] J. Jansson, A. Mäntyniemi, and J. Kostamovaara, “A CMOS time-to-
digital converter with better than 10 ps single-shot precision,” IEEE J.
Solid-State Circuits, vol. 41, no. 6, pp. 1286–1296, Jun. 2006.
NISSINEN et al.: INTEGRATED RECEIVER INCLUDING BOTH RECEIVER CHANNEL AND TDC FOR A PULSED TIME-OF-FLIGHT LASER RANGEFINDER
[26] I. Nissinen, A. Mäntyniemi, and J. Kostamovaara, “A CMOS time-to-
digital converter based on a ring oscillator for a laser radar,” in Proc.
29th ESSCIRC’03, Estoril, Portugal, Sep. 2003, pp. 469–472.
[27] M. Mota and J. Christiansen, “A high-resolution time interpolator
based on a delay locked loop and an RC delay line,” IEEE J. Solid-State
Circuits, vol. 34, no. 10, pp. 1360–1366, Oct. 1999.
[28] T. Rahkonen, J. Kostamovaara, and S. Säynäjäkangas, “CMOS ASIC
devices for the measurement of short time intervals,” in Proc. IEEE Int.
Symp. Circuits and Systems, Jun. 1988, vol. 2, pp. 1593–1596.
[29] A. Mäntyniemi, T. Rahkonen, and J. Kostamovaara, “An integrated
9-channel time digitizer with 30 ps resolution,” in IEEE Int. Solid-State
Circuits Conf. Dig. Tech. Papers, San Francisco, CA, Feb. 2002, vol.
1, pp. 266–465.
[30] T. Kwasniewski, M. Aboud-Seido, A. Bouchet, F. Gaussorgues, and J.
Zimmerman, “Inductorless oscillator design for personal communica-
tions devices—A 1.2 m CMOS process case study,” in Proc. IEEE
Custom Integrated Circuits Conf., Santa Clara, CA, May 1995, pp.
327–330.
Jan Nissinen was born in Oulu, Finland, in 1976. He
received the M.Sc. Eng. and Licentiate of Tech. de-
grees in electrical engineering from the University of
Oulu, Finland, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. He is
currently pursuing the Dr. Tech. degree in electrical
and information engineering at the same university.
His research interests include the design of analog
and mixed-signal integrated circuits and the optical
receiver channel for the integrated receiver of pulsed
time-of-flight laser rangefinders.
1497
Ilkka Nissinen was born in Oulu, Finland, in 1976.
He received the M.Sc. Eng. and Licentiate of Tech.
degrees in electrical engineering from the University
of Oulu, Finland, in 2002 and 2007, respectively.
Since then, he has been working toward the Dr. Tech.
degree in electrical and information engineering at
the same university.
His research interests include the design of time
interval measurement architectures for the integrated
receiver of pulsed time-of-flight laser rangefinders.
Juha Kostamovaara (M’85) received the degrees of
Dipl. Eng., Lic. Tech. and Dr. Tech. in electrical en-
gineering in 1980, 1982 and 1987, respectively, all
from the University of Oulu, Finland.
He was Acting Associate Professor of electronics
in the department of electrical Engineering, Univer-
sity of Oulu, in 1987–1993, and was nominated As-
sociate Professor from the beginning of 1993. During
1994, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Scholar
at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany.
In 1995 he was invited to become a full Professor of
electronics at the University of Oulu, where he is currently also the Head of the
Electronics Laboratory. In 2007 he was nominated to the Academy Professor-
ship position by the Academy of Finland for the period of 2006–2011. His main
interest is in the development of high-speed electronic circuits and systems and
their applications in electronic and optoelectronic measurements and radio mo-
bile telecommunications.