PHASE LOCKED TIME INTERVAL ANALYZER

摘要

A method (Figure 2) of analysis of a time interval between two selected measurement edges of interest (302, 303) includes locking a plurality of at least three substantially interchangeable oscillators (100-1-100-k) to a common reference frequency, the oscillators containing a digital locked-loop (DLL) circuit . The method includes operating one oscillator (100-1) as a timebase oscillator, and operating the other oscillators (100-2-100-k) as edge-resettable measurement oscillators. The method includes coupling (202) one oscillator with a switched and physically-immutable parametric variation, producing an offset in the frequency of the coupled oscillator relative to the frequency of the other oscillators. The method includes phase-aligning (203) each of the measurement oscillators to a triggering pulse created by one of selected measurement edges of interest, oscillating (204) each phase-aligned measurement oscillator, and counting (205) the number of oscillation cycles of the phase-aligned measurement oscillator from the time of phase-alignment until the time of phase matching.