Ultra high-speed time-to-digital converter

摘要

A chain of gates is formed on one and the same substrate of integrated circuit to enable the propagation along the chain of a starting signal received at one end of the chain, and a locking circuit formed for example by another chain of gates has outputs connected to the gates of the chain in order to be able to block the state thereof following the reception of a stop signal, so that the number of gates gone through by the starting signal is a linear function of the time elapsed between the reception of the starting signal and the reception of the stop signal.