A 128-channel Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) inside a Virtex-5 FPGA on the GANDALF module

作者：Buechele M^*; Fischer H; Gorzellik M; Herrmann F; Koenigsmann K; Schill C; Schopferer S

来源：Journal of Instrumentation, 2012, 7: C03008.

DOI：10.1088/1748-0221/7/03/C03008

• Digital signal processing (DSP)
• Trigger concepts and systems (hardware and software)
• Front-end electronics for detector readout
• Digital electronic circuits

The GANDALF 6U-VME64x/VXS module has been developed for the digitization and real time analysis of detector signals. To perform different applications such as analog-to-digital or time-to-digital conversions, coincidence matrix formation, fast pattern recognition and trigger generation, this module comes with exchangeable analog and digital mezzanine cards. Based on this platform, we present a 128-channel TDC which is implemented in a single Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA using a shifted clock sampling method. In contrast to common TDC concepts, the input signal is sampled by 16 equidistant phase-shifted clocks. A particular challenge of the design is the minimum skew routing of the input signals to the sampling flip-flops. We present measurement results for the differential nonlinearity and the time resolution of the TDC readout system.

• 出版日期2012-3