A gain reconfigurable time difference amplifier with self-adaptive linearity control

Time difference amplifier (TDA) is often used in time domain interconnection, computing and measurement. Gain and linearity control are two main design issues. To reduce the nonlinear distortion, a novel self-adaptive pulse shrink circuit is proposed for the SR-latch based time difference amplifier. The multi-stage self-adaptive pulse shrink unit can compensate for the gain error caused by the high-order items and decrease the linearity problem. A programmable gain control circuit is also proposed to improve the gain range of the TDA. The proposed TDA including gain reconfiguration and linearity control is implemented by using SMIC 40nm CMOS technology. Post layout simulation demonstrates that the proposed TDA achieves from 8 to 100 s/s programmable gain within the input linear range $$[-36\,\hbox {ps},36\,\hbox {ps}]$$ . The total area is $$21.186\,\upmu \hbox {m} \times 18.435\,\upmu \hbox {m}$$ . The total power consumption is $$31.45\,\upmu \hbox {W}$$ when the gain is 10 and the toggle frequency is 100 MHz.