Noise Analysis of Constant-Slope Voltage-to-Time Converters
 
Noise Analysis of Constant-Slope Voltage-to-Time Converters 
 
Mattia Gerardi, Jorge Lagos, Piet Wambacq, Jan Craninckx
 
Abstract 

Voltage-to-time converters (VTCs) are critical components in time-domain (TD) analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). This paper addresses a gap in existing literature by analyzing noise in constant-slope (CS) VTCs. Noise contributions are examined across three operational phases: sampling, integration, and crossing-detection. Single-ended (SE) and common-mode (CM) integration approaches are compared, identifying the latter as effective in reducing noise. Moreover, it is shown that while the sampling and integration noise contributions are not affected by the VTC operating speed, faster VTCs suffer from a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) degradation due to the crossing-detector (CD) noise contribution. Theoretical findings are validated through schematic-level simulations in a 22−nm FDSOI CMOS technology, observing agreement.