Broadcom Corporation

Parastoo Nikaeen

Stefanos Sidiropoulos

Marc Loinaz

Systems, methods, and circuits provide a time to digital converter comprising a sigma-delta modulator. The sigma-delta based time to digital converter may receive an analog signal representing a phase error between a reference clock signal and a feedback clock signal and generate a digital signal representing the phase error. The sigma-delta modulator may comprise a subtractor, an integrator, a feedback path, and a quantizer. The subtractor may receive the analog signal and subtract a feedback signal from the analog signal and the integrator may integrate the output of the subtractor. The sigma-delta modulator may accumulate a voltage or a charge over a capacitor as pulses are received from the analog signal and after a number of clock cycles, the capacitor may be discharged to generate a pulse in an output signal.

Systems, circuits, and methods for a sigma-delta based time to digital converter

Systems, methods, and circuits provide a digital frequency synthesizer where the output of the frequency synthesizer is a fractional factor of an input signal frequency. The digital frequency synthesizer may comprise a time to digital converter. A ramp offset signal may be added to the output of the time to digital converter. The ramp offset signal may be added to the output of a TDC until a reference dock signal reaches a value of pi. At such a point, the reference clock signal may be switched and the ramp offset signal may be restarted. As such, a frequency offset may be introduced at the input of the time to digital converter where the frequency offset may be modified by changing the slope of the ramp offset signal.

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Parastoo Nikaeen