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Time Pickoff method using an Automatic Gain Control  

Lim, Han-Sang (Kwangwoon University)
Publication Information
Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC / v.48, no.4, 2011 , pp. 80-85 More about this Journal
Abstract
A time-pickoff circuit used for time measurement suffers from a timing error due to the dependence of the generation time of a timing pulse on the size of the input signal, i.e., time walk. In this study, a time-pickoff method, which employs an automatic gain control (AGC) circuit, is proposed for reducing the timing error. The AGC circuit is added to the input of the comparator, and it renders the sizes of input signals of the comparator relatively uniform. The performance of the proposed time-pickoff method is analyzed using the SPICE simulation, and experiments are performed to confirm the analytical results. The measured time walk is reduced to 2.000 ns by 65% for input signals with a dynamic range of 20 dB as compared to a typical leading-edge discriminator.
Keywords
Time walk; Time pickoff;
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