Integration of radiation tolerant LIDAR receiver with mm accuracy and kHz repetition rate

The main goal of this research is to develope a MGy-radiation-tolerant ps-resolution time-to-digital converter (TDC) for a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) application. TDCs are key building blocks in time-based mixed-signal systems, used for the digitization of analog signals in time domain. A short survey on state-of-theart TDCs is first given in this book. Major radiation effects in CMOS ICs are also introduced. Several system-level and circuit-level radiation-hardened-by-design (RHBD) techniques are employed to achieve the required radiation hardness. Other circuit techniques to improve the TDC’s resolution in a harsh environment are also investigated.