ABSTRACT
The rapid scaling of CMOS technology has resulted in the sharp increase of time resolution and the continuous reduction of voltage resolution. As a result, time-mode circuits where information is represented by the time difference between the occurrences of digital events rather than the nodal voltages or branch currents of electric networks offer a viable and technology-friendly way to reduce scaling-induced performance degradation of mixed-mode systems. This chapter examines the fundamentals of time-mode circuits. The definition of time-based signal processing is provided in Section 1.1. Section 1.2 examines the characteristics of time-mode circuits and compares them with those of their voltage-mode and current-mode counterparts. Challenges encountered in timebased signal processing are investigated in Section 1.3. Section 1.4 browses through the key building blocks of time-mode circuits. These building blocks include time-to-digital converters (TDCs), digital-to-time converters (DTCs), time amplifiers,
1.1 What Is Time-Mode? ........................................................................................2 1.2 Why Time-Mode? .............................................................................................2 1.3Challenges in Time-Mode Signal Processing ...................................................4 1.4Building Blocks of Time-Mode Circuits ..........................................................5
