This work proposes a compact time-to-amplitude converter (TAC) for single-photon time-of-flight (TOF) measurement. Based on the principle of current mirror integration, the regulated cascode output structure is used to improve the integration linearity. Fabricated in 180 nm standard CMOS technology, the test results show that the proposed TAC achieves an integral nonlinearity of less than 1.1 LSB, and a timing resolution of 78 ps in a full-scale range (FSR) of 20 ns. Moreover, the readout voltage only varies by 1% during 1 ms hold-off time. The simple circuit structure make TAC occupy a small area of 120 µm² and consume low dynamic power of 36.8 µW. The TOF measurement error is less than 5.2 cm, and the measurement precision is up to 1.61 cm at 150 cm. The presented TAC provides a compact implementation solution to realize high-density TOF sensors.

这项工作提出了一种用于单光子飞行时间（TOF）测量的紧凑型时间幅度转换器（TAC）。根据电流镜积分的原理，采用可调节的共源共栅输出结构来改善积分线性。测试结果表明，采用180 nm标准CMOS技术制造的TAC在20 ns的满量程范围（FSR）中实现了小于1.1 LSB的积分非线性和78 ps的时序分辨率。此外，在1 ms的保持时间内，读出电压仅变化1％。简单的电路结构使TAC占据了120 µm ²的小面积并消耗36.8 µW的低动态功耗。TOF测量误差小于5.2 cm，在150 cm处的测量精度高达1.61 cm。提出的TAC为实现高密度TOF传感器提供了紧凑的实现解决方案。