This paper provides an in-depth treatment of voltage-to-time converters (VTCs) for time-based signal processing with a nonlinearity emphasis. The need for VTCs in deployment of time-based techniques for high-speed or high-resolution analog-to-digital converters is investigated. It is followed with the classification of VTCs. A detailed treatment of the principle, topology, operation, and design consideration of variable-slope (VS) and constant-slope (CS) VTCs is provided. The nonlinearity of VS-VTCs and that of CS-VTCs are analyzed in detail analytically. It is shown that VS-VTCs is inherently nonlinear while CS-VTCs is intrinsically linear. Factors contributing to the nonlinearity of these VTCs are investigated. VS-VTCs and CS-VTCs studied are designed in TSMC 130 nm 1.2 V CMOS and analyzed using Spectre from Cadence Design Systems with BSIM3.3 device models. A good agreement between simulation and analytical results is obtained. The average gain of the VS-VTC is 4.4 times that of the CS-VTC. The 2nd and 3rd harmonics of the CS-VTC are significantly smaller as compared with those of the VS-VTC at the price of more power consumption.
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