Error analysis and design of the Nutt time-interval digitiser with picosecond resolution

Abstract

Several sources of errors related to the Nutt time-interval digitiser are discussed, including the quantisation process, time jitter, non-linearity of time stretchers and phase noise of the reference clock. A model of the total measurement uncertainty is formulated. The authors also describe the main circuitry and test results of a microprocessor-controlled digitiser which has been developed to achieve a negligible quantisation error (1 ps resolution) and 1 ms range.