In this paper, a time-to-digital converter in which the digital output is obtained without delay time is proposed. The circuit consists of a time-to-voltage converter, voltage-to-frequency converter, and counter. In the time-to-voltage converter, a capacitor is charged with a constant current during the input time interval. The change in the capacitor voltage is proportional to the input time and the capacitor voltage can be converted into a pulse signal with the voltage-to-frequency converter. The frequency of the pulse signal is directly proportional to the peak capacitor voltage and the pulse signals are counted to obtain the digital output. In the proposed circuit, the input time interval can be easily controlled and the resolution of the digital output can be improved by controlling the passive devices such as the capacitor and resistor.

In this work, a temperature stable voltage-to-frequency converter (VFC) in which the output frequency is proportional to the input voltage is proposed. The output frequency range is from 22 kHz to 60 kHz and the difference between simulated and calculated values is less than about 5% for this range of output frequency. The temperature variation of sample output frequencies is less than 0.5% in the temperature range -25C to 75C.

A 20 GHz-band GaAs MMIC receiver module has been developed using 0.15 µm HEMT technology process. It incorporates two front end low noise amplifiers, a double balanced diode mixer, and filters. The RF input frequency ranges 20.1 to 21 GHz and the IF output 1.1 to 2 GHz. Test results show an overall conversion gain of more than 27 dB, and less than a 2.2 dB noise figure. The image-rejection ratio greater than 21 dB has been obtained. The isolation between RF and IF ports is better than 27 dB, and between LO and IF is more than 50 dB.

WDM transmission experiments over cascaded sections of optical links including wavelength converting 2R-transponders have been carried out in a loop testbed. Using dispersion compensated links and simple direct modulated transponder lasers, up to 11 cascaded crossconnects and 1750 km trunk lines have been bridged with 2.5 Gbit/s NRZ signals. The limitations are given mainly due to the accumulated jitter as it is shown by numerical simulations. The results indicate, that 2R-transponders are a useful approach to a flexible WDM network design using bitrate-transparent wavelength conversion.

WDM transmission experiments over cascaded sections of optical links including wavelength converting 2R-transponders have been carried out in a loop testbed. Using dispersion compensated links and simple direct modulated transponder lasers, up to 11 cascaded crossconnects and 1750 km trunk lines have been bridged with 2.5 Gbit/s NRZ signals. The limitations are given mainly due to the accumulated jitter as it is shown by numerical simulations. The results indicate, that 2R-transponders are a useful approach to a flexible WDM network design using bitrate-transparent wavelength conversion.

A current-to-frequency converter using switched-current (SI) circuits is proposed. The SI integrator with a hold-and-reset switch can control integration by the output signals. In the proposed circuit the oscillation frequency can be controlled by the input current, and the circuit is operated in the current domain. This is verified by HSPICE simulations.