Device Ideal for Collision Avoidance in Dones, Robotics, and Vehicles
January 16, 2017 – Mouser Electronics, Inc., the industry’s leading New Product Introduction (NPI) distributor with the widest selection of semiconductors and electronic components, is now stocking the TDC7201 time-to-digital converter from Texas Instruments (TI). The TDC7201 is designed for use with ultrasonic, laser, and radar range finding equipment using time-of-flight (TOF) technique. Laser-based TOF applications demand picosecond accuracy plus the ability to measure very short durations.
TI’s TDC7201 time-to-digital converter, available from Mouser Electronics, has two built-in time-to-digital converters (TDCs) that can be used to measure distance down to 4 cm and up to several kilometers using a simple architecture, which eliminates the need to use FPGAs or processors. Each TDC performs the function of a stopwatch and measures the TOF between a START pulse and up to five STOP pulses. This ability to measure simultaneously and individually on two pairs of pins using two built-in TDCs offers high flexibility in time measurement design. The TDC7201 features a wide measurement range of 0.25 ns to 8 ms and high accuracy of 28 ps. The device has a single shot resolution of 55 ps, (equivalent to 0.825 cm).
When placed in the autonomous multi-cycle averaging mode, the TDC7201 device can be optimized for low system power consumption, which is ideal for battery-powered flow meters. In this mode, the host can go to sleep to save power and wake up when interrupted by the TDC upon completion of the measurement sequence.
The TDC7201 is supported by the TDC7201-ZAX-EVM evaluation module, also available from Mouser. The TDC7201-ZAX-EVM is a BoosterPack plug-in module for the MSP430F5529 LaunchPad and includes two pairs of SMA connectors for START and STOP inputs plus a user-friendly graphic user interface (GUI) to modify the registers, display time of flight, and export data in CSV format.
The TDC7201 is ideal for TOF laser-range-finding applications, including surveying, navigation, drones, and robotics, as well as collision avoidance in autonomous vehicles.
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