US 5,477,196 AGranted

Pulse generator

AssigneeNippondenso Co., Ltd.

InventorsShigenori Yamauchi, Takamoto Watanabe

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

In a device for encoding a pulse phase difference or controlling an oscillation frequency based on delayed signals sequentially output by a delay circuit, the encoding of a pulse phase difference or the oscillation control can be simultaneously performed using a single delay device. There is provided a frequency converter including a ring oscillator consisting of inverting circuits interconnected in the form of a ring, a pulse phase difference encoding circuit for encoding the cycle of a reference signal into a binary digital value based on a pulse output by the ring oscillator, an arithmetic circuit for multiplying or dividing the binary digital value by a predetermined value to generate control data and a digitally controlled oscillation circuit for generating a pulse signal in a cycle in accordance with the control data based on the pulse output by the ring oscillator, the ring oscillator being shared by the encoding circuit and oscillation circuit. This makes the time resolution of the encoding and oscillation circuits constant, thereby allowing accurate frequency conversion.

Claims17

Dependent claims

A pulse generator for generating a pulse based on a first pulse train including first piece of information representing a phase difference or digital value and for generating a pulse based on a second pulse train including second piece of information representing a phase difference or digital value comprising:

a delay circuit which is constituted by a plurality of interconnected delay elements, to which an input signal is input at any connecting point of said delay element and which sequentially outputs a plurality of delayed signals obtained by delaying said input signal by delay periods determined by the numbers of said delay elements connected from a plurality of predetermined connecting points of said delay elements;
a first pulse output circuit to which the first pulse train is input, which outputs first position data representing the connecting position of particular one of said delay element of said delay circuit from the first piece of information in said first pulse train and which generates a first output pulse in accordance with the first position data;
and
a second pulse output circuit to which the second pulse train is input, which outputs second position data representing the connecting position of particular one of said delay element of said delay circuit from the second piece of information in said second pulse train and which generates a second output pulse in accordance with the second position data, said first and second pulse output circuits sharing said delay circuit in generating said respective pulses.

1 more element

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.