Increasing the time resolution of a pulse width modulator in a class D power amplifier by using delay lines

Abstract

In this paper, we present a method to increase the time resolution of a pulse width modulator by using delay lines. The modulator is part of an open loop class D power amplifier, which uses the ZePoC algorithm to code the audio signal which is amplified in the class D power stage. If the time resolution of the pulse width modulator is high enough, ZePoC could also be used to build an high accuracy AC power standard, because of its open loop property. With the presented method the time resolution theoretically could be increased by a factor of 16, which means here the time resolution will be enhanced from 5 ns to 312.5 ps.