Patent ID: 7653170

Claim:
An electrical circuit for measuring times, wherein the electrical circuit has a counter, a decoder and a multiplicity of time trap elements, wherein at least the counter and the time trap elements are located together on an integrated semiconductor component and each time trap element comprising: a data input, a clock input, a delay output and an output port; a delay element which outputs a signal change at the data input with a time delay at the delay output; a flip flop with a data input, a clock input and an output port, the data inputs, the clock inputs and the output ports of the flip flop and of the time trap element being connected to one another; and wherein the time trap elements are connected as ring oscillator, wherein the counter is connected to the output port of a time trap element and the decoder is connected to the output ports of all time trap elements, and wherein the delay element and the flip flop of each time trap element are arranged such that the physical distance between the delay element and the flip flop is less than the largest physical distance between the flip flops of different time trap elements.