Distance measurement using ultrasonic waves is employed in a wide range of industrial applications. In this thesis our main goal is to investigate the possibility of processing ultrasonic signals with a ??-modulator and to process its bitstream output signal with the cross-correlation technique, while being independent of the transducer that is used. A compact chip has been designed in a 0.5 ?m CMOS process for the readout of the transducer. We present simulation results that show that the system is able to accurately estimate the distance to a target when low-Q transducers are used. Furthermore, we present measurement results in which we show that the system is able to determine the zero-crossings of the received echo with a resolution of 0.169 mm.