A Reconfigurable 3-D-Stacked SPAD Imager with In-Pixel Histogramming for Flash LIDAR or High-Speed Time-of-Flight Imaging

Sam W. Hutchings; Nick Johnston; Istvan Gyongy; Tarek Al Abbas; Neale A. W. Dutton; Max Tyler; Susan Chan; Jonathan Leach; Robert K. Henderson

doi:10.1109/JSSC.2019.2939083

A Reconfigurable 3-D-Stacked SPAD Imager with In-Pixel Histogramming for Flash LIDAR or High-Speed Time-of-Flight Imaging

Sam W. Hutchings
, Nick Johnston
, Istvan Gyongy
, Tarek Al Abbas
, Neale A. W. Dutton
, Max Tyler
, Susan Chan
, Jonathan Leach
, Robert K. Henderson^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

190 Citations (Scopus)

1685 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

A 256 × 256 single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) sensor integrated into a 3-D-stacked 90-nm 1P4M/40-nm 1P8M process is reported for flash light detection and ranging (LIDAR) or high-speed direct time-of-flight (ToF) 3-D imaging. The sensor bottom tier is composed of a 64 × 64 matrix of 36.72 μm pitch modular photon processing units which operate from shared 4 × 4 SPADs at 9.18 μm pitch and 51% fill-factor. A 16 × 14 bit counter array integrates photon counts or events to compress data to 31.4 Mb/s at 30-frame/s readout over 8 I/O operating at 100 MHz. The pixel-parallel multi-event time-to-digital converter (TDC) approach employs a programmable internal or external clock for 0.56-560-ns time bin resolution. In conjunction with a per-pixel correlator, the power is reduced to less than 100 mW in practical daylight ranging scenarios. Examples of ranging and high-speed 3-D ToF applications are given.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	2947-2956
Number of pages	10
Journal	IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits
Volume	54
Issue number	11
Early online date	25 Sept 2019
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/JSSC.2019.2939083
Publication status	Published - Nov 2019

Keywords

3-D imaging
CMOS
direct time of flight (dToF)
histogramming
image sensor
light detection and ranging (LIDAR)
single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs)
TDC sharing architecture
time of flight (ToF)
time-to-digital converter (TDC)

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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10.1109/JSSC.2019.2939083

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title = "A Reconfigurable 3-D-Stacked SPAD Imager with In-Pixel Histogramming for Flash LIDAR or High-Speed Time-of-Flight Imaging",

abstract = "A 256 × 256 single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) sensor integrated into a 3-D-stacked 90-nm 1P4M/40-nm 1P8M process is reported for flash light detection and ranging (LIDAR) or high-speed direct time-of-flight (ToF) 3-D imaging. The sensor bottom tier is composed of a 64 × 64 matrix of 36.72 μm pitch modular photon processing units which operate from shared 4 × 4 SPADs at 9.18 μm pitch and 51\% fill-factor. A 16 × 14 bit counter array integrates photon counts or events to compress data to 31.4 Mb/s at 30-frame/s readout over 8 I/O operating at 100 MHz. The pixel-parallel multi-event time-to-digital converter (TDC) approach employs a programmable internal or external clock for 0.56-560-ns time bin resolution. In conjunction with a per-pixel correlator, the power is reduced to less than 100 mW in practical daylight ranging scenarios. Examples of ranging and high-speed 3-D ToF applications are given.",

keywords = "3-D imaging, CMOS, direct time of flight (dToF), histogramming, image sensor, light detection and ranging (LIDAR), single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs), TDC sharing architecture, time of flight (ToF), time-to-digital converter (TDC)",

author = "Hutchings, \{Sam W.\} and Nick Johnston and Istvan Gyongy and \{Al Abbas\}, Tarek and Dutton, \{Neale A. W.\} and Max Tyler and Susan Chan and Jonathan Leach and Henderson, \{Robert K.\}",

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A Reconfigurable 3-D-Stacked SPAD Imager with In-Pixel Histogramming for Flash LIDAR or High-Speed Time-of-Flight Imaging

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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