A 0.5e_rms⁻ Temporal Noise CMOS Image Sensor With Gm-Cell-Based Pixel and Period-Controlled Variable Conversion Gain

A 0.5e_rms⁻ Temporal Noise CMOS Image Sensor With Gm-Cell-Based Pixel and Period-Controlled Variable Conversion Gain

Ge, X. (TU Delft Electronic Instrumentation)
Theuwissen, A.J.P.A.M. (TU Delft Electronic Instrumentation; Harvest Imaging)

2017

A deep subelectron temporal noise CMOS image sensor (CIS) with a Gm-cell based pixel and a correlated-double charge-domain sampling technique has been developed for photon-starved imaging applications. With the proposed technique, the CIS, which is implemented in a standard 0.18-μm CIS process, features pixel-level amplification and achieves an input-referred noise of 0.5 e−rms with a correlated double sampling period of 5μs and a row read-out time of 10 μs. The proposed structurealso realizes a variable conversion gain (CG) with a period-controlled method. This enables the read-out path CG and the noise-equivalent number of electrons to be programmable according to the application without any change in hardware. The experiments show that the measured CG can be tuned from 50 μV/e- to 1.6 mV/e- with a charging period from 100 ns to 4μs. The measured characteristics of the prototype CIS are in a good agreement with expectations, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.

Charge-domain sampling
CMOS image sensor
conversion gain (CG)
low noise
low pass
period controlled
pixel-level amplification
sinc-type filter
subelectron

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:e4bb74d8-a168-44d2-9975-f1caa107b110

https://doi.org/10.1109/TED.2017.2759787

0018-9383

IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, 64 (12), 5019-5026

Accepted Author Manuscript

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2017 X. Ge, A.J.P.A.M. Theuwissen