Characterization of Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes in Standard 140-nm SOI CMOS Technology

We report on the characterization of single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) fabricated in standard 140-nm silicon on insulator (SOI) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. As a methodology for SPAD optimization, a test structure array, called SPAD farm, was realized with several junctions, guard-ring structures, dimensions,...

Analysis and Design of a High-Order Discrete-Time Passive IIR Low-Pass Filter

In this paper, we propose a discrete-time IIR low-pass filter that achieves a high-order of filtering through a charge-sharing rotation. Its sampling rate is then multiplied through pipelining. The first stage of the filter can operate in either a voltage-sampling or charge-sampling mode. It uses switches, capacitors and a simple gm-cell, rather...

High Speed and Wide Bandwidth Delta-Sigma ADCs

This thesis describes the theory, design and implementation of a high-speed, high-performance continuous-time delta-sigma (CT??) ADC for applications such as medical imaging, high-definition video processing, and wireline and wireless communications. In order to achieve a GHz clocking speed, this thesis investigates excess loop delay...

Millimeter-Wave Digitally-Assisted Frequency Synthesizer in CMOS

DotFETs: MOSFETs strained by a Single SiGE dot in a Low-Temperature ELA Technology

The work presented in this thesis was performed in the context of the European Sixth Framework Program FP6 project “Disposable Dot Field Effect Transistor for High Speed Si Integrated Circuits”, referred to as the D-DotFET project. The project had the goal of realizing strain-enhanced mobility in CMOS transistors by transferring strain from a...

Mobility-based Time References for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks require small low-cost radios to enable communication among its nodes. Since those radios must be fully integrated to reduce cost and size, integration is required also for their on-board time references, which are needed to achieve synchronization with the other nodes. To deal with the lower accuracy of integrated...

3D near-infrared imaging based on a single-photon avalanche diode array sensor

An imager for optical tomography was designed based on a detector with 128x128 single-photon pixels that included a bank of 32 time-to-digital converters. Due to the high spatial resolution and the possibility of performing time resolved measurements, a new contact-less setup has been conceived in which scanning of the object is not necessary....

Millimeter-Wave Phased-Array Transmitter in CMOS

Active pixel sensors: The sensor of choice for future space applications

It is generally known that active pixel sensors (APS) have a number of advantages over CCD detectors if it comes to cost for mass production, power consumption and ease of integration. Nevertheless, most space applications still use CCD detectors because they tend to give better performance and have a successful heritage. To this respect a...

CMOS integrator based lock-in pixel for heterodyne interferometry

This article presents a prototype of a CMOS phase sensor for high accuracy (1 Angstrom) heterodyne interferometry. Switched integrators realization of a lock-in pixel for 4-bucket phase detection algorithm is described and illustrated by experimental results. Factors that limit the accuracy of this implementation and possible ways for its...

Silicon micro-optics for smart light control

We present an overview of the results of our recent research in the field of adaptive optical components based on silicon microtechnologies, including membrane deformable mirrors, spatial light modulators, liquid-crystal correctors, wavefront sensors, and both spherical and aspherical micro-optical components. We aim at the realization of...