SPAD Smart Pixel for Time-of-Flight and Time-Correlated Single-Photon Counting Measurements

Villa, Federica; Marković, Bojan; Bellisai, S.; Bronzi, Danilo; Tosi, Alberto; Zappa, Franco; Tisa, Simone; Durini, Daniel; Weyers, Sascha; Paschen, Uwe; Brockherde, W.

doi:10.1109/jphot.2012.2198459

Cited by 85 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…avalanche pick-up network, amplification stage, etc.) and also a Time-toDigital Converter (TDC) [47], similarly to the case of present technology of digital SiPM [48]. In this way, a single chip could replace the entire detection channel with striking technological advance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Fast silicon photomultiplier improves signal harvesting and reduces complexity in time-domain diffuse optics

Mora¹,

Martinenghi²,

Contini³

et al. 2015

Opt. Express

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Abstract:We present a proof of concept prototype of a time-domain diffuse optics probe exploiting a fast Silicon PhotoMultiplier (SiPM), featuring a timing resolution better than 80 ps, a fast tail with just 90 ps decay time-constant and a wide active area of 1 mm 2 . The detector is hosted into the probe and used in direct contact with the sample under investigation, thus providing high harvesting efficiency by exploiting the whole SiPM numerical aperture and also reducing complexity by avoiding the use of cumbersome fiber bundles. Our tests also demonstrate high accuracy and linearity in retrieving the optical properties and suitable contrast and depth sensitivity for detecting localized inhomogeneities. In addition to a strong improvement in both instrumentation cost and size with respect to legacy solutions, the setup performances are comparable to those of state-of-the-art time-domain instrumentation, thus opening a new way to compact, low-cost and high-performance time-resolved devices for diffuse optical imaging and spectroscopy.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Fast silicon photomultiplier improves signal harvesting and reduces complexity in time-domain diffuse optics

Mora¹,

Martinenghi²,

Contini³

et al. 2015

Opt. Express

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…the excitation laser sync-out signal). The structure of the pixel is very similar to the one described in [15], in which just a single pixel is reported. The TDC is made of two stages: a 6-bit counter that counts the number of reference clock periods between the START and STOP signal, and a 4-bit interpolator that latches the phase of the START in respect to 16 shifted replicas of the reference clock generated by the global DLL.…”

Section: Structure Of the Array And Timing Electronicsmentioning

confidence: 69%

High linearity SPAD and TDC array for TCSPC and 3D ranging applications

et al. 2015

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An array of 32x32 Single-Photon Avalanche-Diodes (SPADs) and Time-to-Digital Converters (TDCs) has been fabricated in a 0.35 µm automotive-certified CMOS technology. The overall dimension of the chip is 9x9 mm 2 . Each pixel is able to detect photons in the 300 nm -900 nm wavelength range with a fill-factor of 3.14% and either to count them or to time stamp their arrival time. In photon-counting mode an in-pixel 6-bit counter provides photon-numberresolved intensity movies at 100 kfps, whereas in photon-timing mode the 10-bit in-pixel TDC provides time-resolved maps (Time-Correlated Single-Photon Counting measurements) or 3D depth-resolved (through direct time-of-flight technique) images and movies, with 312 ps resolution. The photodetector is a 30 µm diameter SPAD with low Dark Count Rate (120 cps at room temperature, 3% hot-pixels) and 55% peak Photon Detection Efficiency (PDE) at 450 nm. The TDC has a 6-bit counter and a 4-bit fine interpolator, based on a Delay Locked Loop (DLL) line, which makes the TDC insensitive to process, voltage, and temperature drifts. The implemented sliding-scale technique improves linearity, giving 2% LSB DNL and 10% LSB INL. The single-shot precision is 260 ps rms, comprising SPAD, TDC and driving board jitter. Both optical and electrical crosstalk among SPADs and TDCs are negligible. 2D fast movies and 3D reconstructions with centimeter resolution are reported.

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“…It consists of an array of 32 × 32 smart-pixels and global on-chip electronics for clocking and read-out, fabricated in a 0.35 µm CMOS process. Each pixel includes a 30 µm diameter SPAD with very good noise performance if compared to the current state-of-art in CMOS SPADs (120 dark counts/s per pixel at 35 °C, corresponding to just 0.17 Hz/µm 2 dark count rate density) and a high-linearity 350 ps resolution TDC [10]. A microlens array is also under development [11], in order to mitigate the effects of the low fill-factor of 3.14%, caused by the integration of one TDC per pixel.…”

Section: Camera Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced single-photon time-of-flight 3D ranging

Lussana¹,

Villa²,

Mora³

et al. 2015

Opt. Express

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Abstract:We developed a system for acquiring 3D depth-resolved maps by measuring the Time-of-Flight (TOF) of single photons. It is based on a CMOS 32 × 32 array of Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs) and 350 ps resolution Time-to-Digital Converters (TDCs) into each pixel, able to provide photon-counting or photon-timing frames every 10 µs. We show how such a system can be used to scan large scenes in just hundreds of milliseconds. Moreover, we show how to exploit TDC unwarping and refolding for improving signal-to-noise ratio and extending the full-scale depth range. Additionally, we merged 2D and 3D information in a single image, for easing object recognition and tracking.

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SPAD Smart Pixel for Time-of-Flight and Time-Correlated Single-Photon Counting Measurements

Cited by 85 publications

References 20 publications

Fast silicon photomultiplier improves signal harvesting and reduces complexity in time-domain diffuse optics

Fast silicon photomultiplier improves signal harvesting and reduces complexity in time-domain diffuse optics

High linearity SPAD and TDC array for TCSPC and 3D ranging applications

Enhanced single-photon time-of-flight 3D ranging

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