Abstract
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.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 5019-5026 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices |
Volume | 64 |
Issue number | 12 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Accepted Author ManuscriptKeywords
- Charge-domain sampling
- CMOS image sensor
- conversion gain (CG)
- low noise
- low pass
- period controlled
- pixel-level amplification
- sinc-type filter
- subelectron