Current mode read-out circuit for infrared photodiode applications in 0.35 μm cmos

ABSTRACT

Infrared focal plane arrays have a wide range of military, medical, industrial and scientific applications, where high resolution and high performance read-out integrated electronics are required. This work advances a regulated cascode current mirror (RCCM) amplifier in 0.35 ¼m CMOS technology for application in hybrid CMOS-InGaAs implementations. With an output impedance of 236 k©, the RCCM produces and output noise power of 8.06 nA (RMS), to achieve a SNR of 77 dB and a dynamic range of 60 dB at -40 dB THD. Comparisons with alternative approaches considering key performance parameters are presented.

REFERENCES

• 1: R. M. Phillipp et al., "Linear current-mode active pixel sensor," IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 42, no. 11, pp. 2482--2491, November 2007.
• 2: D. Stoppa et al., "A 120-dB dynamic range CMOS image sensor with programmable power responsivity," IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 42, no. 7, pp. 1555--1563, July 2007.
• 3: X. Wang, W. Wong, and R. Hornsey, "A high dynamic range CMOS image sensor with inpixel light-to-frequency conversion," IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. 53, no. 12, pp. 2988--2992, December 2006.
• 4: M. Tänzer, A. Graupner, and R. Schüffny, "Design and evaluation of currente-mode image sensor in CMOS-technology," IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, vol. 51, no. 10, pp. 566--570, October 2004.
• 5: Y. Huang and R. I. Hornsey, "Current-mode CMOS image sensor using lateral bipolar phototransistors," IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. 50, no. 12, pp. 2570--2573, December 2003.
• 6: D. Y. H. Cheung, "CMOS active pixel sensor designs for fault tolerance and background illumination subtraction," Master's thesis, B.A.Sc. Simon Fraser University, 2002.
• 7: H. Tian, B. Fowler, and A. E. Gamal, "Analysis of temporal noise in CMOS photodiode active pixel sensor," IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 92--101, January 2001.
• 8: K. Guo and et al, "1d InGaAs lock-in FPA," in Infrared Technology and Applications XXX. Edited by Andresen, Bjorn F., and Fulop, Gabor F. Proceedings of the SPIE, ser. Presented at the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Conference, vol. 5406, pp. 64--72, August 2004.
• 9: H. Kulah and T. Akin, "A current mirroring integration based readout circuit for high performance infrared FPA applications," IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, vol. 50, no. 4, April 2003.
• 10: H. C. L. Nanyoung Yoon, Byunghyuk Kim and C.-K. Kim, "High injection efficiency readout circuit for low resistance infra-red detector," IEEE Eletron. Lett., vol. 35, no. 8, pp. 1188--1198, September 1999.
• 11: C.-C. Hsieh et al, "High-performance CMOS buffered gate modulation input (BGMI) readout circuits for IR FPA," IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 33, no. 8, pp. 1188--1198, August 1998.
• 12: C.-C. Hsieh et al., "Focal-plane-arrays and CMOS readout techniques of infrared imaging systems," IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 594--605, August 1997.
• 13: C.-C. Hsieh et al., "A new cryogenic cmos readout structure for infrared focal plane array," IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 32, no. 8, pp. 1192--1199, August 1997.
• 14: W. D. León-Salas et al., "CMOS imager with focal plane compression using predictive coding," IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 42, no. 11, pp. 2555--2572, November 2007.
• 15: M. J. C. de Mello, "Sensibilidade de produtos internos à fabricação em circuitos CMOS para quantização vetorial em sistemas de compressão de imagens no plano focal," Master's thesis, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2007.
• 16: N. Massari and M. Gottardi, "A 100 dB dynamic-range CMOS vision sensor with programmable image processing and global feature extraction," IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 647--657, March 2007.
• 17: H. L. Hass et al, "New error sensitivity model for the analog hardware implementation of inner products," in Proc. IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, pp. 3333--3336, October 2006..
• 18: J. L. Huertas et al, "Smart-pixel cellular neural networks in analog current-mode CMOS technology," IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 29, no. 8, p. 895--905, August 1994.
• 19: S. Ozer et al, "Demonstration and performance assessment of large format InP-InGaAsP quantum-well infrared photodetector focal plane array," IEEE J. Quantum Electron., vol. 43, no. 8, pp. 709--713, August 2007.
• 20: M. Sun and Y. Lu, "Nonlinearity in ESD robust InGaAs P-I-N photodiode," IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. 52, no. 7, pp. 1508--1513, July 2005.
• 21: D. Jonhs and K. Martin, Analog integrated circuit design. John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
• 22: B. Razavi, Design of analog CMOS integrated circuits. McGraw-Hill, 2001.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.7 INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
      B.7.2 Design Aids
          Subjects: Layout

Additional Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.7 INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
      B.7.2 Design Aids
          Subjects: Simulation

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
current-mode, image sensor, infra-red, read-out