A 0.18μm CMOS single-photon sensor for coaxial laser rangefinders

This paper introduces a low-noise single-photon sensor in a 0.18μm CMOS technology for scanning-based coaxial optical rangefinders. At the core of the sensor, macro pixels consisting of 10×10 single-photon detectors enable time-of-flight measurements by taking advantage of temporal and spatial correlations. Unlike conventional silicon photo-multipliers, or multi-pixel photon counters, our sensor features a pulse-shaping and summing stage that accurately resolves the number of quasi-simultaneous photon detections. Sensor characterization data are reported. When mounted on a practical rangefinder setup, the sensor enables distance measurements up to 50 meters with 1σ repeatability error lower than 26cm throughout the range, using 10 laser pulses.

[1]  E. Charbon,et al.  Single-photon synchronous detection , 2008, ESSCIRC 2008 - 34th European Solid-State Circuits Conference.

[2]  Edoardo Charbon,et al.  A 128x128 Single-Photon Imager with on-Chip Column-Level 97ps 10bit Time-to-Digital-Converter Array , 2008, ISSCC 2008.

[3]  M. Gersbach,et al.  A 128 $\times$ 128 Single-Photon Image Sensor With Column-Level 10-Bit Time-to-Digital Converter Array , 2008, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[4]  L. A. Filatov,et al.  Silicon photomultiplier and its possible applications , 2003 .

[5]  K. Sato,et al.  Development of Multi-Pixel Photon Counter (MPPC) , 2006, 2007 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record.

[6]  E. Charbon,et al.  Single-Photon Synchronous Detection , 2009, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[7]  P.-A. Besse,et al.  Single photon detector fabricated in a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor high-voltage technology , 2003 .

[8]  D. A. Gedcke,et al.  A constant fraction of pulse height trigger for optimum time resolution , 1967 .

[9]  S. Cova,et al.  Towards picosecond resolution with single-photon avalanche diodes , 1981 .

[10]  Cristiano Niclass.  Single-photon image sensors in CMOS , 2008 .

[11]  V. Saveliev,et al.  Novel type of avalanche photodetector with Geiger mode operation , 2004 .

[12]  J. Massa,et al.  Optical design and evaluation of a three-dimensional imaging and ranging system based on time-correlated single-photon counting. , 2002, Applied optics.

[13]  V. Golovina,et al.  Novel type of avalanche photodetector with Geiger mode operation , 2004 .