Readout architectures for uncooled IR detector arrays

The main idea of this paper is to compare the readout architectures for uncooled microbolometer focal plane detector arrays with respect to the detector and readout circuit noise. The comparison is done keeping the total power consumption of all architectures constant. Three CMOS readout architectures with different degree of parallelism are described in this paper: pixelwise, columnwise and serial. The noise model of the readout circuit is given. Also, the optimization for the lowest NETD (noise equivalent temperature difference) and estimation of the self-heating effect is presented.