PIN-bridge distance measurement sensor

The presented integrated optical distance measurement sensor works on the time-of-flight principle. The distance information is obtained from the correlation of received light and the transmitted signal. The PIN-bridge circuit concept ensures suppression of background light by equally charging and discharging a capacitor within one period, while integrating the wanted signal. A single distance measurement is performed in 8 ms. With averaging, an accuracy of better than 1% is achieved for a distance of 3.7 m. Effective pixel size is 150/spl times/200 /spl mu/m/sup 2/ having a fill-factor of /spl sim/10%. The sensor was manufactured in a modified standard 0.6 /spl mu/m BiCMOS process.

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