5.2 A 1200×900 6µm 450fps Geiger-Mode Vertical Avalanche Photodiodes CMOS Image Sensor for a 250m Time-of-Flight Ranging System Using Direct-Indirect-Mixed Frame Synthesis with Configurable-Depth-Resolution Down to 10cm

Long-range (~250m) measurement systems with 3D resolution are highly anticipated for various applications such as automotive, surveillance and robotics systems. Direct time-of-flight (ToF) systems based on CMOS image sensors (CIS) with avalanche photodiodes with the Geiger-mode or single-photon aval...

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Main Authors: Okino, Toru, Yamada, Shota, Sakata, Yusuke, Kasuga, Shigetaka, Takemoto, Masato, Nose, Yugo, Koshida, Hiroshi, Tamaru, Masaki, Sugiura, Yuki, Saito, Shigeru, Koyama, Shinzo, Mori, Mitsuyoshi, Hirose, Yutaka, Sawada, Masayuki, Odagawa, Akihiro, Tanaka, Tsuyoshi
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Avalanche photodiodes
CMOS image sensors
Distance measurement
Image resolution
Photonics
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Summary:Long-range (~250m) measurement systems with 3D resolution are highly anticipated for various applications such as automotive, surveillance and robotics systems. Direct time-of-flight (ToF) systems based on CMOS image sensors (CIS) with avalanche photodiodes with the Geiger-mode or single-photon avalanche diodes (SPAD) have been developed for these purposes. One difficulty is to meet practical requirements of long-range (~250m) measurement capability together with both lateral and depth resolution. Although indirect-ToF systems based on modulation and phase sensitive detection have fine depth resolution of the order of sub-cm, their full range is limited only to ~4m with standard Si-photodiodes [1] and ~20m with the gain assist of APD [2]. Direct-ToF systems based on SPAD pixels with time-to-digital converters (TDC) have long range measurement capability but have not reached megapixel resolution [3], [4]. Another direct-ToF of sub-range syntheses (SRS) system, which detects single photons returned from an object located in each sub-range by synchronous gating, was demonstrated to have a long range (250m) measurement capability with high lateral resolution of 10cm. However, it has a depth resolution limited by the width of optical pulse source [5]. In order to circumvent this issue, in this work, we develop an SRS-ToF system based on a 6µm pitch, 1200×900pixels, Geiger-mode operated vertical avalanche photodiodes (VAPD) CIS that enables one to configure depth resolution down to 10cm for short-distance (
ISSN:2376-8606
DOI:10.1109/ISSCC19947.2020.9063045