3D Sensor for indirect ranging with pulsed laser source

The growing interest for fast, compact and cost-effective 3D ranging imagers for automotive applications has prompted to explore many different techniques for 3D imaging and to develop new system for this propose. CMOS imagers that exploit phase-resolved techniques provide accurate 3D ranging with no complex optics and are rugged and cost-effective. Phase-resolved techniques indirectly measure the round-trip return of the light emitted by a laser and backscattered from a distant target, computing the phase delay between the modulated light and the detected signal. Single-photon detectors, with their high sensitivity, allow to actively illuminate the scene with a low power excitation (less than 10W with diffused daylight illumination). We report on a 4x4 array of CMOS SPAD (Single Photon Avalanche Diodes) designed in a high-voltage 0.35 mu m CMOS technology, for pulsed modulation, in which each pixel computes the phase difference between the laser and the reflected pulse. Each pixel comprises a high-performance 30 mu m diameter SPAD, an analog quenching circuit, two 9 bit up-down counters and memories to store data during the readout. The first counter counts the photons detected by the SPAD in a time window synchronous with the laser pulse and integrates the whole echoed signal. The second counter accumulates the number of photon detected in a window shifted with respect to the laser pulse, and acquires only a portion of the reflected signal. The array is readout with a global shutter architecture, using a 100 MHz clock; the maximal frame rate is 3 Mframe/s.