A 65 nm 0.5 V DPS CMOS Image Sensor With 17 pJ/Frame.Pixel and 42 dB Dynamic Range for Ultra-Low-Power SoCs

Couniot, Numa;de Streel, Guerric;Botman, François;Kuti Lusala, Angelo;Bol, David;et.al.
(2015) IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits — Vol. 50, n° 10, p. 2419-2430 (2015)

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Authors
  • Couniot, NumaUCLouvain
    Author
  • de Streel, GuerricUCLouvain
    Author
  • Botman, FrançoisARM, Cambridge/UK
    Author
  • Kuti Lusala, AngeloSynergia Medical, Mont-Saint Guibert/Belgium
    Author
  • Author
  • Bol, Davidorcid-logoUCLouvain
    Author
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Abstract
Adding vision capabilities to wireless sensors nodes (WSN) for the Internet-of-Things requires imagers working at ultra-low power (ULP) in nanometer CMOS systems-on-chip (SoCs). Such performance can be obtained with time-based digital pixel sensors (DPS) working at ultra-low voltage (ULV), at the expense of lower dynamic range, higher fixed-pattern noise (FPN) and thus poorer image quality. To address this problem, three key techniques were developed in this work for DPS pixels: wide-range adaptive body biasing, low-Ron gating of the 2-transistor in-pixel comparator and digital readout performing delta-reset sampling with low switching activity and robust timing closure. These concepts were demonstrated by designing and fabricating a 128$times$128 CMOS image sensor array in a 65 nm low-power CMOS logic process. Operating at 0.5 V, it features an FPN of 0.66%, a dynamic range of 42 dB and a fill factor of 57% with a 4 µm pixel pitch, while consuming only 17 pJ/(frame.pixel) and 8.8 µW at 32 fps. These performances combined with the small silicon area of 0.69 mm 2 makes the imager perfectly suitable for integration in ULP SoCs, targeting WSN applications.
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Citations

Couniot, N., de Streel, G., Botman, F., Kuti Lusala, A., Flandre, D., & Bol, D. (2015). A 65 nm 0.5 V DPS CMOS Image Sensor With 17 pJ/Frame.Pixel and 42 dB Dynamic Range for Ultra-Low-Power SoCs. IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits, 50(10), 2419-2430. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSSC.2015.2457897 (Original work published 2015)