An 8-windows Continuous Wave Indirect Time-of-Flight Method for High Frequency SPAD-based 3D Imagers in 0.18 μm CMOS

3D camera; CMOS imager; Depth image sensor; Indirect Time-of-Flight (iToF); Continuous-wave indirect Time-of-Flight (cw-iToF); Time-Gated Single Photon Counting (TGSPC); Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR); Time-of-Flight (ToF); Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD)

Abstract :

[en] Time-of-flight (ToF) Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) arrays are an increasingly popular option for 3D imaging. However, the traditional direct (dToF) and indirect (iToF) SPAD ranging pixels still struggle to get accuracies and precisons below the millimeter for short ranges. We propose to adapt the continuous-wave indirect time-of-flight (cw-iToF) method to use 8 integrating windows instead of the usual 4. This 8-windows cw-iToF method greatly reduces the non-linearity error when using a square optical signal, which consequently enables its use at much higher frequencies than if a sine wave was required, while also showing great robustness to an imperfect square wave, unlike pulse indirect time-of-flight (p-iToF). We provide an analysis of the effects of this new method on the accuracy and precision. Then, we present a single-pixel proof of concept implementation of an 8-taps cw-iToF SPAD pixel containing 4 up/down counters in a 0.18 μm CMOS process. Laser diodes illuminate the target with a 200 MHz square wave. The depth measurement’s worst non-linearity error over a 75 cm range is 1.2 mm, and stays below one millimeter for more than 90% of the measured range. Furthermore, the precision for 100 ms-long frames is as low as 0.35 mm.

Research Center/Unit :

Montefiore Institute - Montefiore Institute of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - ULiège

Disciplines :

Electrical & electronics engineering

Author, co-author :

Piron, François ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'électricité, électronique et informatique (Institut Montefiore) > Systèmes microélectroniques intégrés ; Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Liè,ge, Belgium

Pierre, Hervé ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'électricité, électronique et informatique (Institut Montefiore) > Systèmes microélectroniques intégrés ; Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Liè,ge, Belgium

Redouté, Jean-Michel ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'électricité, électronique et informatique (Institut Montefiore) > Systèmes microélectroniques intégrés ; Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Liè,ge, Belgium

Language :

English

Title :

An 8-windows Continuous Wave Indirect Time-of-Flight Method for High Frequency SPAD-based 3D Imagers in 0.18 μm CMOS

Publication date :

2024

Journal title :

IEEE Sensors Journal

ISSN :

1530-437X

eISSN :

1558-1748

Publisher :

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Volume :

Issue :

Pages :

20495-20503

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10539057

Name of the research project :

Space4ReLaunch

Funders :

FRIA - Fonds pour la Formation à la Recherche dans l'Industrie et dans l'Agriculture
SPW EER - Service Public de Wallonie. Economie, Emploi, Recherche

Funding number :

2210181

Available on ORBi :

since 29 May 2024

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