A 124-dB Dynamic-Range SPAD Photon-Counting Image Sensor Using Subframe Sampling and Extrapolating Photon Count
Jun Ogi, Takafumi Takatsuka, Kazuki Hizu, Yutaka Inaoka, Hongbo Zhu, Yasuhisa Tochigi, Yoshiaki Tashiro, Fumiaki Sano, Yusuke Murakawa, Makoto Nakamura, Yusuke Oike
Abstract
This article presents a 250-ft/s photon-counting image sensor with a dynamic range (DR) of 124 dB. A prototype of a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$160\times264$ </tex-math></inline-formula> single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD)-based photon-counting image sensor with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$12.24~\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> pitch stacked pixels successfully realized global-shutter image capture with noiseless readout, motion artifact suppression, and no signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) dip over the DR. This result can be achieved by a subframe sampling and extrapolating architecture by decreasing the number of counter bits to 9 and reducing the power consumption by 1/100 with 10<sup>6</sup> incident photons under high light intensity.