A 100-m Range 10-Frame/s 340 96-Pixel Time-of-Flight Depth Sensor in 0.18- mC M O S

Abstract

This paper introduces a single-photon detection tech- nique for time-of- flight distance ranging based on the temporal and spatial correlation of photons. A proof-of-concept prototype achieving depth imaging up to 100 meters with a resolution of 340 96 pixels at 10 frames/s was implemented. At the core of the system, a sensor chip compris ing 32 macro-pixels based on an array of single-photon avalanche d iodes featuring an optical fill factor of 70% was fabricated in a 0.18- mC M O S .T h ec h i pa l s o comprises an array of 32 circuits capable of generating precise triggers upon correlation events as well as of sampling the number of photons involved in each correlation event, and an array of 32 12-b time-to-digital converters. Characterization of the TDC array led to 0.52 LSB and 0.73 LSB of differential and integral nonlinearities, respectively. Quantitative evaluation of the TOF sensor under strong solar background light, i.e., 80 klux, revealed a repeatability error better than 10 cm throughout the distance range of 100 m, thus leading to a relative precision of 0.1%. In the same condition, the relative nonlinearity error was 0.37%. In order to show the suitability of our approach in a real-world situation, experimental results in which the depth sensor was operated in a typical traf fic scenario are also reported.