A 128 × 128 SPAD Motion-Triggered Time-of- Flight Image Sensor With In-Pixel Histogram and Column-Parallel Vision Processor Francesco Mattioli Della Rocca , Student Member , IEEE

Abstract

A 128 × 128 single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) motion detection-triggered time- of-flight (ToF) sensor is imple- mented in STMicroelectronics 40 nm CMOS SPAD foundry process. The sensor combines vision and ToF ranging functions to acquire depth frames only when inter-frame intensity changes are detected. The 40 µm × 20 µm pixels integrate two 16-bit time-gated counters to acquire ToF histograms and repurpose them to compare two vision frames without the requirement for additional out-of-pixel frame memory resources. An embedded column-parallel ToF and vision processor performs on-chip vision frame comparison and binary frame output compression as well as controlling the time-resolved histogram sampling. The sensor achieves a maximum 32.5 kframes/s in vision modality and 500 frames/s in motion detection-triggered ToF over a measured 3.5 m distance with 1.5 cm accuracy. The vision function reduces the sensor power consumption by 70% over continuous ToF operation and allows the sensor to gate the ToF laser emitter to reduce the system power when no motion activity is observed.