High Speed Column-Parallel CDS/ADC Circuit with Nonlinearity Compensation for CMOS Image Sensors

A high speed column-parallel CDS/ADC circuit with nonlinearity compensation is proposed in this paper.The correlated double sampling (CDS) and analog-to-digital converter (ADC) functions are integrated in a threephase column-parallel circuit based on two floating gate inverters and switched-capacitor network.The conversion rate of traditional single-slope ADC is speeded up by dividing quantization to coarse step and fine step.A storage capacitor is used to store the result of coarse step and locate the section of ramp signal of fine step,which can reduce the clock step from 2 n to 2 (n/2+1).The floating gate inverters are implemented to reduce the power consumption.Its induced nonlinear offset is cancelled by introducing a compensation module to the input of inverter,which can equalize the coupling path in three phases of the proposed circuit.This circuit is designed and simulated for CMOS image sensor with 640×480 pixel array using Chartered 0.18μm process.Simulation results indicate that the resolution can reach 10-bit and the maximum frame rate can reach 200 frames/s with a main clock of 10MHz.The power consumption of this circuit is less than 36.5μW with a 3.3V power supply.The proposed CDS/ADC circuit is suitable for high resolution and high speed image sensors.     

CMOS 图像传感器用ADC及其进展

将ADC集成到CMOS 图像传感器可有多种方法,各种方法各有其特点,且对ADC要求不同,而像素级的集成因其诸多优点,正日益引起人们关注.文章对CMOS图像传感器用ADC的研究进展进行了综述.     

In-pixel charge addition scheme applied in time-delay integration CMOS image sensors

An addition scheme applicable to time-delay integration (TDI) CMOS image sensor is proposed,which adds signals in the charge domain in the pixel array.A two-shared pixel structure adopting two-stage charge transfer is introduced,together with the rolling shutter with an undersampling readout timing.Compared with the conventional TDI addition methods,the proposed scheme can reduce the addition operations by half in the pixel array,which decreases the power consumption of addition circuits outside the pixel array.The timing arrangement and pixel structure are analyzed in detail.The simulation results show that the proposed pixel structure can achieve the charge addition with negligible nonlinearity,therefore the power consumption of the periphery addition circuits can be reduced by half theoretically.     

Area-efficient low power CMOS image sensor readout circuit with fixed pattern noise cancellation

A low cost of die area and power consumption CMOS image sensor readout circuit with fixed pattern noise(FPN) cancellation is proposed.By using only one coupling capacitor and switch in the double FPN cancelling correlative double sampling(CDS),pixel FPN is cancelled and column FPN is stored and eliminated by the sampleand-hold operation of digitally programmable gain amplifier(DPGA).The bandwidth balance technology based on operational amplifier(op-amp) sharing is also introduced to decrease the power dissipation of traditional multi-stage switched capacitor DPGA.The circuit is designed and simulated using 1P6M 0.18 μm 1.8 V/3.3 V process.Simulation results indicate that the proposed CDS scheme can achieve an FPN of less than 1 mV.The total sampling capacitor per column is 0.9 pF and no column-wise power is dissipated.The die area and FPN value are cut by 70% and 41% respectively compared with amplifier-based CDS.The op-amp sharing gain stage can achieve a 12-bit precision and also implement an 8-bit gain controlling within a gain range of 24 dB.Its power consumption is 1.4 mW,which is reduced by 57% compared with traditional schemes.The proposed readout circuit is suitable for the application of low power cost-sensitive imaging systems.