Compact Active Quenching Circuit for Single Photon Avalanche Diodes Arrays

Abstract

A compact quenching circuit for Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) arrays is presented. The proposed circuit preserves the advantages of small area occupation and low power consumption, since it mainly adopts the junction capacitance of the detector to sense the avalanche current. The sensing time is now limited more by the detector rather than the circuit itself. Fabricated in TSMC standard 0.35[Formula: see text][Formula: see text]m CMOS process, the proposed circuit only occupies an area of 20[Formula: see text][Formula: see text]m[Formula: see text][Formula: see text][Formula: see text]31[Formula: see text][Formula: see text]m and can operate properly with the detector biased up to 5[Formula: see text]V above breakdown. The circuit functionality has been verified by experimental measurements, operating with 64[Formula: see text][Formula: see text][Formula: see text]64 InGaAs/InP single photon avalanche diode arrays for time-of-flight-based applications.