Compact, Low-Power and Fully Reconfigurable 10 ps Resolution, 160 Range, Time-Resolved Single-Photon Counting System

Abstract

We present a handheld, low-power, time-resolved single-photon detection system, consisting of a time measurement platform, able to record optical waveforms with 10 ps resolution and a detection board, which can host both CMOS and custom-made single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs). It has been validated using up to 200 $\mu \text{m}$ diameter CMOS SPADs, reaching 40% photon detection efficiency at 450 nm and less than 100 HZ dark count rate at room temperature (with a 50 $\mu \text{m}$ device). The system provides 50 ps full-width at half-maximum single-shot timing precision, with 1.2% of least significant bit (LSB) (RMS) differential non-linearity (DNL) and 160 $\mu \text{s}$ full-scale range. Both data communication and power supply are provided by a USB 2.0 link. The module comes in a very compact ( $1 \,\, \times \,\, 2$ in2) handheld housing and consumes less than 1.3 W (even at the maximum rate of 5 Mconversion/s). Because of the field programmable gate array (FPGA) data processing, this complete time-correlated single-photon counting system enables customized and cost-effective new applications, which require high portability and configurability, with no compromises on performance.