Design and Implementation of an Imaging System Based on the sCMOS Sensor

Abstract

sCMOS sensor has broken through the technical bottleneck of high noises and low quantum efficiencies of traditional CMOS sensors. It has the advantages of high sensitivity, high dynamic ranges, low dark current, low readout noises, low power consumption, and high integration, and has gradually become the preferred detector for low-noise imaging systems. Therefore, this paper developed an imaging system with high sensitivity, a high frame rate, low noises, and low power consumption based on a sCMOS sensor. The system adopts a sCMOS image sensor GSENSE400BSI which is very suitable for the requirements of low noises and a high dynamic range in the scientific imaging field as the photosensitive element and XILINX SPARtan-6 FPGA as the control core. Two pieces of high-speed DDR3 are configured to realize ping-pong cache of image data. In the thermal vacuum experimental verification, the total power consumption of the imaging system in the imaging mode is less than 2.2W, and the temperature rise of the sensor is less than 0.1°C. During the in-orbit verification, the imaging system runs stably and the imaging status of the system is good. It has achieved effective monitoring of space targets and high-energy ray bursts and other astronomical phenomena. The image indicators meet the application requirements of commercial space-based telescopes.