Abstract
The design and implementation of a real-time breakdown voltage and on-chip temperature monitoring system for single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) is described in this work. In the system, an on-chip shaded (active area of the detector covered by a metal layer) SPAD is used to provide a dark count rate for the breakdown voltage and temperature calculation. A bias circuit was designed to provide a bias voltage scanning for the shaded SPAD. A microcontroller records the pulses from the anode of the shaded SPAD and calculates its real-time dark count rate. An algorithm was developed for the microcontroller to calculate the SPAD’s breakdown voltage and the on-chip temperature in real time. Experimental results show that the system is capable of measuring the SPAD’s breakdown voltage with a mismatch of less than 1.2%. Results also show that the system can provide real-time on-chip temperature monitoring for the range of −10 to 50 °C with errors of less than 1.7 °C. The system proposed can be used for the real-time SPAD’s breakdown voltage and temperature estimation for dual-SPADs or SPAD arrays chip where identical detectors are fabricated on the same chip and one or more dummy SPADs are shaded. With the breakdown voltage and the on-chip temperature monitoring, intelligent control logic can be developed to optimize the performance of the SPAD-based photon counting system by adjusting the parameters such as excess bias voltage and dead-time. This is particularly useful for SPAD photon counting systems used in complex working environments such as the applications in 3D LIDAR imaging for geodesy, geology, geomorphology, forestry, atmospheric physics and autonomous vehicles.
Highlights
Single photon counting technology has been used in a wide range of low light sensing applications such as LIDAR [1,2], DNA sequencing [3], quantum key distribution [4] and medical imaging [5,6] due to its ultra-high sensitivity and photon counting capability
The breakdown voltage of single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) is the voltage corresponding to the critical breakdown of SPADs and the excess bias voltage of the SPAD is the additional voltage above the breakdown where the device is typically biased
Experimental results show that the system is capable of measuring the SPAD’s breakdown voltage with the error of less than 1.2% and on-chip temperature error of less than 1.7 ◦C in the range of −10–50 ◦C
Summary
Single photon counting technology has been used in a wide range of low light sensing applications such as LIDAR [1,2], DNA sequencing [3], quantum key distribution [4] and medical imaging [5,6] due to its ultra-high sensitivity and photon counting capability. Some key performance parameters (including dark count rate, breakdown voltage and after-pulsing) of SPADs are affected by the temperature which should been monitored. A real-time breakdown voltage and on-chip temperature monitoring system for the SPAD is designed.
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