Non-linear responsivity characterisation of a CMOS Active Pixel Sensor for high resolution imaging of the Jovian system

Abstract

The Jovian system is the subject of study for the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE), an ESA mission which is planned to launch in 2022. The scientific payload is designed for both characterisation of the magnetosphere and radiation environment local to the spacecraft, as well as remote characterisation of Jupiter and its satellites. A key instrument on JUICE is the high resolution and wide angle camera, JANUS, whose main science goals include detailed characterisation and study phases of three of the Galilean satellites, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, as well as studies of other moons, the ring system, and irregular satellites.The CIS115 is a CMOS Active Pixel Sensor from e2v technologies selected for the JANUS camera. It is fabricated using 0.18 μ m CMOS imaging sensor process, with an imaging area of 2000 × 1504 pixels, each 7 μ m square. A 4T pixel architecture allows for efficient correlated double sampling, improving the readout noise to better than 8 electrons rms, whilst the sensor is operated in a rolling shutter mode, sampling at up to 10 Mpixel/s at each of the four parallel outputs.A primary parameter to characterise for an imaging device is the relationship that converts the sensor's voltage output back to the corresponding number of electrons that were detected in a pixel, known as the Charge to Voltage Factor (CVF). In modern CMOS sensors with small feature sizes, the CVF is known to be non-linear with signal level, therefore a signal-dependent measurement of the CIS115's CVF has been undertaken and is presented here. The CVF is well modelled as a quadratic function leading to a measurement of the maximum charge handling capacity of the CIS115 to be 3.4 × 104 electrons. If the CIS115's response is assumed linear, its CVF is 21.1 electrons per mV (1/47.5 μ V per electron).