Performance of focal plane arrays for the photon counting arrays (PCAR) program

Abstract

The DARPA PCAR program is sponsoring the development of low noise, near infrared (1.5 mm wavelength) focal plane arrays (FPAs) for night vision applications. The first phase of this work has produced a collection of 640 x 512 pixel, 20 mm pitch FPAs with low noise. The approach was to design four different read out integrated circuits (ROICs), all compatible with the same bump-bonded InGaAs photodiode detector array. Two of the designs have capacitive transimpedance amplifier (CTIA) pixels, each with a somewhat different amplifier design and with two different sizes of small integration capacitors. The third design is a source follower per detector (SFD) pixel, integrating on the detector capacitance. The fourth design also integrates on the detector capacitance, but uses a moderate gain, in-pixel amplifier to boost the signal level, and also has a differential pixel output. All four designs require off-chip correlated sampling to achieve the desired noise level. The correlated sampling is performed digitally in the data acquisition software. Each design is capable of 30 frames per second read out rate, and has a dynamic range of 1000:1 using a rolling, non-snapshot integration. The designs were fabricated in a standard CMOS foundry process, and were bump-bonded to InGaAs detector arrays. All four designs are working without any significant design errors, and are producing low noise imaging, with less than 50 electrons rms noise per pixel after correlated double sampling.