Abstract
SPAD-based solid state CMOS image sensors utilising analogue integrators have attained deep sub-electron read noise (DSERN) permitting single photon counting (SPC) imaging. A new method is proposed to determine the read noise in DSERN image sensors by evaluating the peak separation and width (PSW) of single photon peaks in a photon counting histogram (PCH). The technique is used to identify and analyse cumulative noise in analogue integrating SPC SPAD-based pixels. The DSERN of our SPAD image sensor is exploited to confirm recent multi-photon threshold quanta image sensor (QIS) theory. Finally, various single and multiple photon spatio-temporal oversampling techniques are reviewed.
Highlights
Imaging a few photons per pixel, per frame, demands pixels operating in the single photon counting regime
This paper evaluates the single photon counting and noise characteristics of our recent work on Single photon avalanche diode (SPAD)-based image sensors [15,16,17] and analyses the benefits, tradeoffs and noise performance of various spatio-temporal oversampling techniques [18,19]
The use of single photon counting histograms are not new to the imaging community but the analysis presented here seeks to model and quantify the noise measurements that may be obtained from the PCH
Summary
Imaging a few photons per pixel, per frame, demands pixels operating in the single photon counting regime. 0.5 einput referred read noise (RN) [8], but practically there is a 90% accuracy of determining the number of photoelectrons at 0.3 e RN, and approaching 100% accuracy at 0.15 e RN [9] These probability figures, assume RN is Gaussian distributed and the discrimination thresholds between one photoelectron signal, to the are set precisely mid-way and do not take into account fixed pattern noise (FPN) or gain variations in photo-response non-uniformity (PRNU). Such sensors in this photon-counting regime with approximately
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