A Cryogenic readout integrated circuit with analog pile-up and in-Pixel ADC for high frame rate Skipper CCD-in-CMOS Sensors

TL;DR

This paper presents a cryogenic, high-speed readout circuit with in-pixel ADC and analog pile-up for Skipper CCD-in-CMOS sensors, enabling high frame rates and low noise in large-area imaging.

Contribution

It introduces a novel in-pixel SAR ADC with analog pile-up for high frame rate Skipper CCD-in-CMOS sensors, optimizing power and noise performance.

Findings

Achieved 4 kfps frame rate with large sensor arrays

Demonstrated ADC DNL of ~0.44 LSB and INL of 0.58 LSB

Power consumption estimated at 50μW per pixel

Abstract

The Skipper CCD-in-CMOS Parallel Read-Out Circuit V2 (SPROCKET2) is designed to enable high frame rate readout of Skipper CCD-in-CMOS image sensors. The SPROCKET2 pixel is fabricated in a 65 nm CMOS process and occupies a 60$\mu$m $\times$ 60$\mu$m footprint. SPROCKET2 is intended to be heterogeneously integrated with a pixelated Skipper CCD-in-CMOS sensor, such that one readout pixel is connected to a multiplexed array of 16 active image sensor pixels, to match their spatial geometry. Our design benefits from the Skipper CCD-in-CMOS sensor's non-destructive readout capability to achieve exceptionally low noise through multi-sampling and averaging while optimizing for total power consumption. The pixel readout utilizes correlated double sampling to minimize 1/f noise and includes "pile-up" of ten successive samples in the analog domain before digitizing at a rate of 66.7 ksps. Measurement results of in-pixel serial SAR ADC show DNL and INL of ~0. 44 LSB and 0.58 LBS respectively. A large area array of 20,000 SPROCKET2 ADC pixels (multiplexed 1:16 to 320,000 sensor pixels) is currently under test. By reading out data over a 10 Gbps optical link, this pixel design enables a frame rate of $\sim$ 4 kfps for large sensing areas with minimal sensing deadtime. In the highest gain mode, the pixelated ADC has an input-referred resolution of 10$\mu$V with a simulated power consumption of 50$\mu$W. The pixel operates with constant current draw to minimize power-rail crosstalk.