An 80 × 60 Flash LiDAR Sensor With In-Pixel Delta-Intensity Quaternary Search Histogramming TDC

This article presents a flash light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor featuring an in-pixel histogramming time-to-digital converter (hTDC) based on a delta-intensity quaternary search (DIQS) technique. The proposed 12-b DIQS hTDC is a two-step converter consisting of a 6-b coarse hTDC and a 7-b fine hTDC with 1-b redundancy. The DIQS hTDC synthesizes depth maps with three subframes from the coarse mode and a single subframe from the fine mode, achieving 100-ps resolution without a clock frequency of a few gigahertz. The DIQS repeats dividing the time range of a current step into four periods and finding the location where a target object is placed by comparing the number of events in each period, which is similar to the binary search method but doubles its operating speed. Two time-of-flight (ToF) bits are consecutively determined in every coarse step, and seven ToF bits are estimated by the indirect ToF technique with photon counts. An up–down counter is employed to reduce the memory size by half and enable the delta-intensity technique that can extend the dynamic range by suppressing the uniform background light. The prototype LiDAR with an
$80\times60$
pixel array was fabricated in a 110-nm CMOS image sensor (CIS) process and fully characterized. The maximum detectable range is measured to 45 m with a success rate of 100% at night and 60% under 70-klux background light. The depth accuracy and precision are 2.5 and 1.5 cm from 3 to 4.5 m indoor, respectively, and the precision is maintained to 1.8 cm for the target located at a 1.5-m distance under 60-klux background light. Inherent time-gating and differential signaling of the DIQS hTDC effectively suppress common-mode noise, accomplishing real-time acquisition of depth images with 30 frames/s in a 9-m range at 30-klux background light.