Home // International Journal On Advances in Systems and Measurements, volume 7, numbers 1 and 2, 2014 // View article

CMOS Readout Circuit with Wide Dynamic Range for an UV-NIR Silicon Sensor

Authors:
Emmanuel Gómez Ramírez
Jóse Alejandro Díaz Méndez
Mariano Aceves Mijares
Jóse Miguel Rocha Pérez
Jorge Miguel Pedraza Chávez
Carlos Domínguez Horna
Ángel Merlos

Keywords: UV sensor, silicon sensor, smart-sensor, wide dynamic range; CMOS imagers; PWM sensors; continuously operating sensors; multimode sensing.

Abstract:
Currently, a CMOS imager capable of detecting from Ultraviolet-to-Near Infrared (UV to NIR) light is desirable. A new silicon sensor that detects from UV to NIR to be used for CMOS imaging was developed. However, the range of photo current generated by this sensor is wide. Then, there is a need to develop CMOS circuits with a wide dynamic range to be used with this sensor, or any other with wide output signal. This paper describes a CMOS readout circuit for applications in UV-NIR imaging with sensors that generate current in many orders of magnitude. The developed UV-NIR sensor is compatible with a CMOS technology. A new topology of a wide dynamic range readout circuit using a multimode sensing technique is proposed. Also, the design, computer simulation, and experimental corroboration are shown. It is demonstrated that automatic switching between different modes is achieved, and then a dynamic range up to 160 dB can be obtained.

Pages: 23 to 33

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2014. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2014

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-261x