A 100m-range 10-frame/s 340×96-pixel time-of-flight depth sensor in 0.18μm CMOS

Abstract

This paper introduces a high-performance optical depth sensor in a 0.18μm CMOS technology. At the core of the sensor, macro pixels consisting of 6×2 single-photon detectors enable accurate and selective time-of-flight measurements by taking advantage of temporal and spatial correlations of photons. An array of 32 high-throughput time-to-digital converters allows for the digitization of time-of-flight data with a resolution of 208ps within a range of 853ns, thus resolving distances up to 128 meters. Quantitative characterization of the chip sensor is reported. Depth map data acquired in a real-world situation illustrates the effectiveness of the approach in a road traffic environment.