Design considerations for a range image sensor containing a PSD-array and an on-chip multiplexer

Abstract

In the present paper we introduce a range image sensor, the PSD-chip, designed for sheet of light range imaging. The image sensor consists of an array of 128 Position Sensitive Detector (PSD)-strips with a 20 mm length and a 28 /spl mu/m pitch. Design considerations for the image sensor are discussed, as well as the on-chip electronics. The on-chip electronics consists of an analog part and a digital part. The analog preamplifiers deal with the low-pass filtering of the sensor-signals in order to reduce the noise bandwidth. The digital part consists of an analog current multiplexer, implemented in ECL technology. Our goal is to achieve a 2 MHz range/frequency at 12 bits resolution.