Low Power Design of Column Readout Stage for 320x288 Snapshot Infrared ROIC

Abstract

A novel column readout architecture for infrared (IR) readout integrated circuit (ROIC) is proposed in this paper. When the readout rate is 5M Hz, by applying master-slave column amplifier and the technology of divided-output-bus, the power of the column readout stage has been reduced from more than 47mw to 6.74mw, which reduced more than 85%. In the master-slave readout structure, master amplifiers convert the charge to voltage, which have relaxed time limit. Slave amplifiers drive the output bus and ensure the readout rate, which adopts low power standby work mode. The technology of divided-output-bus is to divide the 320 pairs of switches to 20 groups and reduces the switches connected to the output bus, which does help to reduce power dissipation of slave amplifiers. A 320X288 IR ROIC with pixel size of 30X30μm2has been designed with this architecture which based on CSMC 0.5μm DPDM n-well CMOS process.