Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials

The Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers (한국전기전자재료학회)
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A Readout IC Design for the FPN Reduction of the Bolometer in an IR Image Sensor

  • Shin, Ho-Hyun (Department of Electrical Engineering, Korea University) ;
  • Hwang, Sang-Joon (Department of Electrical Engineering, Korea University) ;
  • Jung, Eun-Sik (Department of Electrical Engineering, Korea University) ;
  • Yu, Seung-Woo (Department of Electrical Engineering, Korea University) ;
  • Sung, Man-Young (Department of Electrical Engineering, Korea University)
  • Published : 2007.10.31
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Abstract

In this paper, we propose and discuss the design using a simple method that reduces the fixed pattern noise(FPN) generated on the amorphous Si($\alpha-Si$) bolometer. This method is applicable to an IR image sensor. This method can also minimize the size of the reference resistor in the readout integrated circuit(ROIC) which processes the signal of an IR image sensor. By connecting four bolometer cells in parallel and averaging the resistances of the bolometer cells, the fixed pattern noise generated in the bolometer cell due to process variations is remarkably reduced. Moreover an $\alpha-Si$ bolometer cell, which is made by a MEMS process, has a large resistance value to guarantee an accurate resistance value. This makes the reference resistor be large. In the proposed cell structure, because the bolometer cells connected in parallel have a quarter of the original bolometer's resistance, a reference resistor, which is made by poly-Si in a CMOS process chip, is implemented to be the size of a quarter. We designed a ROIC with the proposed cell structure and implemented the circuit using a 0.35 um CMOS process.

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References

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Cited by

  1. Simulation and Analysis of Uncooled Microbolometer for Serial Readout Architecture vol.2016, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/9751056