An 8 × 8 CMOS Optoelectronic Readout Array of Short-Range LiDAR Sensors

This paper presents an 8 × 8 channel optoelectronic readout array (ORA) realized in the TSMC 180 nm 1P6M RF CMOS process for the applications of short-range light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors. We propose several circuit techniques in this work, including an amplitude-to-voltage (A2V) converter that reduces the notorious walk errors by intensity compensation and a time-to-voltage (T2V) converter that acquires the linear slope of the output signals by exploiting a charging circuit, thus extending the input dynamic range significantly from 5 μA_pp to 1.1 mA_pp, i.e., 46.8 dB. These results correspond to the maximum detection range of 8.2 m via the action of the A2V converter and the minimum detection range of 56 cm with the aid of the proposed T2V converter. Optical measurements utilizing an 850 nm laser diode confirm that the proposed 8 × 8 ORA with 64 on-chip avalanche photodiodes (APDs) can successfully recover the narrow 5 ns light pulses even at the shortest distance of 56 cm. Hence, this work provides a potential CMOS solution for low-cost, low-power, short-range LiDAR sensors.