A 25M Points/s Back-Illuminated Stacked SPAD Direct Time-of-Flight Depth Sensor with Equivalent Time Sampling for Automotive LiDAR
This paper presents technologies at Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) direct Time-of-flight (ToF) depth sensor and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). Method of readout by under-pixel differential comparator and the threshold control can select either to prioritize distance accuracy or acquisition of reflectance information. The equivalent time sampling (ETS) at 3 GHz improves depth accuracy. Furthermore, subsequent 250MHz re-sampling and the depth information extraction pipeline relaxes the operation frequency maintaining the depth accuracy and approximately 98% data size reduction. Sensor delivers distance measurement for 520 effective macro pixels with 0.05° vertical angular resolution at 120° horizontal Field of View (FoV) and 20fps, resulting in 25M points/s (pts/s) ranging data and detection of 25cm object at 250m.
Authors
- Yuko Matsushita (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-0610-2534)
- Takahiro Toyoshima
- Kouji Mori
- Oichi Kumagai
- Yoshinori Tanaka (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1428-0683)
- Masahiro Hosoya (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9605-9848)
- Masayuki Takahashi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9055-1305)
- Yorito Sakano
- Yuqing Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1425-0081)
- K. Yamada (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5720-7553)
- Yoshiaki Tashiro
- Masataka Yamane
- Masatoshi Shibata
- K. Akatsuka
- Katsuhiko Hanzawa (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-5446-1678)
- Tatsuya Yui
- Toshiki Sakada
- Kenichi Tsunoji
- Tadashi Yasufuku
- Albert Tumewu
Institutions
- Sony (Taiwan) (TW)
- Sojo University (JP)
Publication Details
- Published
- 2025-06-08
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.23919/vlsitechnologyandcir65189.2025.11075078
- Citations
- 7
- Primary Topic
- Advanced Optical Sensing Technologies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 8.34