On Analog Silicon Photomultipliers in Standard 55-nm BCD Technology for LiDAR Applications

We present an analog silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) based on a standard 55-nm Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) technology. The SiPM is composed of 16 x 16 single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) and measures 0.29 x 0.32 mm(2). Each SPAD cell is passively quenched by a monolithically integrated 3.3 V thick oxide transistor. The measured gain is 3.4 x 10(5) at 5 V excess bias voltage. The single-photon timing resolution (SPTR) is 185 ps and the multi-photon timing resolution (MPTR) is 120 ps at 3.3 V excess bias voltage. We integrate the SiPM into a co-axial light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system with a time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) module in FPGA. The depth measurement up to 25 m achieves an accuracy of 2 cm and precision of 2 mm under the room ambient light condition. With co-axial scanning, the intensity and depth images of complex scenes with resolutions of 128 x 256 and 256 x 512 are demonstrated. The presented SiPM enables the development of cost-effective LiDAR system-on-chip (SoC) in the advanced technology.

Automated summary

This study presents an analog silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) based on a 55-nm Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) technology, which can be used in light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems. The SiPM features small size and high gain, enabling accurate depth measurement and high-resolution intensity and depth imaging of complex scenes under ambient light conditions.