A 64x64-pixel CMOS test chip for the development of large-format ultra-high-speed snapshot imagers

A 64 x 64-pixel test circuit was designed and fabricated in 0.18-mu m CMOS technology for investigating high-speed imaging with large-format imagers. Several features are integrated into the circuit architecture to achieve fast exposure times with low-skew and jitter for simultaneous pixel snapshots. These features include an H-tree clock distribution with local and global repeaters, single-edge trigger propagation, local exposure control, and current-steering sampling circuits. To evaluate the circuit performance, test structures are periodically located throughout the 64 x 64-pixel device. Measured devices have exposure times that can be varied between 75 ps to 305 ps with skew times for all pixels less than +/- 3 ps and jitter that is less than +/- 1.2 ps rms. Other performance characteristics are a readout noise of approximately 115 e- rms and an upper dynamic range of 310,000 e-.