A Digital Readout IC for Microbolometer Imagers Offering Low Power and Improved Self-Heating Compensation

This paper presents a novel and power efficient readout architecture for uncooled microbolometers that offers adequate noise performance along with a circuit-based method for self-heating compensation. The proposed method employs an event-generation scheme and a time-mode readout chain to achieve dynamic mode of operation resulting in low power. The readout chain consists of a capacitive transimpedance amplifier (CTIA) based current-to-time converter followed by a two stage time-to-digital converter (TDC). The CTIA employs a novel integration scheme for time amplification along with a modified reset mechanism to achieve self-heating compensation. We also present a model to analyze the implications of time-mode readout on imager operation. An experimental readout chip, based on this approach, has been designed using a 130 nm bulk CMOS technology. The proposed architecture offers robust frontend processing and achieves a per channel power consumption of $66~\mu \text{W}$ , which is considerably lower than the most recently reported designs, while maintaining better than 10-mK readout noise equivalent temperature difference (NETD).