Smart Readout Integrated Circuit for Dual Band Infrared Focal Plane Arrays

"Alphacore proposes the development of a new digital readout integrated circuit (DROIC) that can be utilized for multiple applications through a unique digital programmability capability, includingdigitally programmable resolution. This programmability allows a single DROIC to be used for multiple applications, with each application having different resolution and speed requirements. In addition to the digital programmability, Alphacores novel DROIC has a counter that uses a small fraction of the area than a digital logic based counter and thus allows fabricating the DROICs in a reasonably priced 130nm and 180nm fabrication processes.In addition to the lower costs, this architecture allows keeping the pixel area small. A 14um x 14um pixel is demonstrated in this proposal, but even a pixel smaller than10um x 10um is possible. Due to the fact that Alphacore has an area-optimized, low-power, 10b, 40MSPS ADC IP core available, we can place several of them on the DROIC chip and, as a result, the frame rate can clearly exceed 200 frames/sec for a 512x512 array. The frame rate can be as high as few kframes/sec.The ROIC will be radiation hardened to 300krad(Si)."