Megapixel Low Light Level Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) Imager for Persistent Surveillance

Persistent surveillance missions require the continuous observation of roadways, road junctions, and other areas of interest from platforms operating at low, medium, and high altitude. Because the area to be observed is not precisely known, the area of coverage for the sensor system is much greater than currently available target acquisition systems. A single, monolithic CMOS sensor would provide significant advantages in terms of reduced complexity, size, weight, and power. Commercial applications include ground based border and seaport security of homeland defense, perimeter security for nuclear power plants, and urban security camera system for cities and high value targets. Recent advances in silicon based CMOS technology have shown the potential for operation during extremely low light conditions with both high frame rate and spectral response into the NIR. This proposal is to develop, fabricate and test a 10,000 x 10,000 pixel, back illuminated CMOS array with sufficient sensitivity to acquire images, under night sky illumination conditions, at 20 frames per second.