Solid-state LIDAR Chip

The design of a compact, high performance, solid state lidar receiver for underwater mine detection will be developed. The receiver's high frame rate operation and near single-photon sensitivity capability will enable range resolved imaging of mine like objects through greater than 6 attenuation lengths of ocean water at a significantly lower cost, and in a smaller-sized package than current approaches. The all-silicon receiver, manufacturable on commercial CMOS processes, includes a highly sensitive photodetector array, which on a single integrated circuit, is monolithically integrated with low noise analog amplifiers, sampling circuits, and readout electronics. The imaging array is capable of better than 350-psec range resolution and on-chip analog storage for greater than 128 samples per frame. During Phase I, physics-based modeling and simulation, tradeoff studies, and the system design engineering necessary to realize a compact imaging system, deployable on a variety of small sized underwater vehicles will be performed. In the optional task, test detector structures will be fabricated and their performance characteristics demonstrated. The design will be optimized through rigorous orthogonal design experiments. The results of the Phase I effort will be a detailed detector design allows for a fully operational sensor to be developed and tested in Phase II.