Compact (1 Cubic Inch) Million Frame Per Second Imager with Integrated Thousand Frame Memory

Ultrafast imaging is an important need for the development, control and evaluation of modern air-deliverable weapons systems. Recent advances in optical imaging such as speckle interferometry can potentially improve DoD capability to deliver munitions and armaments to targets at long ranges, and under adverse seeing conditions. Moderate density arrays of at least 100 x 100 pixels, and frame rates of at least 1 MHz are required. Ultrafast imaging is also required for flow field optical image analysis for hypersonic propulsion systems. Unfortunately, current detectors are not adequately sensitive, are relatively slow, and are expensive. SMD proposes to design and fabricate a cost-effective, large format (at least 512x512 pixel) 1 million frame per second CCD imager based on an extraordinarily compact silicon imager geometry with integrated 100-1,000 frame memory configuration, within a two centimeter cube.