Abstract
This thesis is dedicated to improving signal-to-noise ratio issue in satellite remote sensing application for high ground resolution and presents two TDI prototypes based on APST methodology to increase SNR and verify feasibility. This structure achieves CCD-like transfer function without additional in-pixel device and complex routing effort but has swing degradation and addition efficiency issues. And the thesis concentrates on improving weakness of adopted structure. A 128x16 APST-Based TDI sensor has been designed and fabricated in TSMC0.18μm 1P6M CIS technology with 6x6 um2 pixel size, 26.99% fill factor, 0.976V/lux*s light sensitivity. The extra dummy transistor is added in pixel design to reduce switch coupling during transfer and helps to implement more TDI stage in limited swing. The interlaced pixel array is adopted to implement linear interpolation for enhancing image resolution to double. The TDI functions and performance have been verified by experimental measurements at 3.3V supply voltage. The prototype achieves 15.27db SNR improvement with 16-stage operation under 186mW/m2 light irradiance at 3300 frame rate. Revised TDI imager with 1024x64 pixel array has been designed and fabricated in TSMC 0.11um 1P4M CIS BSI technology. The pixel size is 5x5um2 with 52% fill factor. Thanks to BSI technology, the pixel sensitivity is enhanced to 3.527 V/lux*s. Tunable dummy voltage is adopted to select appropriate operation region for TDI performance. The TDI functions and performance have been verified by experimental measurements at 3.3V supply voltage. The chip achieves 14.26db SNR improvement with 10-stage operation under 186mW/m2 light irradiance at 6600 frame rate. The peak SNR reaches 65.97 V/V which matches design specification