Digital pixel readout IC works with existing technology
Able to work with existing detector and optics technology, the Calcium high dynamic range digital pixel readout IC is available from Senseeker Engineering in an industry standard format and available for commercial use.
The 20 micron, 640 x 512mm Calcium RP0033 DPROIC (digital pixel readout IC) has a dynamic range above 120dB and a frame rate of up to 700 frames per second.
It can be used with existing detector and optics technology, said Senseeker. Customers can accelerate development of high dynamic range, infrared focal plane arrays (FPAs) by hybridising available off-the-shelf detectors with this advanced commercial readout, explained the company.
The Calcium RP0033 has dual gain modes and programmable well capacities of over 40 Me- and 400 Me-, each with low read noise of 50 and 330 electrons at 80K, respectively. The chip is controlled through Senseeker’s SenSPI serial peripheral interface to facilitate communications. It can operate in both integrate-then-read and integrate-while-read modes and has programmable windows to observe and track targets at thousands of frames per second.
“This chip is designed to make extremely advanced digital pixel technology accessible to everyone,” said Senseeker’s president, Kenton Veeder. Developers can attach a detector and drop the IC behind existing optics or in a Senseeker sensor test unit to begin imaging with single-digit mK NETD.
Senseeker’s Calcium architecture is stitchable up to a 4k x 4k array size. This allows the proven base design to be electronically stitched together in blocks of 512 x 512 rows and columns to grow a family of DPROICs from small to very large formats. Larger format Calcium DPROICs are already in development, with a 2k x 1k unit coming soon.
The Calcium RP0033 is in production now and is supported by an electronics evaluation kit also available from Senseeker.
The Calcium DPROIC is already being used by QmagiQ to develop SLS FPAs for the next generation of infrared imaging, revealed Mani Sundaram, president and CEO at QmagiQ.
