A 128x128, 34μm pitch, 8.9mW, 190mK NETD, TECless Uncooled IR bolometer image sensor with column-wise processing

In this paper, a 128x128, 34μm pixel-pitch, room temperature infrared image sensor and processor is presented. With a measured power consumption of 8.9mW (540μW / pixel) in full operating mode (image acquisition and data processing), the sensor exhibit a Noise Equivalent Temperature Difference (NETD) of 190mK at room temperature and doesn't require a Thermo-Electric Cooler (TEC). The circuit also features a novel ∑Δ Analogue to Digital Conversion architecture, 12 frames of Built-in SRAM and 128 column-wise full-custom processors that target a broad range of applications such as 2-points corrected IR camera or feature extraction for privacy-compliant presence detection, localization and counting. Built-in analogue and digital pixel-level offset pre-correction improves operability and manufacturing yields thus pushing bolometers IR technology one step forward towards high-end applications for consumer market.