Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited
Time-to-digital converter circuit and method for single-photon avalanche diode based depth sensing

Abstract:

A self-calibration time-to-digital converter (TDC) integrated circuit for single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) based depth sensing is disclosed. The circuit includes a SPAD matrix with a plurality of SPAD pixels arranged in m rows and n columns, the SPAD pixels in each column of SPAD pixels are connected by a column bus; a global DLL unit with n buffers and n clock signals; and an image signal processing unit for receiving image signals from the column TDC array. The circuit can also include a row control unit configured to enable one SPAD pixel in each row for a transmitting signal; a circular n-way multiplexer for circularly multiplexing n clock signals in the global DLL unit; a column TDC array with n TDCs, each TDC further comprises a counter and a latch, the latch of each TDC is connected to the circular n-way multiplexer for circular multiplexing.