Design and Characterisation of a Fast Architecture Providing Zero Suppressed Digital Output Integrated in a High Resolution CMOS Pixel Sensor for the STAR Vertex Detector and the EUDET Beam Telescope

CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) have demonstrated their strong potential for tracking devices, particularly for flavour tagging. They are foreseen to equip several vertex detectors and beam telescopes. Most applications require high read-out speed, imposing sensors to feature digital output with integrated zero suppression. The most recent development of MAPS at IPHC and IRFU addressing this issue will be reviewed. An architecture will be presented, combining a pixel array, column-level discriminators and zero suppression circuits. Each pixel features a preamplifier and a correlated double sampling (CDS) micro-circuit reducing the temporal and fixed pattern noises. The sensor is fully programmable and can be monitored. It will equip experimental apparatus starting data taking in 2009/2010.