A low-power column-parallel ADC for high-speed CMOS image sensor

This paper presents a 10-bit low-power column-parallel cyclic analog-to-digital converter (ADC) used for high-speed CMOS image sensor (CIS). An opamp sharing technique is used to save power and area. Correlated double sampling (CDS) circuit and programmable gain amplifier (PGA) are integrated in the ADC, which avoids stand-alone circuit blocks. An offset cancellation technique is also introduced, which reduces the column fixed-pattern noise (FPN) effectively. One single channel ADC with an area less than 0.03mm 2 was implemented in a 0.18μm 1P4M CMOS image sensor process. The resolution of the proposed ADC is 10-bit, and the conversion rate is 2MS/s. The measured differential nonlinearity (DNL) and integral nonlinearity (INL) are 0.62 LSB and 2.1 LSB together with CDS, respectively. The power consumption from 1.8V supply is only 0.36mW.