Fully digital routing logic for single-photon avalanche diode arrays in highly efficient time-resolved imaging

Time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) is a powerful optical technique, which permits recording fast luminous signals with picosecond precision. Unfortunately, given its repetitive nature, TCSPC is recognized as a relatively slow technique, especially when a large time-resolved image has to be recorded. In recent years, there has been a fast trend toward the development of TCPSC imagers. Unfortunately, present systems still suffer from a trade-off between number of channels and performance. Even worse, the overall measurement speed is still limited well below the saturation of the transfer bandwidth toward the external processor. We present a routing algorithm that enables a smart connection between a 32×32 detector array and five shared high-performance converters able to provide an overall conversion rate up to 10 Gbit/s. The proposed solution exploits a fully digital logic circuit distributed in a tree structure to limit the number and length of interconnections, which is a major issue in densely integrated circuits. The behavior of the logic has been validated by means of a field-programmable gate array, while a fully integrated prototype has been designed in 180-nm technology and analyzed by means of postlayout simulations.