| Optical brain imaging using functional near infra-red spectroscopy (fNIRS) offers a direct and noninvasive tool for monitoring of blood oxygenation. fNIRS is a noninvasive, safe, minimally intrusive, and high temporal-resolution technique for real-time and long-term brain imaging. It allows detecting both fast-neuronal and slow-hemodynamic signals. Besides the significant advantages of fNIRS systems, they still suffer from few drawbacks including low spatial-resolution, moderately high-level noise and high-sensitivity to movement. In order to overcome the limitations of currently available non-portable fNIRS systems, we have introduced a new low-power, miniaturized on-chip photodetector front-end intended for portable fNIRS systems. It includes silicon avalanche photodiode (SiAPD), Transimpedance amplifier (TIA), and Quench- Reset circuitry implemented using standard CMOS technologies to operate in both linear and Geiger modes. So it can be applied for both continuous-wave fNIRS (CW-fNIRS) and also single-photon counting applications. Several SiAPDs have been implemented in novel structures and shapes (Rectangular, Octagonal, Dual, Nested, Netted, Quadratic and Hexadecagonal) using different premature edge breakdown prevention techniques. The main characteristics of the SiAPDs are validated and the impact of each parameter and the device simulators (TCAD, COMSOL, etc.) have been studied based on the simulation and measurement results. Proposed techniques exhibit SiAPDs with high avalanche-gain (up to 119), low breakdown-voltage (around 12V) and high photon-detection efficiency (up to 72% in NIR region) in additional to a low dark-count rate (down to 30Hz at 1V excess bias voltage). Three new high gain-bandwidth product (GBW) and low-noise TIAs are introduced and implemented based on distributed-gain concept, logarithmic-amplification and automatic noise-rejection and have been applied in linear-mode of operation. The implemented TIAs offer a power-consumption around 0.4 mW, transimpedance gain of 169 dBO, and input-output current/voltage noises in fA/pV range accompanied with ability to tune the gain, bandwidth and power-consumption in a wide range. The implemented mixed quench-reset circuit (MQC) and controllable MQC (CMQC) front-ends offer a quench-time of 10ns, a maximum power-consumption of 0.4 mW, with a controllable hold-off and reset-times. The on-chip integration of SiAPDs with TIA and photon-counting circuitries has been demonstrated showing improvement of the photodetection-efficiency, specially regarding to the sensitivity, power-consumption and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) characteristics. |
