analysis of 1strongfstrong noise in cmos aps - stanford university.pdfVIP

Analysis of 1/f noise in CMOS APS Hui Tian, and Abbas El Gamal Information Systems Laboratory, Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305 USA ABSTRACT As CMOS technology scales, the effect of 1/f noise on low frequency analog circuits such as CMOS image sensors becomes more pronounced, and therefore must be more accurately estimated. Analysis of 1/f noise is typically performed in the frequency domain even though the process is nonstationary. To find out if the frequency domain analysis produces acceptable results, the paper introduces a time domain method based on a nonstationary extension of a recently developed, and generally agreed upon physical model for 1/f noise in MOS transistors. The time domain method is used to analyze the effect of 1/f noise due to pixel level transistors in a CMOS APS. The results show that the frequency domain results can be quite inaccurate especially in estimating the 1/f noise effect of the reset transistor. It is also shown that CDS does not in general reduce the effect of the 1/f noise. Keywords: 1/f noise, subthreshold operation, nonstationary 1/f noise model, time domain noise analysis, CMOS APS, image sensor 1. INTRODUCTION As CMOS technology scales, the effect of 1/f noise on low frequency analog circuits such as CMOS image sensors becomes more pronounced. As a result it is becoming important to estimate the effect of 1/f noise more accurately. Analysis of 1/f noise is typically performed in the frequency domain. The 1/f noise, which is nonstationary, is approximated by a stationary band-limited process. A low cutoff frequency IL is defined based on the