Senseeker Launches High Dynamic Range Calcium™ Digital Pixel Readout IC

Calcium Wide Dynamic Range Image

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Oct. 6, 2022 – PRLog — Senseeker Engineering, a leading innovator of digital infrared image sensing technology, has announced the availability of the Calcium™ RP0033, an advanced digital pixel readout IC (DPROIC) with > 120 dB dynamic range and a frame rate of up to 700 frames per second.

The 20 µm p-on-n pixel and 640 x 512 format is an industry standard that allows the Calcium RP0033 chip to be used with existing detector and optics technology. Customers can accelerate development of advanced HDR infrared focal plane arrays (FPAs) by hybridizing available off-the-shelf detectors with the most advanced new commercial readout on the market.

“Infrared FPAs are rapidly evolving to use DPROICs to take advantage of their far superior signal-to-noise, dynamic range, and imaging modalities,” said Mani Sundaram, President and CEO at QmagiQ LLC. “The Senseeker Calcium DPROIC is an excellent commercial vehicle to realize these benefits in a practical and useful array format and pixel pitch.  We are excited to be developing SLS FPAs on this DPROIC for the next generation of infrared imaging.”

Digital pixel readouts disassociate the well capacity from the noise floor. This allows for both better sensitivity and larger well capacity at the same time. The Calcium RP0033 has dual-gain modes with programmable well capacities of over 40 Me- and 400 Me-, each with extremely low read noise of 50 and 330 electrons at 80 K, respectively. The chip is controlled through Senseeker’s popular SenSPI® interface for easy communications and fast bring-up. It can operate in both integrate-then-read and integrate-while-read modes and has programmable windows to observe and track targets at thousands of frames per second. “This chip is designed to make extremely advanced digital pixel technology accessible to everyone,” said Kenton Veeder, President of Senseeker. “Attach a detector and drop it behind your existing optics or in a Senseeker sensor test unit (STU) and you will be imaging with single-digit mK NETD in no time.”

Senseeker’s Calcium architecture is stitchable up to a 4k x 4k array size. This allows the proven base design to be ‘electronically stitched’ together in blocks of 512 x 512 rows and columns to quickly grow a whole family of DPROICs ranging from small to very large formats.  Larger format Calcium DPROICs are already in the works with a 2k x 1k unit coming soon.

The Calcium RP0033 is in production now and is supported by an electronics evaluation kit that is also available from Senseeker, part number RP0033-J20x-EK00.

About Senseeker Engineering
Senseeker is a US owned transducer IC and cryogenic test solutions company that specializes in the design of state-of-the-art digital imaging sensors, cryogenic test equipment, electronics and software. Senseeker’s products and IP enable FPA developers to produce world class infrared image sensing solutions. Read more at https://www.senseeker.com.