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Ultra-Broadband Photon Imaging for SPAD sensors offers passive, ultra-fast light observation, enabling detailed, single-photon imaging from seconds to picoseconds, even in darkness
About
The Ultra-Broadband Photon Imaging innovation represents a significant leap forward in optical sensing technology, designed to operate across a wide range of applications that necessitate extreme sensitivity, bandwidth, and dynamic range. This innovation leverages a free-running SPAD (single-photon avalanche diode) camera and a novel computational algorithm to analyze photon arrival times, enabling the passive reconstruction of light intensity flux at speeds unachievable by current sensors. Unlike conventional methods that require synchronization with a controlled light source, this passive and asynchronous approach allows the system to capture ultra-fast optical signals without external cues, making it particularly valuable in environments where faint and dynamic optical phenomena need to be observed. Compatible with existing CMOS SPAD technologies, which are already implemented in consumer electronics like smartphones, this advancement opens up new possibilities in fields such as lidar, autonomous navigation, and high-bandwidth optical communications, allowing for groundbreaking applications such as passive light-in-flight observation and GHz-speed intensity imaging.
Key Benefits
The main advantages of this technology are:
- Passive and asynchronous. Compared to existing optical sensors, the approach achieves temporal resolution on the order of picoseconds without requiring synchronization to an active source, enabling passive observation of faint, ultra-fast optical signals that are not synchronized to the detector.
- Leverages existing single-photon detection technology. The system is compatible with existing single-photon detector technologies, including CMOS SPADs, which are highly scalable and have already been deployed in consumer electronics (e.g., the Apple iPhone).
- Opens up new applications. The system enables detection of extremely weak and faint sources; for example, it could be used for detection and localization of lidar systems, self-localization from ambient pulsed light sources, or high-bandwidth optical communications.
Applications
The team has demonstrated the technology for the following applications:
- Simultaneous detection and characterization of ultra-fast (picosecond) laser signals from multiple lidar systems.
- Monitoring and detection of ultra-broadband optical signals (Hz to 10+ GHz) over durations from seconds to tens of minutes.
Sector End-use Applications:
- High-speed photonics and sensing. Ultra-broadband capture of faint optical signals in photonics applications that require extreme bandwidth and sensitivity (exceeding that of conventional fast photodetectors or avalanche photodiodes).
- Lidar. The technology has potential utility for long-range or fast-scanning lidar systems. It may also enable bi-static lidar systems that operate asynchronously (i.e., without requiring an explicit connection between the transmitter and receiver).
- Security/Defense/Surveillance. Detection of faint optical signals or fast-moving objects in low light is crucial for security, defense, and surveillance applications. Passive ultra-broadband single-photon sensing is uniquely positioned to have advantages in this sector.
- A new generation of ultra-flexible video cameras. Conventional 2D cameras can passively record video at rates that are limited by the exposure time of individual video frames. The most advanced video cameras based on SPAD technologies are limited to approximately 100K binary frames per second; other technologies that enable ultra-fast readout are limited to about 1 million frames per second, require extreme amounts of light to acquire video with reasonable levels of noise. This invention enables acquisition of continuous video at controllable rates from 30 frames per second (or less) to over 200 billion frames per second. Moreover, acquisition can take place using already available camera hardware technologies (free-running SPAD pixels) and conventional light levels.
- Sync-less imaging with multiple, ultra-fast lasers. numerous imaging systems, from automotive Lidars and consumer depth cameras to fluorescence lifetime microscopes (FLIM), rely on accurate synchronization of a laser with one or more light detectors. Such synchronization requires considerable hardware infrastructure and high-speed electronics to achieve it. This approach makes it possible for these techniques to be employed without any sync whatsoever, simplifying the hardware needs as well as the flexibility of the underlying imaging systems.