A 134-Pixel CMOS Sensor for Combined Time-of-Flight and Optical Triangulation 3-D Imaging

This paper describes the design and characterization of a 134-pixel linear array sensor for three-dimensional measurements based on both multiple-pulse indirect-time-of-flight (ITOF) and optical triangulation (OT) techniques. In OT mode, a winner-take-all (WTA) stage allows for a fast localization of the spot position along the pixel array so that only useful pixels are selectively read out, for a maximum operation speed of 131 kVoxel/s. Distance measurements in OT mode over the range 0.4 m-1.0 m are obtained with a best precision of 0.004%-0.21%, while ITOF operation allows mapping the range 0.8-3 m at 125 voxel/s with a relative precision of 1.7%-3.8%. Background rejection up to 10 klux has also been demonstrated without the need of any optical filters.