7.6 A 512×424 CMOS 3D Time-of-Flight image sensor with multi-frequency photo-demodulation up to 130MHz and 2GS/s ADC

Interest in 3D depth cameras has been piqued by the release of the Kinect motion sensor for the Xbox 360 gaming console [1,2,3]. This paper presents the pixel and 2GS/s signal paths in a state-of-the-art Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor suitable for use in the latest Kinect sensor for Xbox One. ToF cameras determine the distance to objects by measuring the round trip travel time of an amplitude-modulated light from the source to the target and back to the camera at each pixel. ToF technology provides an accurate high pixel resolution, low motion blur, wide field of view (FoV), high dynamic range depth image as well as an ambient light invariant brightness image (active IR) that meets the highest quality requirements for 3D motion detection.