A SystemC model of energy harvesting CMOS digital pixel sensor

Accurate modeling of the circuits at different steps of design process is an essential factor for having a cost effective and high throughput final circuit implementation. In this paper an efficient system level modeling of a digital pixel sensor architecture with the capability of harvesting the energy of illuminated light is presented. For the modeling the SystemC-AMS analog and mixed signal extension to the SystemC hardware description language (HDL) 1666 IEEE standard is used. The proposed model mainly focuses on the accuracy of the photodiode model which is fabricated in a standard CMOS 0.18 μm technology. This accuracy is important for both light sensing and energy harvesting phases. The model uses electrical linear network (ELN) and timed data flow (TDF) models of computation (MoC) of SystemC-AMS. Simulation results confirm the validity of the proposed model.