An Novel Readout Circuit Allowing Microbolometer to Operate with High Uniformity

This paper describes a new read-out IC(ROIC)architecture with high uniformity for the uncooled microbolometer detector. Mismatch which is due to the production process of uncooled infrared focal plane array of microbolometer leads to detector non-uniformly. Especially, the non-uniformity of column is the most obvious. Numerical simulation and measurement of the proposed ROIC architecture demonstrate high readout uniformity. A 320×240 uncooled microbolometer focal plane array(FPA)based on the proposed circuit was implemented on silicon using a 0.5 μm CMOS technology. The test spatial fixed pattern noise voltage is 0.088 V. Thus it is ideally suited for high CMOS process.