A CMOS Energy Harvesting and Imaging (EHI) Active Pixel Sensor (APS) Imager for Retinal Prosthesis

A CMOS image sensor capable of imaging and energy harvesting on same focal plane is presented for retinal prosthesis. The energy harvesting and imaging (EHI) active pixel sensor (APS) imager was designed, fabricated, and tested in a standard 0.5 μm CMOS process. It has 54 × 50 array of 21 × 21 μm² EHI pixels, 10-bit supply boosted (SB) SAR ADC, and charge pump circuits consuming only 14.25 μW from 1.2 V and running at 7.4 frames per second. The supply boosting technique (SBT) is used in an analog signal chain of the EHI imager. Harvested solar energy on focal plane is stored on an off-chip capacitor with the help of a charge pump circuit with better than 70% efficiency. Energy harvesting efficiency of the EHI pixel was measured at different light levels. It was 9.4% while producing 0.41 V open circuit voltage. The EHI imager delivers 3.35 μW of power was delivered to a resistive load at maximum power point operation. The measured pixel array figure of merit (FoM) was 1.32 pW/frame/pixel while imager figure of merit (iFoM) including whole chip power consumption was 696 fJ/pixel/code for the EHI imager.