A Single-Chip CMOS Optical Microspectrometer With Light-to-Frequency Converter and Bus Interface

A single-chip CMOS optical microspectrometer containing an array of 16 addressable Fabry–Perot etalons (each one with a different resonance cavity length), photodetectors, and circuits for readout, multiplexing, and driving a serial bus interface has been fabricated in a standard 1.6m CMOS technology (chip area 3.9 4.2 mm). The result is a chip that can operate using only four external connections (including and ) covering the optical range of 380–500 nm with full-width half-maximum (FWHM) = 18 nm. Frequency output and serial bus interface allow easy multisensor and multichip interfacing using a microcontroller or a personal computer. Power consumption is 1250 W for a clock frequency of 1 MHz.