1/f Noise in CMOS Sensors

A paper "1/f Noise Modelling and Characterization for CMOS Quanta Image Sensors" by Wei Deng and Eric R. Fossum, Dartmouth College belongs to MDPI Special issue on the 2019 International Image Sensor Workshop (IISW2019). The paper presents rather surprising results that match Hooge mobility fluctuation model, largely abandoned by the industry and academic worlds:

"This work fits the measured in-pixel source-follower noise in a CMOS Quanta Image Sensor (QIS) prototype chip using physics-based 1/f noise models, rather than the widely-used fitting model for analog designers. This paper discusses the different origins of 1/f noise in QIS devices and includes correlated double sampling (CDS). The modelling results based on the Hooge mobility fluctuation, which uses one adjustable parameter, match the experimental measurements, including the variation in noise from room temperature to –70 °C. This work provides useful information for the implementation of QIS in scientific applications and suggests that even lower read noise is attainable by further cooling and may be applicable to other CMOS analog circuits and CMOS image sensors."