Design and Performance of a THz Block Camera with a 130 nm CMOS Focal Plane Array

Recent advances in 130 nm CMOS based Schottky barrier diode THz power detectors enable relatively simple, high-performance focal plane arrays. We present a low size, weight and power block camera which uses polymer refractive optics and a 6x6 focal plane array to image the return from an active source operating at 218 GHz. The operating frequency is chosen for multiple reasons: to coincide with atmospheric transmission windows, to image through degraded visual environments, and to leverage recently developed high power sources available at the Naval Research Laboratory. The sensor achieves better than 30 pW/root Hz NEP at video frame rates while lock-in detecting a modulated source. The three and a half pound camera houses a COTs aspheric polymer optic, detector array, signal amplification and lock-in detection, and outputs data over an Ethernet connection. We will present the camera design, performance metrics, and sample imagery.