Method and apparatus for high-speed charge-coupled CMOS TDI imaging

An apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of output registers coupled to receive respective signal charges readout from a plurality of Time Delay and Integration (TDI) Charge Coupled Device (CCD) pixel registers, comprising active light responsive TDI pixel registers, arranged in a form of a matrix array, a column slice thereof comprising a column of TDI pixel registers and a column of the plurality of output registers, the column of the plurality of output registers coupled to an end of the column of the TDI pixel registers;
• wherein signal charges accumulated over the plurality of the TDI pixel registers in respective columns are transferable to the plurality of the output registers in the corresponding columns, the number of the output registers thereof is equal to the number of the TDI pixel registers or fewer;
• and
• wherein:
• each of the plurality of output registers is configured with circuitry providing parallel reset functionality, parallel charge sensing functionality and charge transfer functionality;
• and
• each of the plurality of output registers is coupled to respective column-parallel analog to digital converters (ADCs) to produce respective digital values for each of respective signal charges.