Photon Force, a manufacturer of the high-throughput, fast time-resolved single photon counting camera and sensor products, has launched the 2023 line-up for its PF32 camera range, which supersedes the previous models.
Providing enhanced computational capacity to perform a range of standard and customer-specific processing functions, the four product options in the new PF32-USBC camera range will significantly enhance what Photon Force customers can achieve with the company’s products.
The latest units are also more robust, and now utilise the USB-C interface, making them much easier to connect.
Announcing the new product line-up, CEO Richard Walker commented: “We’re really excited about the capabilities we can bring to customers with the increased processing capacity of the new camera electronics, which allows us to accelerate our customer’s applications – so vital in today’s competitive research environment. In addition to an overall modernisation of our range, customer feedback had indicated a preference for easier connectivity, meaning our switch from USB3 micro-B to USB-C connectors is directly responding to customer needs.”
A key competitive advantage of the PF32 camera product line has always been the ultra-high speed of operation, with the PF32 sensor being able to generate up to 5.12Gbps of photon counting or time-correlated timestamp data with 55ps resolution.
This volume of data could, however, surpass the capacity of the USB3 interface and present processing challenges on the host PC. The latest generation PF32-USBC cameras allow customers to solve these problems via a substantial increase in processing capacity due to the incorporation of the Xilinx Artix 7 FPGA. The FPGA interfaces between the proprietary SPAD array sensor and the user’s application through a USB-C interface, while running a variety of optional processing modules in real time.
As an example, Photon Force will soon launch a correlation firmware module, which supports customers with diffuse correlation spectroscopy applications by performing the correlation function in real-time in the camera’s internal FPGA, providing a 20x increase in frame rate through eliminating readout bottlenecks and computational loading on the customer’s PC system.
