Deep N-well CMOS MAPS with in-pixel signal processing and sparsification for the ILC vertex detector

This paper is intended to discuss the features of a novel kind of monolithic active pixel sensors (MAPS) in deep submicron technology for use in charged particle trackers and vertex detectors. In such devices the triple well option, available in deep submicron processes, is exploited to implement analog and digital signal processing at the pixel level. This paper will discuss the design and performance of a deep N-well (DNW) monolithic sensor prototype including different test structures with both analog and digital functions. The paper also reports results from physical device simulations, aiming at evaluating the properties of the DNW sensor in terms of charge diffusion and charge sharing among pixels.