A 1/2.5 inch VGA 400 fps CMOS Image Sensor With High Sensitivity for Machine Vision

Machine vision requires CMOS image sensors (CISs) with high frame rate, short exposure time, and fine spatial resolution. Recently, capacitive transimpedance amplifier (CTIA) is used in the high-speed pixel circuit to achieve high sensitivity by expediting the charge transfer from the photodiode to a tiny integration capacitor ( CINT). Existing CTIA pixel designs have large pixel sizes due to the multiple sampling capacitors and switches for global shutter and CDS, which unfavorably limits the spatial resolution. In this paper, we present a 400 fps CIS design with 640 × 480 pixel array for machine vision. With simplified pixel circuits, the new sensor has a CTIA pixel size of 8.7 × 8.22 μm2, which is the smallest in the category. The pixel implements a new multi-layer MOM capacitor with good uniformity as the tiny CINT, which achieves high sensitivity (36.5 V/lux·s) without calibration. Pixel-wise CDS is implemented in this global-shutter CIS to minimize the pixel noise. The pixel signals are quantized by 640 column processing slices with 12 bit resolution at 411 kS/s. The size of the column SAR ADC is minimized with a simple calibration technique. The CIS is fabricated in a 0.18 μm mixed-signal CMOS process. The temporal noise is 15.6 erms-. With the new MOM capacitor, FPN of the CIS is 0.55% without calibration. The new pixel design achieves the highest sensitivity per unit area.

[1]  Alexander I. Krymski,et al.  A 9-V/Lux-s 5000-frames/s 512/spl times/512 CMOS sensor , 2003 .

[2]  Ruoyu Xu,et al.  High-speed highly sensitive CMOS image sensors , 2013 .

[3]  Alexander I. Krymski,et al.  A 9V / Lux-s 5000-Frames / s 512 512 CMOS Sensor , 2001 .

[4]  C. Niclass,et al.  A 100-m Range 10-Frame/s 340 $\,\times\, $96-Pixel Time-of-Flight Depth Sensor in 0.18-$\mu\hbox{m}$ CMOS , 2013, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[5]  François Blais.  Review of 20 years of range sensor development , 2004, J. Electronic Imaging.

[6]  Shoji Kawahito,et al.  A 33Mpixel 120fps CMOS image sensor using 12b column-parallel pipelined cyclic ADCs , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference.

[7]  Giovanna Sansoni,et al.  State-of-The-Art and Applications of 3D Imaging Sensors in Industry, Cultural Heritage, Medicine, and Criminal Investigation , 2009, Sensors.

[8]  S. Ando,et al.  Real-Time Phase-Stamp Range Finder Using Correlation Image Sensor , 2009, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[9]  M. Furuta,et al.  A High-Speed, High-Sensitivity Digital CMOS Image Sensor With a Global Shutter and 12-bit Column-Parallel Cyclic A/D Converters , 2007, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[10]  Koichi Hashimoto,et al.  3,000-fps 3-D shape measurement using a high-speed camera-projector system , 2007, 2007 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[11]  Masatoshi Ishikawa,et al.  955-fps Real-time Shape Measurement of a Moving/Deforming Object using High-speed Vision for Numerous-point Analysis , 2007, Proceedings 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[12]  Matteo Perenzoni,et al.  A Range Image Sensor Based on 10-μm Lock-In Pixels in 0.18-μm CMOS Imaging Technology , 2011, IEEE J. Solid State Circuits.

[13]  George Jie Yuan,et al.  A Quantum-Limited Highly Linear Monolithic CMOS Detector for Computed Tomography , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[14]  Y. Lee,et al.  A 1/13-inch 30fps VGA SoC CMOS image sensor with shared reset and transfer-gate pixel control , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference.

[15]  Dongsoo Kim,et al.  A High-Speed CMOS Image Sensor With Column-Parallel Two-Step Single-Slope ADCs , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.

[16]  Bruce G. Batchelor.  Machine vision handbook , 2012 .

[17]  Fabio Remondino,et al.  TOF Range-Imaging Cameras , 2013 .

[18]  A. Krymski,et al.  CMOS Image Sensor with integrated 4Gb/s Camera Link Transmitter , 2006, 2006 IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference - Digest of Technical Papers.

[19]  Rihito Kuroda,et al.  A Global-Shutter CMOS Image Sensor With Readout Speed of 1-Tpixel/s Burst and 780-Mpixel/s Continuous , 2013, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[20]  L. Gonzo,et al.  A Range Image Sensor Based on 10- $\mu{\hbox {m}}$ Lock-In Pixels in 0.18-$\mu$m CMOS Imaging Technology , 2011, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[21]  Xinqiao Liu,et al.  A 10000 frames/s CMOS digital pixel sensor , 2001, IEEE J. Solid State Circuits.

[22]  R. Johansson,et al.  A multiresolution 100-GOPS 4-Gpixels/s programmable smart vision sensor for multisense imaging , 2005, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[23]  Kartikeya Murari,et al.  A CMOS In-Pixel CTIA High-Sensitivity Fluorescence Imager , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems.

[24]  V. Brajovic,et al.  100 frames/s CMOS range image sensor , 2001, 2001 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers. ISSCC (Cat. No.01CH37177).

[25]  A. Suzuki,et al.  High-Speed Digital Double Sampling with Analog CDS on Column Parallel ADC Architecture for Low-Noise Active Pixel Sensor , 2006, 2006 IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference - Digest of Technical Papers.

[26]  Kim L. Boyer,et al.  Color-Encoded Structured Light for Rapid Active Ranging , 1987, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[27]  George Jie Yuan,et al.  A 1500 fps Highly Sensitive 256 , ˟, 256 CMOS Imaging Sensor With In-Pixel Calibration , 2012, IEEE J. Solid State Circuits.

[28]  M. Paindavoine,et al.  A 10 000 fps CMOS Sensor With Massively Parallel Image Processing , 2008, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[29]  N. Ono,et al.  Spatio-temporal phase-encoding profilometry using correlation image sensor , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics.

[30]  Eric R. Fossum,et al.  Digital camera system on a chip , 1998, IEEE Micro.

[31]  A. El Gamal,et al.  CMOS image sensors , 2005, IEEE Circuits and Devices Magazine.

[32]  Jürgen Adamy,et al.  Task-Based Environment Interpretation and System Architecture for Next Generation ADAS , 2011, IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine.

[33]  Shoji Kawahito,et al.  A 2.7e- temporal noise 99.7% shutter efficiency 92dB dynamic range CMOS image sensor with dual global shutter pixels , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - (ISSCC).

[34]  S.E. Bohndiek,et al.  A CMOS Image Sensor With In-Pixel ADC, Timestamp, and Sparse Readout , 2009, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[35]  Jun Ohta,et al.  Smart CMOS Image Sensors and Applications , 2007 .

[36]  M. Wany,et al.  CMOS image sensor with NMOS-only global shutter and enhanced responsivity , 2003 .

[37]  George Jie Yuan,et al.  Digitally Calibrated 768-kS/s 10-b Minimum-Size SAR ADC Array With Dithering , 2012, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[38]  K. Isobe,et al.  A High-Speed Low-Noise CMOS Image Sensor With 13-b Column-Parallel Single-Ended Cyclic ADCs , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.

[39]  T.S. Perry,et al.  A 64 $\times$ 64-Pixel CMOS Test Chip for the Development of Large-Format Ultra-High-Speed Snapshot Imagers , 2008, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[40]  Bing Liu,et al.  An Activity-Triggered 95.3 dB DR $-$75.6 dB THD CMOS Imaging Sensor With Digital Calibration , 2009, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[41]  Amine Bermak,et al.  A Low-Power Pilot-DAC Based Column Parallel 8b SAR ADC With Forward Error Correction for CMOS Image Sensors , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[42]  K. Arai,et al.  No image lag photodiode structure in the interline CCD image sensor , 1982, 1982 International Electron Devices Meeting.