A novel adaptive logarithmic digital pixel sensor

A major problem associated with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor and charge couple device imagers is their limited dynamic range (DR), typically 60-70 dB. This falls far short of covering the wide illumination ranges found in natural scenes (typically 120-140 dB). Biological retinas are known to feature adaptive, logarithmic-type responses enabling them to cover a very wide DR, without compromising the resolution. This letter presents a novel way to realize such an adaptive logarithmic response by combining a digital time domain vision sensor and a simple adaptive digital quantizer. This letter presents the theory and experimental results for an adaptive logarithmic response sensor featuring over 100-dB DR

[1]  Ming-Jer Kao,et al.  A new design for a 1280/spl times/1024 digital CMOS image sensor with enhanced sensitivity, dynamic range and FPN , 1999, 1999 International Symposium on VLSI Technology, Systems, and Applications. Proceedings of Technical Papers. (Cat. No.99TH8453).

[2]  Bart Dierickx,et al.  Random addressable active pixel image sensors , 1996, Advanced Imaging and Network Technologies.

[3]  A. Bermak,et al.  PWM digital pixel sensor based on asynchronous self-resetting scheme , 2004, IEEE Electron Device Letters.

[4]  Orly Yadid-Pecht,et al.  Wide-dynamic-range sensors , 1999 .

[5]  Carver A. Mead,et al.  Analog VLSI Phototransduction by continuous-time, adaptive, logarithmic photoreceptor circuits , 1995 .