Super-Sensitive Gyro Sensor from Epson

Epson Toyocom announced super-sensitive gyro sensor XV-8000CB. The sensor is mainly intended for in-car GPS, but its sensitivity allows also a very efficient digital camera image stabilization.
Here is the sensor spec:

Item	Specification	Unit
Supply voltage	4.75 to 5.25	V
Operating temperature range	-40 to +85	°C
Sensitivity	25.0	mV/deg/sec
Zero-point voltage	2.5	V
Zero-point voltage temperature variation	±3.5	%
Detection range	±60	deg/sec
Dimensions	5.0 x 3.2 x 1.3	mm

More about Mitsubishi Image Stabilization

A patent search reveals that the same guys from Mitsubishi filed a PCT patent application on image stabilized sensor. Most of the text is in Japanese, except of the abstract:

IMAGE PICKUP DEVICE
Abstract:
A first to an Nth (N is 2 or more) images are read (34) during a charge storing period of a charge storage means (31), the read first image is held by an image holding means (35), the held first image is shifted by 1/N of a moving quantity of an image pickup device by an image shifting means (36), and the shifted first image is added to the second image, and the image obtained by the addition is shifted again by 1/N and a third image is added. Such operations are repeated up to the Nth image (37). Camera shake correction can be performed without using a device having a special mechanism.

Sounds a bit similar to Sony's digital stabilization and Canon's one. Will see what's in the paper on ICCE.

Potentially Interesting Paper on ICCE 2007

The oncoming ICCE 2007 conference has an intriguing paper on image stabilization:

8.3-2 A NEW IMAGE-STABILIZING METHOD BY TRANSFERRING ELECTRIC CHARGES
Mitsuo Hashimoto, Tetsuya Kuno, Hiroaki Sugiura, Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Japan

As the name implies the image stabilization might be implemented inside an image sensor. This is certainly worth watching.

Sharp's new CCD with 1.88um Pixels

DPReview: Sharp announced 12MP 1/1.7" CCD with 1.88um pixels. Looks like almost the smallest pixel size CCD , other than Sanyo's 1.56um pixel FFT CCD announced almost a year ago.

Al-Manazir: New Camera-Phone Technical Blog

There is a new blog devoted to digital optics and camera-phones: Al-Manazir.
Among other basic things about camera-phone technology, it gives market shares chart. I'm not sure how credible is this data, as it has no reference to its source whatsoever. Here it is, anyway:

IBM 0.18um CIS Process Data

Google cash reveals details of hidden IBM pdf file with CIMG7SF CIS process description.

First are IBM's sub-3um pixel parameters:

Dark Current: 100-300pA/cm @ 60C, which is equivalent to 34e/s @ 60C
Noise, Total: 30e rms @ 3Msps (including FPN)
Charge Capacity: 5630e/um, 10,300e
QE: 40% peak
Angle response:

10deg @ 70% of max, vertical
17deg @ 70% of max, horizontal
20deg @ 70% of max, diagonal

PRNU: 5% peak-to-peak, global
Image lag: 10e
Color closs-talk: 20% of Green, as measured in Red @ 650nm
Process: CIMG7SF
Wiring: Copper and aluminum

Process highlights:

Standard features:

■ Twin or triple-well CMOS technology on p- epitaxial p+ substrate
■ 4T/4S reference pixel
■ Photodiode defined with additional FEOL block masks
■ Thin Cu BEOL
■ Three and four levels of global metal
■ Fully integrated color filter array with webbed micro lenses

Optional features:

■ Vertical natural capacitor (VNCAP)
■ Nitride metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor
■ Polysilicon RR resistor
■ Optional chip scale package
■ Electrically writable e-fuses

Process Description:

Lithography: 180 nm
Voltage (VDD): 1.8 V
Additional power supply options: 2.5 V / 3.3 V I/O

Standard NFET / PFET:

Lmin: 0.18 µm
Lp: 0.145 µm
Vt(Wdes/Ldes = 10 µm/0.18 µm): 0.40 V / -0.38 V
IDsat(Wdes/Ldes = 10 µm/0.18 µm): 610 µA/µm / 260 µA/µm
Ioff(Wdes/Ldes = 10 µm/0.18 µm): <25pa/um size="4">Thick-oxide NFET / PFET

Lmin: 0.4 µm
Lp: 0.29 µm
Vt: 0.56 V / -0.68 V
IDsat: 590 µA/µm / 225 µA/µm
Ioff: <2.5pa/um size="4">Available FET devices (maximum voltage):

Standard NFET/PFET (1.8 V)
Zero-Vt NFET (1.8 V)
Triple-well NFET (1.8 V)
Thick-oxide NFET/PFET (2.5 V)
Thick oxide zero Vt NFET (2.5 V)
Thick-oxide triple-well NFET (2.5 V)
Thick-oxide I/O NFET/PFET (3.3 V)
Thick-oxide triple-well NFET (3.3 V)

Here is the text portion of the document:

IBM Semiconductor solutions offers a leading-edge CMOS image sensor (CIMG) technology based on IBM’s industry-standard 180-nm CMOS technology family. Clients can choose appropriate devices and design tools to match their application requirements.
Base technology IBM CIMG7SF provides a highly competitive sub 3.0-µm, 4-transistor 4-shared (4T/4S) pixel architecture with an optimized transfer gate, which is ideal for mobile camera phone and digital still-camera applications. CIMG7SF also provides large reference pixels for high end digital still camera and emerging applications. The offering includes state-of-the-art micro lenses and color filters for exceptional quantum efficiency and angle response, along with pinned photodiode technology for reduced dark current. This technology uses aluminum wiring for the last metal level and copper wiring for the remaining metal levels. With thin back-end-of-line (BEOL) metal stacks and improved dielectric tolerance, CIMG7SF is ideal for multiple CMOS image-sensor applications.

The document is dated by July 2006.

SuperPix - One More CIS Startup

Yahoo-Finance: Tower Semiconductor announced another image sensor customer - SuperPix from China with 2MP sensor.

Initially, the products will be used in cellular phone and smart phone cameras to be retailed within the Chinese market, with projections to eventually expand sales internationally. The Chinese market is the fastest growing retail customer base for cellular products. The annual market for cellular and smart phone image sensors in China, alone, is projected to exceed 200M units in 2008 and 300M in 2010, with business volume of the image sensors projected to exceed $500M.

From SuperPix site:

Up to now, Superpix has successively developed a series of CIS-SOC chips including 1/3 inch UXGA, 1/4 inch SXGA and 1/6 inch VGA. The pixel size of these products spreads from 2.8um to 3.6um.
The company history is one of quite rapid product development:

2005, Apr: SuperPix Micro Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., setup on April,2005
2005, Sep: 1/6 inch VGA CIS-SOC developed successively
2005, Oct: 1/3 inch SXGA CIS-SOC developed successively
2005, Nov: 1/3 inch UXGA and 1/4 inch SXGA CIS-SOC developed successively

It's not immediately clear why this fast paced history log is ended a year ago. Company pages copyright notice reveals its connection with Micro Technology(Beijing)Co.,Ltd. If SuperPix is a spin-out of Micro, this can explain a very fast development schedule.

Kodak Reports $100M of CIS Design Wins

Democrat & Chronicle: On the latest conference call Kodak's CEO Antonio Perez said Kodak believes that the sensor project could begin paying dividends soon. The company has been distributing its CMOS sensors for evaluation and has racked up $100 million of "design wins," in which a manufacturer chooses a particular product design over a competitor's.

The $100 million will not necessarily all translate into revenue, Perez said, "but I am trying to give you a sense of where we are ... we are building a portfolio of design wins with which I am very happy."

Theodore Franceschi, chief development officer and co-CEO at New Scale, said that in his discussions with handset manufacturers, he hasn't sensed a groundswell of demand for Kodak's sensor technology. But he quickly noted that the company does have a competitive strength in providing the imaging know-how for the sensors to produce better-quality images.

Analysts say that sales of camera phones are on their way to topping 1 billion a year by late 2008.
The scent of opportunity has also attracted a small Victor startup company with pioneering technology in providing miniaturized motors that can power zoom lenses or auto focus functions in camera phones. That's New Scale Technologies, which is working with Tamron Co. Ltd., a leading maker of precision optics based in Japan. Tamron is licensing New Scale's technology for use in Tamron's optical imaging assemblies, which include digital still cameras, camcorders and mobile phone cameras.

Dongbu and Siliconfile Trumpet 0.13um Era

Yahoo-Finance: Dongbu and Siliconfile announced jointly developed 0.13um process generation. Volume production of CIS devices using the new process is expected to begin during the first quarter of 2007.
The most strange thing about this press-release is that there is no mention of pixel size - one of the best metrics of process advances.
The new process uses a 3-layer aluminum interconnect. Distance between the photodiode and the micro lens has been reduced to less than 4 microns. Here the press release states "This compares to a 5-micron distance in CIS chips from the world's largest CIS device manufacturer, Micron Technology Inc." This is quite a rare direct comparison statement for an official press-release. Also, the data about Micron seems to be a little outdated.
The claim also improvements in color quality in terms of resolution, gray scale, relative illumination and color crosstalk among red-green-blue pixels, thereby improving sensitivity by more than 20 Percent.
Af for the next step, Dongbu is targeting early 2008 to qualify a CIS process at the 110nm node for volume production.

TrueImaging Start-Up Company

Another image sensor startup just came to my attention: TrueImaging Technology (San Jose, CA). It offers "unique "analog-free" ultra high dynamic range CMOS Image Sensors for cell phone cameras and multi-megapixel digital cameras". Its "patented technology enables superior image quality with better edge precision in sunlight conditions and vastly improved clarity in low-light conditions. TruImaging raises the bar above all the other analog-based image sensor players by bridging the quality/cost gap -- providing high CCD quality at low CMOS cost and low CMOS power consumption."

Here is what TrueImaging site says about its technology:

TruImaging's patented oversampling technology is critically strategic to cell phone camera OEMs and ODMs -- because it directly overcomes the "limitation of electrons" when cell camera pixel size needs to scale from 4um down to 3um and below. This is a physical limitation for all the analog-based conventional Active Pixel Sensors (APS) and CMOS approaches scaling to multi-megapixel cell cameras (1, 2, 3MP).

As focal plane resolution increases and lower frame rate (with longer integration time) is required for low light conditions with reduced photo diode sensitivity, output data rate is a serious problem for all analog readout players where noise bandwidth increases proportionally to the amount of data being transmitted. TruImaging addresses the noise sources by being digital at the pixel level with oversampling. TruImaging overcomes the "limitation of electrons" by effectively increasing well capacity, which increases signal and signal-to-noise ratio, which reduces the effects of shot noise and KTC noise -- beyond all other approaches. More light capability means better image quality.

TruImaging Technology provides unsurpassed ultra high dynamic range and significantly increased sensitivity necessary for low light level performance. This translates into "Day/Night Vision", "Indoor/Outdoor", "In the sun/out of the sun", flashless cell phone cameras... affordably.

• Integrated digital conversion on focal plane for digital cameras.
• Analog to digital conversion is at each pixel. Thereby, eliminates all analog electronics for improved reliability and reduced cost. No precision analog or trim to fit components are used.
• 100% pure digital circuitry implementation of analog to digital function with no analog ADC circuitry.
• Proven to be extremely low power compared to all other focal plane design methods.
• Exceeds the capabilities of analog and other digital approaches in linearity, dynamic range and signal to noise ratio.
• Uses generic CMOS logic manufacturing process.
• SoC integration friendly.

However, the investor page on its site does not name any, while the news page promises to exhibit products within a year. The site design is dated by 2004, however there is no products exhibited yet. The site does not name people behind the company.