2019 IISS Pioneering Achievement Award goes to Marvin White for Correlated Double Sampling (CDS)

In the early 1970’s, soon after the invention of the CCD image sensor, there was great interest in low-light cameras using CCDs. At Westinghouse, Dr. Marvin White was working with the Navy on low-light CCDs. So-called kTC noise on the output node was limiting the low light performance. Marvin said he borrowed the general idea of double-sampling from radar signal processing at Westinghouse and applied it to CCD signal processing (see here, for example).

Since then Correlated Double Sampling (CDS) has been a mainstay in CCD signal processing to reduce noise and spawned the use of other noise-reduction strategies like DDS, CMS in both analog and digital domains. Probably every CCD made since the early 1970’s up through the present has employed CDS. For this pioneering achievement, the International Image Sensor Society (IISS), will be presenting Dr. White with the 2019 IISS Pioneering Achievement Award at the 2019 IISW at Snowbird later in June. Congratulations, and thank you, Marvin!