CCD Adopts Dual Gain Readout

Truesense Imaging patent application US20130099095 "Multiple-gain charge sensing in image sensors" by Christopher Parks proposes a CCD readout having a small sense node 225 and a large sense node 215:

High Extinction Ratio Polarizing Pixel Reported

Nara Institute, Japan paper in Optics Express shows that with advanced process of 65nm and large pixel size of 20um one can get over 35db extinction ratio polarizing pixels:

"Image sensor pixel with on-chip high extinction ratio polarizer based on 65-nm standard CMOS technology"
Kiyotaka Sasagawa, Sanshiro Shishido, Keisuke Ando, Hitoshi Matsuoka, Toshihiko Noda, Takashi Tokuda, Kiyomi Kakiuchi, and Jun Ohta

Simulation results of metal Cu wire grid polarizer characteristics.
(a) Extinction ratio spectra for different line / space sets
(b) transmittance for TE and TM polarization light and extinction
spectra for the finest pitch grating that can be achieved using
65nm process

More from 2012 Imec Scientific Report

Imec Scientific Report 2012 has an extended section on image sensors. There are BSI, eCCD, 3D stereo developments and more. A hyperspectral imagers part shows the sensor structure and spectral response:

(a) Concept of tiled layout (filter heights exaggerated for illustration);
(b) a packaged tile-based hyperspectral sensor;
(c) Table with key specifications of tile based spectral imager.

Spectral response of few selected filter bands from the wedge-based
spectral sensor.

Image Sensor Market Growth by Regions

Photonics Spectra shows a nicer graph from Global Image Sensor Market (2013-2018) report published in February. The report essentially predicts that the future image sensor market growth is concentrated in APAC and ROW regions:

Imec Achievements in 2012

Imec has published its 2012 annual report listing its image sensor achievements over the past year:

• Developed BSI process
• Started developing embedded CCD process having CCD sensing part combined with CMOS readout
• First prototype of a hyperspectral sensor integrating Fabry-Pérot interferometers directly on top of a CMOS image sensor, i.e. as an extension of the CMOS process flow.
• Developed a lens-free microscope with 25sq. mm field of view and 2um resolution, another one with 800nm resolution
• In collaboration with an industrial partner designed, fabricated and characterized a full CMOS imager. It features more than 8MP resolution and includes advanced column ADCs. Successfully processed the imager in imec 0.13um technology.

Aptina Proposes Motion Compensated HDR

Aptina's patent application US20130100314 "Imaging systems and methods for generating motion-compensated high-dynamic-range images" by Huai Dong Li and Peng Lin presents image processing pipeline to implement motion compensation when combining short exposed and long exposed images in HDR imaging:

APAC Touchless & Gesture Recognition Market to Reach $4.18B by 2018

PR Newswire: According to the market research report "Asia-Pacific Gesture Recognition & Touchless Sensing Market (2013 - 2018)", this market is expected to reach $4.18 billion by 2018 growing at a CAGR of 42.33% from 2013 to 2018.

The increasing concerns related to sanitation and hygiene in the region is expected to drive the touchless sanitary equipment market. The touchless biometrics market is driven by the Aadhaar number initiative in India and the e-passport program in the region. China is expected to lead the touchless sensing market for both sanitary equipment and touchless biometric products by 2018.

May be these are the markets that Mesa Imaging CEO Jim Lewis meant answering on question where he sees the future growth for 3D camera applications: "The growth will not come from the applications that one reads/hears about most often in the public domain."

PR Newswire: The global demand for touchless and gesture recognition devices is predicted to reach $15.02 billion by 2018.

Spherical Imager

IEEE Spectrum published an article on spherical imager work mostly done in University Urbana by Prof. John Rogers flexible electronics group in cooperation with few other universities around the world. The 1cm-large wire-connected grid of 180 sensors with microlenses looks very nice:

Nature paper's supplementary doc describes the manufacturing process of such a sensor.

CIS Power Analysis

Rice University published a joint paper with Microsoft on image sensor power consumption, to be presented at ACM Int. Conf. Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys) in Taipei, Taiwan on June 25-28, 2013:

"Energy characterization and optimization of image sensing toward continuous mobile vision"
Robert LiKamWa, Bodhi Priyantha, Matthai Philipose, Lin Zhong, and Paramvir Bahl

The power consumption of five image sensors from two major vendors in the mobile market is analysed, breaking down the power consumption by major components and by operational modes. Few interesting conclusions:

• Modern image sensors are not energy-proportional: energy per pixel is in fact inversely proportional to frame rate and resolution of image capture, and thus image sensor systems fail to provide an important principle of energy-aware system design: trading quality for energy efficiency.
• Optimal clock scaling reduces power by up to 50% or 30% for one mega-pixel photos and videos, respectively;
• By entering low-power standby mode between frames, an image sensor achieves almost constant energy per pixel for video capture at low frame rates, results in 40% power reduction for 1MP, 5fps capture.

Terry Gilton Left Apple

Terry Gilton, the head of Apple image sensor efforts, has left the company, according to his LinkedIn page. Formerly Terry was VP of Technology at Aptina, responsible for pixel and process.