Image Sensors World is pleased to introduce its compiled list of conferences and exhibitions that include image sensor topics and products. The range includes everything from device physics and designs to applications and test. Included are on-site meetings, on-line webinars and various sorts of hybrid and archived events.
Because many meetings keep the presented materials available on-line for extended periods, each event will remain in the listings for one year or until the next session of the event occurs, whichever is shorter. New events will be listed as soon as they are announced and grouped by the month the event is scheduled to begin.
The ISW list will be broader than the individual posts announcing events that ar4e focused on image sensor such as the IISW or some of the IEEE meetings. Those posts will continue to assure that ISW readers are aware of them in time to submit papers or make travel plans.
Building the list will take some time so the postings will be added in chronological order with those scheduled soonest first. Listings will be brief, giving the sponsor, event name, location, dates and a link to the event website. Note that often the links change as the date of the event approaches. Occasionally, additional information will be supplied that affects who can attend - security clearance or membership requirements, for example.
Most events require payment for attendance to technical sessions and some charge for exhibits. These listings will not include the costs because those are often contingent on time, membership, discounts and other factors. See the event websites for registration details.
Finally, if you are reading the listings looking for opportunities to exhibit your products, those with associated exhibitions will usually have exhibitor information sections on their websites. Please consult them as early as possible. Many popular shows are sold out long before the event begins and some require reservations years in advance.
Feel free to post comments on the shows - your experiences or plans - and let us know if you are aware of an event ISW should list.
The index to the monthly lists is here.
Press release: https://www.sony-semicon.com/en/news/2023/2023091201.html
Sony Semiconductor Solutions to Release CMOS Image Sensor for Automotive Cameras with Industry-Leading 17.42-Effective Megapixels
Delivering sophisticated sensing and recognition performance and contributing to safe, secure automated driving
Atsugi, Japan — Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation (SSS) today announced the upcoming release of the IMX735, a new CMOS image sensor for automotive cameras with the industry’s highest pixel count, at 17.42 effective megapixels. The new sensor product will support the development of automotive camera systems capable of sophisticated sensing and recognition performance, thereby contributing to safe, secure automated driving.
For automated systems to deliver automated driving, they must offer sophisticated, high-precision sensing and recognition performance, encompassing all 360 degrees of the environment around the vehicle. Accordingly, there is considerable demand for image sensors that can help achieve this level of performance and support the development of more advanced automotive camera systems.
The new sensor product achieves the industry’s highest pixel count of 17.42 effective megapixels, enabling high definition capture of far-off objects. Moreover, automated driving systems often use automotive cameras in combination with LiDAR and other sensing systems. While typical CMOS image sensors readout signals output from pixels one vertical line at a time, this product outputs signals horizontally, one row at a time. This means that automotive cameras employing this sensor can more easily synchronize with mechanical scanning LiDAR, since their laser beams also scan horizontally. This better synchronization will improve the sensing and recognition capabilities of the automated driving system as a whole.
Furthermore, the new sensors’ improved saturation illuminance, made possible by a proprietary pixel structure, and unique exposure method yield a wide dynamic range of 106 dB even when simultaneously employing high dynamic range (HDR) imaging and LED flicker mitigation. The dynamic range is even higher, at 130 dB, when using dynamic range priority mode. This creative design helps suppress highlight blowouts even in backlit conditions, enabling more precise object capture in road environments with significant differences in brightness, such as tunnel entrances and exits.
Main Features
■Long-distance recognition delivered by industry-leading 17.42 megapixels
Thanks to the industry’s highest pixel count of 17.42 effective megapixels, the new sensor is capable of high definition capture, extending the object recognition range to greater distances and thereby allowing better detection of road conditions, vehicles, pedestrians and other objects. Early detection of far-away objects while driving helps make automated driving systems safer.
■Horizontal pixel signal output for easier synchronization with mechanical-scanning LiDAR
When reading signals from pixels, CMOS image sensors generally do so in a vertical direction one line at a time. This product, on the other hand, employs a readout method that outputs signals horizontally one row at a time, making it easier to synchronize with mechanical-scanning LiDAR, which also uses a horizontal scanning method. This means that the information output from automotive cameras equipped with this product can be integrated with LiDAR information downstream on the system. This will improve the sensing and recognition capabilities of the automated driving system as a whole.
■Wide dynamic range even during simultaneous use of HDR and LED flicker mitigation
In automobile driving, objects must be precisely detected and recognized even in road environments with significant differences in brightness, such as tunnel entrances and exits. Automotive cameras are also required to suppress LED flicker, even while in HDR mode, to deal with the increasing prevalence of LED signals and other traffic devices. The proprietary pixel structure and unique exposure method of this product improves saturation illuminance, yielding a wide dynamic range of 106 dB even when simultaneously employing HDR and LED flicker mitigation (when using dynamic range priority mode, the range is even wider, at 130 dB). This design also helps reduce motion artifacts generated when capturing moving subjects.
■Compliant with standards required for automotive applications
The product is qualified for AEC-Q100 Grade 2 automotive electronic component reliability tests by mass production. Also, SSS has introduced a development process compliant with the ISO 26262 road vehicle functional safety standard, at automotive safety integrity level ASIL-B(D). This contributes to improve automotive camera system reliability.
■Cybersecurity required for automotive applications (optional)
The product can support cybersecurity features such as camera authentication via a public-key algorithm to confirm CMOS image sensor authenticity, image authentication to detect any tampering with acquired images, and communication authentication to detect any tampering with control communications.
Texas Instruments made (mostly) area CCDs using the virtual-phase architecture invented by Jerry Hynecek in their Central Research Lab. Some later devices, designated "Impactron" incorporated a high-voltage shift register that provided electron multiplication. TI made these devices until 2011 when their fab in Aizu-wakamatsu, Japan, was heavily damaged in an earthquake. The CCD line was never restarted.
You may notice that the archive includes a data sheet for the TIVICON silicon vidicon camera tube. Truly, TI made an imaging vacuum tube before it made solid-state sensors. It was built for an Air Force forward-looking infrared (FLIR) system that flew over the jungles of Vietnam making thermal images of people among the trees. The silicon vidicon looked at a spinning line of infrared LEDs (another TI product) to produce a windshield-wiper-shaped image that was displayed on a video monitor. I ran the lab that tested these tubes and I wrote the data sheet included in the archive to start TI on commercial sales of the tubes. I was gone before TI introduced CCDs but my boss, Frank Skaggs, moved to that program.
We are pleased to introduce a new feature of the ISW blog, an archive of data sheets and other documents related to image sensor products. A recent survey of blog readers indicated that many of you would like access to a location where both historical and current data sheets, application notes, test data and other documents describing image sensors released to the market are available for download. The new archive will provide this.
Image sensors have been made by over 200 companies since manufacturing began in the early 1970s and new ones appear almost every day now. I will attempt to both fill in the past and keep the archive current but catching up will take a while. Please comment if you have priorities you would like me to consider. Also comment if you have recollections that might interest the newer members of the image sensor community.
All of the documents will be stored on a Google Drive account with open access. This means that documents that are export-controlled, mostly for thermal sensors, will not be included. To get to the Drive folders, you need only to click a company link on the blog post that comes up when you select "Image Sensor Documentation" from the list on the left of the blog front page. Download whatever you like.
If you have anything you would like to contribute, send me an e-mail and we can make an arrangement. While we are interested in more than just data sheets, we can't post any company confidential information even if the company is out of the image sensor business or no longer exists.
As I add new companies to the archive, I will post announcements with a link to the company folder and a little background on the company. Again, feel free to comment if you have something interesting to add. Note that the companies and their documents will be identified by the company name in use when each sensor was introduced. Thus, companies like OnSemi may have products under other names going all the way back to Photobit or IMEC or Kodak.
The first company up is Texas Instruments, active 1978-2011, making virtual-phase and electron-multiplying sensors invented by Jerry Hynecek. The post with the link to the TI documents is here.
The ISW Blog documentation folders contain documents for image sensors from these companies:
Excelitas Announcement Document Archive
Foveon Announcement Document Archive
PerkinElmer Announcement Document Archive
Pixim Announcement Document Archive
Reticon Announcement Document Archive
SITe Announcement Document Archive
Tektronix Announcement Document Archive
Texas Instruments Announcement Document Archive
PHOTONIS GROUP BECOMES EXOSENS
PRESS RELEASE
MÉRIGNAC – SEPTEMBER 20th 2023
PHOTONIS GROUP a global leader of highly differentiated technology for detection, imaging and light, held by Groupe HLD since 2021 is deeply transforming by developing adjacent technologies, expanding to particles detection markets. Following that strategy, the group has acquired four companies (Xenics, Proxivision, Telops and Elmul) since December 2022. Worldwide leader for image intensifier tubes, the company has diversified its technologies and products portfolios with the ambition to become the worldwide leader in detection and imaging technologies. To illustrate that strategy, PHOTONIS GROUP becomes EXOSENS.
Proposing electro-optic devices covering the full optical spectrum from UV to LWIR in addition to electron, ion, neutron and gamma detectors, EXOSENSaddresses four markets which are lifescience, industrial control, nuclear energy and defense. The company takes benefits of positive dynamics in each of these four verticals, such as enhanced diagnosis demand, factory automation, small modular reactors deployment and defense budget increase.
Jean-Hubert Vial, partner at Groupe HLD said: “It’s an important step for Photonis Group. By becoming EXOSENS, the company clearly anchors its position as high-end technology provider to serve high growing commercial and defense markets for more sustainability and safety”
Jérôme Cerisier, CEO of the new group said: “EXOSENS means “to detect, to see and to give meaning to what is beyond”. It perfectly reflects what we are doing, we reveal the invisible, we sense the world to make it safer. With EXOSENS, we aim to share our common values throughout the whole organization, to integrate new companies and colleagues and to always offer high performances products to meet customers satisfaction.”
Operationally, legal entities will keep their existing names. The four product brands Photonis (for intensified products, nuclear and mass spectrometry detectors), Xenics (for infrared sensors and cameras), Elmul (for electron detectors) and Telops (for hyperspectral and cooled infrared camera) will continue to be deployed and promoted in their markets.
ABOUT EXOSENS:
Accompanied by Groupe HLD since 2021, EXOSENS is a high-tech company, with more than 85 years of experience in the innovation, development, manufacture and sale of technologies in the field of particles and photo detection and imaging. Today, it offers its customers detectors and detection solutions: its travelling wave tubes, advanced cameras, neutron & gamma detectors, instrument detectors and light intensifier tubes allow EXOSENS to respond to complex issues in environments extremely demanding by offering tailor-made solutions to its customers. Thanks to its sustained and permanent investment, EXOSENS is internationally recognized as a major innovator in optoelectronics, with production and R&D carried out on 9 sites, in Europe and North America and over 1 500 employees.
Papers from the recent International Image Sensor Workshop (IISW) 2023 held in Crieff Scotland are now available on the International Image Sensor Society website:
Link: https://imagesensors.org/2023-papers/
An exciting lineup of invited talks, posters, and papers over nine different sessions; go check it out!
Session 1 3D Stacking and Small Pixels
Session 2 Noise
Session 3 Pixel Design & Process Technology
Session 4 HDR and Automotive
Session 5 Smart and Event-based Imagers
Session 6 Beyond Visible & Scientific Imaging
Session 7 Speciality and New Applications
Session 8 SPAD Devices
Session 9 Time of Flight
OMNIVISION Announces New TheiaCel™ Technology and Automotive Image Sensor for LED-Flicker-Free Exterior Cameras
Announced at AutoSens Brussels, the OX08D10 is a small, low-power-consumption image sensor that features OMNIVISION’s new TheiaCel™ technology for superior image quality regardless of lighting condition
BRUSSELS, Belgium – September 19, 2023 – OMNIVISION, a leading global developer of semiconductor solutions, including advanced digital imaging, analog and touch & display technology, today debuted its OX08D10 8-megapixel (MP) CMOS image sensor with TheiaCel™ technology at AutoSens Brussels. The new solution enhances automotive safety by providing enhanced resolution and image quality in exterior cameras for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD).
The OX08D10 features industry-leading lowlight performance and low power consumption in a compact size that is 50% smaller than other exterior cabin sensors in its class. It is the first image sensor that features OMNIVISION’s new 2.1-micron (µm) TheiaCel™ technology, which harnesses the capabilities of next-generation lateral overflow integration capacitors (LOFIC) and OMNIVISION’s DCG™ high dynamic range (HDR) technology to eliminate LED flicker regardless of lighting conditions. TheiaCel™ enables the OX08D10 to achieve HDR image capture at up to 200 meters. This range is the sweet spot for delivering the best balance between SNR1 and dynamic range and is optimal for automotive exterior camera applications.
“The new OX08D10 image sensor provides automotive OEMs with one device that combines all of the most important features, including low-light performance, LED flicker mitigation (LFM), small size and low power, eliminating the need for our customers to make performance/design compromises to address LED flicker, as they have in the past,” said Paul Wu, automotive product marketing manager, OMNIVISION. “Additionally, we are excited to debut our new TheiaCel™ technology at AutoSens this year. TheiaCel™ brings a new era to single-exposure HDR in an easy-to-implement solution that yields dramatic improvements in image quality.”
“LFM, HDR and high resolution have become essential prerequisites in modern automotive image sensors to achieve higher autonomy vehicles,” said Anas Chalak, technology & market analyst, Imaging at Yole Intelligence, part of Yole Group. “OMNIVISION’s TheiaCel™ DCG + LOFIC solution fulfill these criteria, aligning with the trend of implementing more exterior cameras per car in the upcoming years. By 2028, we expect the ADAS camera market volume to reach around 105M units and the overall automotive image sensor market to expand to $3.7 billion, experiencing a CAGR22-28 of 8.7%1.”
In the automotive market, flicker from LED traffic lights poses a serious challenge for imaging solutions, preventing ADAS and AD systems from correctly detecting lighted traffic signs. The industry has been clamoring for a solution that could be easily integrated into a CMOS image sensor to meet this challenge. Some previous approaches, while achieving satisfactory LFM, have resulted in reduced image quality, especially at high automotive temperatures.
OMNIVISION’s new 2.1µm single-pixel TheiaCel™ technology delivers high LFM without sacrificing image quality. TheiaCel™ leverages next-generation LOFIC capabilities together with the proven strength of OMNIVISION’s proprietary HDR technology (patented DCG and split-diode technology), which captures extremely high-contrast scenes for optimum content and image quality. OMNIVISION’s TheiaCel™ DCG + LOFIC solution achieves a wider dynamic range than earlier single-exposure HDR architectures.
The new OX08D10 achieves overall superior performance in key areas compared to its non-LOFIC-based predecessor – in particular, its LFM dynamic range is 3.3x higher and total dynamic range nearly 3x higher. It features upgraded cybersecurity to comply with the newest MIPI CSE version 2.0 standards, which adds functional safety to automotive image sensor data streams. The TheiaCel™ device features OMNIVISION’s a-CSP™ package technology for the smallest possible solution. Samples are available now, and the OX08D10 will be in mass production in the second half of 2024. For more information, contact an OMNIVISION sales representative: www.ovt.com/contact-sales.
About OMNIVISION
OMNIVISION is a global fabless semiconductor organization that develops advanced digital imaging, analog and touch & display solutions for multiple applications and industries, including mobile phones; security and surveillance; automotive; computing; medical; and emerging applications. Its award-winning innovative technologies enable a smoother human/machine interface in many of today’s commercial devices. Find out more at www.ovt.com.
1 Imaging for Automotive report, Yole Intelligence, 2023.
OMNIVISION®, TheiaCel™, DCG™, a-CSP™ and the OMNIVISION logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of OMNIVISION. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Imaging Sensors and Systems at EI 2024: Jan 21-25
What makes ISS different?
· Offers a place of exchange and opportunity for quick publication of new work in the areas of solid state detectors, solid state cameras, new optical concepts, image processing, and novel applications.
· Features work from both industry and academia, and includes state-of-the-art presentations by invited keynote speakers complimented by topics covered in several of the short courses, as well as the plenary, demonstration, and poster sessions.
· Includes a mixture of both tutorial and highly advanced research presentations, so that researchers, students, and engineers all can find content that is appropriate to their level of expertise. Some of the conference sessions include overview talks, as well as panel discussions that allow for in-depth Q&A interactions with experts in industry and academia.
· Access to all the EI conferences. Of particular interest may be:
· Autonomous Vehicles and Machines
· Computational Imaging
· High Performance Computing for Imaging
· Image Quality and System Performance
· Image Processing: Algorithms and Systems
· Machine Learning for Scientific Imaging
· Intelligent Robotics and Industrial Applications using Computer Vision
The conference takes place in the Silicon Valley, close to San Francisco Airport, offering proximity to local tech companies and easy transportation options.
Submission options include proceedings paper and presentation only.
Extended submission deadline: 30 September 2023
For other conferences, visit their individual webpage: see all conferences listing
Plenary speaker and other program details will be announced in the next few weeks.