Spectrum Interviews Martin Wäny, Awaiba CEO

IEEE Spectrum published a podcast talking about tiny Awaiba camera for endoscopy (no video, just audio podcast):

Yole Developpement Wafer Bonding Review

Yole Developpement published "Permanent Wafer Bonders: Technologies, Applications & Markets Report". The report sampler summarizes the approaches for BSI processing:

Vertical Transfer Gates Proposed by Omnivision, KETRI

Aiming to improve fill factor in small pixels, both KETRI and Omnivision applied for patents on vertical transfer gate structures, US20110084322 and US20110089311 respectively. The structures look quite similar:

KETRI Gate

Omnivision's Gate

Meanwhile, applications from Apple Imaging Group continue to trickle in. A large 91-page US20110090351 talks about temporal noise filtering with motion artifact reduction. The algorithm itself is quite straightforward but assumes that one has pixels motion vectors ready:

The Apple application also talks about other ISP stages, such as shading correction, defect pixel correction, demosaicing, etc.

Aptina Announces 3.1MP 1080p/60fps HDR Sensor

Business Wire: Aptina announces AR0331 sensor aimed at security and surveillance applications. The 1/3-inch 3.1MP sensor features the new 2.2um pixel based on Aptina A-Pix tech and 100dB WDR capability with built-in adaptive local tone mapping. The new sensor provides HD video of up to 1080p at 60 fps employing binning techniques to enable the sensor’s sub 1-lux low light performance.

Sampling now, Aptina’s AR0331 mass production is scheduled for Q4 2011.

TYZX Demos Consumer Gesture Control

TYZX published Youtube video demoing its gesture control used by Samsung and Reactrix:



TYZX also opened Youtube channel showing its capabilities.

PTC and FD Capacitance Nonlinearity

The latest post in Albert Theuwissen's PTC series discusses pixel non-linearity and its effects on PTC.

EDoF vs AF Comparison

All About Symbian publishes a nice comparison of EDoF and AF camera phones. Nokia E52, E55, E5, E6, E7, C6-01, C7, and X7 phones are EDoF-based, while E72, X6, and N8 have AF cameras.

Panasonic D-Imager in Ford UK Campaign

Panasonic announced that 10 units of its D-Imager are employed in Ford UK Grand C-MAX augmented reality campaign.

Canon Applies for Patent on Two-Row Parallel Output Pixel Layout

I do not believe this patent will ever be granted. Canon US20110080492 application talks about pixel layout allowing two rows to be read out simultaneously through two parallel column output lines. The idea to speed out pixel array with parallel outputs is now new, so it looks like Canon is trying to patent a specific layout implementation of it. Few layout versions are given, here is one of them:

Altasens Raises $15.1M

TMCnet: AltaSens has raised $15.1M out of planned $20.1M in private equity offering. Investors are not disclosed.

Update: Here is Altasens SEC filing.