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Bloomberg reports that an oncoming Huawei smartphone possibly incorporate Sony ToF sensor:

"The phone, code-named Princeton internally, will be announced this month and go on sale within a few weeks, according to one of the people who requested anonymity discussing private plans. The technology uses sensors developed by Sony Corp. that can accurately measure distances by bouncing light off surfaces.

Besides generating pictures that can be viewed from numerous angles, Huawei’s new camera can create 3-D models of people and objects that can be used by augmented-reality apps, according to one of the people. The new camera will also let developers control apps and games in new ways, such as hand gestures, the person said, who added that some of the details may change as developers work with the technology."

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Gpixel announces a 51MP, 8424 x 6032 resolution, 35 mm full-frame global shutter image sensor. The GMAX4651 is capable of capturing full resolution images at frame rates of up to 80 fps in standard 12-bit read out mode and 40 fps in dual gain HDR mode.

With more than 83dB DR, 1/50,000 shutter efficiency and wide angular response, the GMAX4651 is aimed to advanced optical inspection and machine vision applications (Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) and Flat Panel Display (FPD) inspection) as well as high-end 8k/4k video broadcast and aerial imaging applications.

“The GMAX4651 is a really unique addition to our GMAX series, outperforming existing CCD solutions on all performance levels,” commented Wim Wuyts, Chief Commercial Officer of Gpixel. “It combines the dual gain HDR used in our successful GSENSE sensors, with excellent global shutter pixel technology and unprecedented frame rates. All together this will set a new industry standard for high-end industrial inspection and the video industry.”

Based on a 4.6 µm charge domain global shutter technology with true CDS, the GMAX4651 delivers more than 25 ke- linear FWC and up to 50 ke- when using 1x2 binning and ultra-low noise read out down to 1.5 e-RMS. Under dual gain HDR mode, where the sensor reads out the same exposure with two different gain settings for off-chip HDR reconstruction, DR can reach 83dB.

GMAX4651 mono sensor sample and evaluation kit will be commercially available in March 2019. Color samples will be made available in Q2 2019 and volume production is targeted for Q3 2019.

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Toronto, Canada-based startup Sheba Microsystems promises MEMS-based AF, zoom, and OIS:





Some demo videos are published in the company's Youtube channel.

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Arxiv.org paper "Event-Based Structured Light for Depth Reconstruction using Frequency Tagged Light Patterns" by T. Leroux, S.-H. Ieng, and R. Benosman from University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and Sorbonne University proposes to use (apparently) Prophesee sensor for a structured light 3D camera. Although the paper appears a bit rushed to publication and needs some proofreading, the presented ideas look nice:

"This paper presents a new method for 3D depth estimation using the output of an asynchronous time driven image sensor. In association with a high speed Digital Light Processing projection system, our method achieves real-time reconstruction of 3D points cloud, up to several hundreds of hertz. Unlike state of the art methodology, we introduce a method that relies on the use of frequency tagged light pattern that make use of the high temporal resolution of event based sensors. This approach eases matching as each pattern unique frequency allow for any easy matching between displayed patterns and the event based sensor. Results are shown on the real scenes."

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SystemPlus publishes a teardown report of Orbbec face recognition solution in Oppo Find X smartphone:

"Located in the Find X’s front side, around the speaker, the 3D system is packaged in one metal enclosure. The system features a dot projector, a flood illuminator, a red/green/blue camera and a NIR camera sensor. An additional SoC component is soldered on the main board to process the signal from the latter devices.

The system uses standard components found on the market. That includes a GS image sensor featuring 3µm size pixels and standard resolution of 1 megapixel and a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL). The system is therefore very cost efficient compared to other solutions. The camera and dot projector module assembly uses standard wire bonding to connect the sensor or the VCSEL dies, along with an optical module comprising four lenses for both modules."

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After few months of presentations at different conferences and exhibitions, STMicroelectronics has officially unveiled two new automotive global shutter image sensors, the VG5661 and VG5761, aimed to driver monitoring.

ST’s VG5661 and VG5761 are 1.6MP and 2.3MP automotive global shutter sensors. ST has created a unique automotive global shutter pixel with two memory cells while keeping a small pixel size of 3.2μm. The two memory zones allow double-image storage, enabling linear HDR up to 98dB or background removal without lag effects and with no need for additional processing by the host system. This offloads the host processor and reduces instances of correction artefacts. In addition, HDR and high MTF in NIR further minimizes interference from natural light sources.

The VG5661 and VG5761 are supplied in standard BGA packages, or as bare die for direct integration in automotive OEM systems produced in high volumes. They are qualified to AEC-Q100 grade 2 and include complex safety-integrity features as required for an ASIL-B camera system in accordance with the automotive safety standard ISO 26262.

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Lucid Vision Labs presentation has some data on Sony polarization sensors:

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Photoneo presentation at Vision Show in Stuttgart, Germany, on Nov. 6-8, 2018 shows its Parallel Structured Light 3D camera concepts:

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DIY Photography quotes EOSHD that Sony is working on IMX435 stacked full-frame sensor that is able to shoot 8K 60fps video with 12b ADC resolution:

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Lucid Vision Labs presents the results of its ToF camera based on Sony-Softkinetic IMX556 BSI sensor:

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SWIR Vision System presentation at Vision Show 2018 details on its lower than InGaAs cost sensor mentioned in my previous post:


Thanks to TL for the pointer!

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Woodside Capital Partners release November 2018 update of its "Autonomous Vehicles Technology Report." A few interesting slides with somewhat pessimistic view on the automotive LiDAR short term prospects:

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Yole Developpement analyst Alexis Debray publishes an interview with Filip Geuens, CEO of LiDAR maker XenomatiX. Some interesting quotes:

"We see 2 main categories in the market: global illumination LiDARs (also called flash LiDAR) and scanning-beam LiDAR. The scanning can come from an optical phase array or from a rotating mirror, oscillating mirror or other mechanical device.
Our XenoLidar does not fit in any of these 2 categories. XenoLidar uses multi-beam. Just like global illumination, we measure the scene in one shot and with high resolution, but in a much more efficient way as we only need a fraction of the energy a flash system needs. This actually translates into the fact that we can cover a much larger range for the same energy.

In the end it is a balancing exercise. We believe we have the best mix of what is critical for automotive in terms of cost, reliability, resolution, efficiency and size (in order of importance).

Today, an important bottleneck is the lack of decision taking. Many people get confused by the diversity of make-believe solutions and by initiatives that failed to deliver on their promises. That is slowing down adoption. Too many parties are sitting on the fence and waiting for a leader to pick a solution.

We deal with this by putting evidence on the table. Being able to back-up performance statements with functional products is our response. However, early adopters are still needed to help the technology to mature further, moving from technology level to application level."

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Fraunhofer presentation at the Vision Show held in Stuttgart, Germany, on Nov 6-8, 2018 offers a different approach to the data minimization in machine vision applications. To simplify the use, Fraunhofer embedded vision sensor even offers Python language-like scripting interface:


Prophesee too presented its Event-Driven Sensor at the Vision Show:


Thanks to TL for the pointers!

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ST presentation "Automotive In-cabin Sensing Solutions" by Nicolas Roux details the company's GS HDR sensor technology, including the dual ADCs and dual pixel memory:

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ST presentation "Automotive In-cabin Sensing Solutions" by Nicolas Roux details the company's GS HDR sensor technology, including the dual ADCs and dual pixel memory:

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International Image Sensors Society calls for nominations for the 2019 Walter Kosonocky Award for significant advancement in solid-state image sensors.

The Walter Kosonocky Award is presented biennially for THE BEST PAPER presented in any venue during the prior two years representing significant advancement in solid-state image sensors. The award commemorates the many
important contributions made by the late Dr. Walter Kosonocky to the field of solid-state image sensors.

Founded in 1997 by his colleagues in industry, government and academia, the award is also funded by proceeds from the International Image Sensor Workshop. The award is selected from nominated papers by the Walter Kosonocky Award Committee, announced and presented at the International Image Sensor Workshop (IISW), and sponsored by the International Image Sensor Society (IISS).

The nominations for 2019 award should be sent to Rihito Kuroda, Chair of the IISS Award Committee, with a pdf file of the nominated paper (that you judge is the best paper published/ presented in calendar years 2017 and 2018) as well as a brief description (less than 100 words) of your reason nominating the paper. Nomination of a paper from your company/ institute is also welcome.

The deadline for receiving nominations is February 18th, 2019.

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Tom's Guide: ZTE Nubia X with dual display on the front and back eliminates the need in a front camera: the main rear camera is used for selfies too:


GSM Arena reports that one of the largest smartphone manufacturers Vivo is about to roll out a similar model with no separate selfie camera - NEX 2:

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Panasonic Industrial presentation teaches plasma dicing advantages for image sensors:


Veeco Ultratech promotes its IR alignment system:

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Yole Developpement report "Consumer Biometrics: Market and Technologies Trends 2018" forecasts:

"As anticipated by Yole Développement (Yole) in mid-2016, biometry’s “second wave” began with the introduction of the iPhone X in September 2017, when Apple set the standard for technological advancement (and use-cases) for 3D sensing in consumer. Apple conceived a complex assembly of camera modules and VCSEL light sources using structured light principles, along with an innovative NIR global shutter image sensor from STMicroelectronics to perform secure 3D facial recognition. This second wave, led by biometry with 3D sensing, is ongoing and will increase market value toward $17B by 2022.

But biometry is not only a matter of fingerprint or face detection but also iris and voice recognition, regarding the overall breakdown of biometry recognition, Yole estimates that the proportion of each type of detection will be quite unbalanced in the future, with 60% of biometric module in volume coming from face recognition module, while fingerprint (40%) will see a decrease over time of its value due to competition and alternative implementation leading to cost reduction."

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Tokyo Institute of Technology and Olympus publish a paper "Single-Sensor RGB-NIR Imaging: High-Quality System Design and Prototype Implementation" by Yusuke Monno, Hayato Teranaka, Kazunori Yoshizaki, Masayuki Tanaka, and Masatoshi Okutomi.

"In recent years, many applications using a set of RGB and near-infrared (NIR) images, also called an RGB-NIR image, have been proposed. However, RGB-NIR imaging, i.e., simultaneous acquisition of RGB and NIR images, is still a laborious task because existing acquisition systems typically require two sensors or shots. In contrast, single-sensor RGB-NIR imaging using an RGB-NIR sensor, which is composed of a mosaic of RGB and NIR pixels, provides a practical and low-cost way of one-shot RGB-NIR image acquisition. In this paper, we investigate high-quality system designs for single-sensor RGBNIR imaging. We first present a system evaluation framework using a new hyperspectral image dataset we constructed. Different from existing work, our framework takes both the RGB-NIR sensor characteristics and the RGB-NIR imaging pipeline into account. Based on the evaluation framework, we then design each imaging factor that affects the RGB-NIR imaging quality and propose the best-performed system design. We finally present the configuration of our developed prototype RGB-NIR camera, which was implemented based on the best system design, and demonstrate several potential applications using the prototype."

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Espros November 2018 Newsletter shows the company's ToF module for face recognition in smartphones:

"The USPs of the epc660 chip - very high NIR sensitivity (>80% @ 850nm) as well as the capability of suppressing strong ambient light in the charge domain - make it in a favorite choice for miniaturized mobile applications. High sensitivity means saving battery power and allows eye-safe operation due to fact that the active illumination can be designed to be less powerful. Ambient light acceptance is a key factor and a challenge for devices although they are used outdoor in a full sunlight environment.

The slim bare-die chip-scale package with an overall thickness of 0.23mm with solder balls (CSP) allows to design modules for the thinnest mobile applications. The package allows to scale down the whole the complete module not just in size but also in cost."

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Pamtek presents 4 generations of its testing systems for camera modules:

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DPReview publishes a review of SiOnyx Aurora night vision camera with Black Silicon sensor. The conclusion is:

"Does the SiOnyx Aurora let me see things in the dark that I can't see with the unaided eye? Absolutely: the infrared sensitivity makes a big difference and, hence, my stress on the night vision capability of this device. The fact that you can also capture what you see is a plus. For me it was capturing Northern Lights, but I'm also looking forward to capturing surface lava flows in Hawaii, bioluminescence in Puerto Rico, as well as other phenomena around the world."

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Teledyne presentation on IR detectors for space missions by Paul Jerram and James Beletic shows the company's project examples:

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IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics publishes an open access paper "High-Performance Back-Illuminated Three-Dimensional Stacked Single-Photon Avalanche Diode Implemented in 45-nm CMOS Technology" by Myung-Jae Lee, Augusto Ronchini Ximenes, Preethi Padmanabhan, Tzu-Jui Wang, Kuo-Chin Huang, Yuichiro Yamashita, Dun-Nian Yaung, and Edoardo Charbon from EPFL, Delft University of Technology, and TSMC.

"We present a high-performance back-illuminated three-dimensional stacked single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD), which is implemented in 45-nm CMOS technology for the first time. The SPAD is based on a P + /Deep N-well junction with a circular shape, for which N-well is intentionally excluded to achieve a wide depletion region, thus enabling lower tunneling noise and better timing jitter as well as a higher photon detection efficiency and a wider spectrum. In order to prevent premature edge breakdown, a P-type guard ring is formed at the edge of the junction, and it is optimized to achieve a wider photon-sensitive area. In addition, metal-1 is used as a light reflector to improve the detection efficiency further in backside illumination. With the optimized 3-D stacked 45-nm CMOS technology for back-illuminated image sensors, the proposed SPAD achieves a dark count rate of 55.4 cps/μm 2 and a photon detection probability of 31.8% at 600 nm and over 5% in the 420-920 nm wavelength range. The jitter is 107.7 ps full width at half-maximum with negligible exponential diffusion tail at 2.5 V excess bias voltage at room temperature. To the best of our knowledge, these are the best results ever reported for any back-illuminated 3-D stacked SPAD technologies."

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