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Melexis publishes a video on its Autosens-Detroit presentation ofToF in-cabin monitoring camera in BMW cars:

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BusinessWire: San Francisco-based LiDAR startup Ouster is said to close a deal to go public at a about $1.9B valuation through a merger with SPAC Colonnade Acquisition Corp. Up to now, Ouster has raised $142M in the previous investment rounds.

The new transaction is expected to provide up to $300M in gross proceeds, comprised of Colonnade Acquisition Corp.’s $200M of cash held in trust and a $100M fully committed common stock PIPE.

The company's Investor Presentation talks about its LiDAR sales and forecasts:

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The next International Image Sensor Workshop (IISW) is going to be an on-line event on Sept. 20-24, 2021. The First Call for Papers has been published on International Image Sensor Society web site:

"The 2021 International Image Sensor Workshop (IISW) provides a biennial opportunity to present innovative work in the area of solid-state image sensors and share new results with the image sensor community. Now in its 35th year, the workshop is intended for image sensor technologists; in order to encourage attendee interaction and a shared experience, attendance is limited, with strong acceptance preference given to workshop presenters. As is its tradition, the 2021 workshop will emphasize an open exchange of information among participants.

Submission of abstracts:

An abstract should consist of a single page of maximum 500-words text with up to two pages of illustrations, and include authors’ name(s) and affiliation, mailing address, telephone and e-mail address. The deadline for abstract submission is April 17th, 2021 (CST).

Please visit http://imagesensors.org/CFP2021 for the abstract and paper submission procedures.

Abstracts will be considered on the basis of originality and quality. High quality papers on work in progress are also welcome. Abstracts will be reviewed confidentially by the Technical Program Committee and the IISS Board.

Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their abstract by June 3th, 2021.
Final-form 4-page paper submission date is August 6th, 2021.
Presentation material submission date is September 13th, 2021.

Location and format: 

The IISW 2021 is planned to be held Sept 20-24th. Given the outlook of the pandemic situation and related travel restrictions, the workshop is expected to be an online event, which will be supported by several initiatives to preserve its interactive and open atmosphere. The workshop will not be delayed: in any case the selected papers will be presented in September 2021. More details on the format will be provided in February 2021 with the final call for papers."

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Royal Society of Chemistry publishes "A review of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) based photodetectors: from ultra-broadband, selfpowered to flexible devices" by Hari Singh Nalwa from Advanced Technology Research, CA.

"Two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (2D TMDs) have attracted much attention in the field of optoelectronics due to their tunable bandgaps, strong interaction with light and tremendous capability for developing diverse van der Waals heterostructures (vdWHs) with other materials. Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) atomic layers which exhibit high carrier mobility and optical transparency are very suitable for developing ultra-broadband photodetectors to be used from surveillance and healthcare to optical communication. This review provides a brief introduction to TMD-based photodetectors, exclusively focused on MoS2-based photodetectors. The current research advances show that the photoresponse of atomic layered MoS2 can be significantly improved by boosting its charge carrier mobility and incident light absorption via forming MoS2 based plasmonic nanostructures, halide perovskites–MoS2 heterostructures, 2D–0D MoS2/quantum dots (QDs) and 2D–2D MoS2 hybrid vdWHs, chemical doping, and surface functionalization of MoS2 atomic layers. By utilizing these different integration strategies, MoS2 hybrid heterostructure-based photodetectors exhibited remarkably high photoresponsivity raging from mA W^−1 up to 1010 A W^−1, detectivity from 1e7 to 1e15 Jones and a photoresponse time from seconds (s) to nanoseconds (1e−9 s), varying by several orders of magnitude from deep-ultraviolet (DUV) to the long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) region. The flexible photodetectors developed from MoS2-based hybrid heterostructures with graphene, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), TMDs, and ZnO are also discussed. In addition, strain-induced and self-powered MoS2 based photodetectors have also been summarized. The factors affecting the figure of merit of a very wide range of MoS2-based photodetectors have been analyzed in terms of their photoresponsivity, detectivity, response speed, and quantum efficiency along with their measurement wavelengths and incident laser power densities. Conclusions and the future direction are also outlined on the development of MoS2 and other 2D TMD-based photodetectors."

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University of Strasbourg and CNRS, France, publishes a paper "A High Dynamic Range High Speed Pixel Operating at 100 Million Frames Per Second" by Mathieu Hugoud, Wilfried Uhring, Jean-Baptiste Kammerer, and Jean-Bapstiste Schell presented at 2020 18th IEEE International New Circuits and Systems Conference (NEWCAS).

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Arxiv.org paper "An Overview of Depth Cameras and Range Scanners Based on Time-of-Flight Technologies" by Radu Horaud, Miles Hansard, Georgios Evangelidis, and Clement Menier from INRIA Grenoble, Queen Mary University of London, and 4D View Solutions mostly repeats 2016 paper published by Springer.

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Intel presents a new addition to its EVO PC platform:

"A new platform addition we’re excited to unveil today is the Intel Visual Sensing Controller (codenamed “Clover Falls”), a secure companion chip that helps make PCs more smart and secure through the power of Intel artificial intelligence. This companion module will first arrive in commercial systems, bringing new low-power capabilities to the PC and helping it sense and adapt to its surroundings. For example, the module could help the system automatically adjust display brightness after detecting user presence."

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EI 2021 will be held on-line and span over two weeks from January 18 to 28. The Image Sensors and Systems track features 10 image sensor papers, 4 of them come from Samsung. Out of these 4 papers, two are devoted to under-display smartphone cameras:

1. 0.8 um color pixels with wave-guiding structures for low optical crosstalk image sensors
   Y. Chang, C. Lin, Z. Tu, J. Lee, S. Cheng, C. Wu, K. Wu, H. Tsai,
   VisEra Technologies Company, Hsinchu City , Taiwan
2. 2D, or not 2D, that is the question: How 3D-stacking is shaping the future of SPAD image sensors
   E. Charbon,
   École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
3. A 64M CMOS image sensor using 0.7µm pixel with high FWC and switchable conversion gain
   J. Jung,
   Omnivision Technologies, Inc., Campbell, California, United States
4. A low-voltage 0.7 µm pixel with 6000 e- full-well capacity for a low-power CMOS image sensor
   S. Lee, S. Cha, D. Jang, M. Kim, H. Lee, N. Lee, S. Kim, K. Oh, D. Lee, S. Hong, H. Lee, S. Oh, D. Park, Y. Kim, J. Ahn,
   System LSI, Samsung Electronics DS, Yongin, Giheung-gu, Republic of Korea
5. A proposal of analog correlated multiple sampling with high density capacitors for low noise CMOS image sensors
   S. Kamoshita, M. Suzuki, R. Kuroda, S. Sugawa,
   Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan
6. A single chip PPG sensor with enhanced IR sensitivity for low power and small size
   J. Lim, J. Kim, L. Yan, H. Noh, J. Pyo, J. Yun, S. Jung, D. Seol, K. Lee, T. NAGANO, J. Ahn,
   Pixel development team, Samsung Electronics Device Solutions, Hwaseong, Republic of Korea;
   T. Jung,
   Samsung Electronics, Yongin-city, Republic of Korea
7. Computational photography at the point of capture
   M. Levoy,
   Adobe Inc., San Francisco, California, United States
8. Deep-trench isolation: The holy grail for image sensors?
   A. Theuwissen,
   Harvest Imaging, Bree, Belgium;
   EE, TU Delft, Delft , Netherlands
9. Under display camera image recovery through diffraction compensation
   J. Lee, Y. Choi, H. Lee, E. Heo, D. Lim, G. Lee, S. Song,
   Samsung Electronics, Hwaseong, Republic of Korea
10. Under display camera Quad Bayer raw image restoration using deep learning
    I. Kim, Y. Choi, H. Ko, D. Lim, Y. Seo, J. Lee, G. Lee, E. Heo, S. Song, S. Lim,
    S.LSI, Samsung, Hwaseong, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea

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Globenewswire: Advantest launches a new high-speed CMOS image capture module for its T2000 test platform that enables parallel, 64-site testing of both D-PHY and C-PHY devices for the smart phone market. The new T2000 4.8-Gbps CMOS image capture module, known as the 4.8GICAP, is designed to efficiently transfer data from CIS to the T2000 tester’s image processor engine (IPE). It is the first mass-produced test solution to achieve a maximum data rate of 3.5 Gsps for C-PHY version 1.2 devices as well as the industry’s fastest capture speed of 4.8 Gbps for D-PHY version 2.1 devices.

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Corning publishes a white paper "Improving iris recognition with liquid lens technology." The main highlights are:

• Liquid lens-based AF allow the optical system to maximize the sharpness of an image. This compact, low-cost, and low-power solution extends the iris reading distance from a few millimeters to several meters.
• COVID-19 has escalated the already growing demand for non-contact identification systems.
• Liquid lenses possess a fast response time, as low as 10 ms. This feature enables auto-focus and continuous focus for biometric applications.

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AIP Applied Physics Letters publishes Oregon State University paper "A perovskite retinomorphic sensor" by Cinthya Trujillo Herrera and John G. Labrama.

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ON Semi video by Sergey Velichko presents the company's automotive HDR sensors:

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AutonmouStuff publishes Velodyne webinar explaining its new Velarray H800 operation:

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BusinessWire: AIStorm has closed $16M in a Series B financing round from strategic investors that include AsusTek, Egis Technology, Knowles Corporation, Meyer Corporation, and Senvest Management, a New York-based venture capital firm. In 2019, AIStorm raised $13.2M in Round A funding.

“AIStorm’s approach is the only technology that allows the sensor to couple directly to popular convolutional neural networks. This allows AIStorm to deliver true, template-based ‘always-on’ at the edge—at prices that deep-submicron digital competitors cannot match for the same performance. This is a winning formula in the highly competitive IoT sector,” said David Schie, CEO of AIStorm.

AIStorm’s charge-domain processing is said to accept charge directly from the sensor, such as electrons from a pixel, and multiplies that charge directly. AIStorm’s partners benefit from an AI-at-the-edge technology that is scalable, offers MAC efficiencies up to several thousand TOPS per watt, and works with conventional tool flows.

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GlobeNewswire: Tower and China-based OPIX announce a successful development of pulsed iToF technology platform for 3D imaging and face recognition, based on Tower’s pixel level wafer stacking BSI technology.

Utilizing TOWER’s 65nm pixel-level stacked BSI CIS technology and fabricated in its Uozu, Japan facility the sensor is said to be the first in a series of iToF products.

The sensor that is currently being prototyped to customers features a 5µm 3-tap iToF pixel and resolution of 640×480 pixels. The BSI technology improves its NIR sensitivity.  In addition, the wafer stacking enables very high modulation frequencies of up to 165 MHz and 30 depth fps.

The sensor is said to have industry-leading depth accuracy at short, mid and long-range distances even in challenging ambient light conditions by using pulse modulation iToF technique. Advanced features include multiple acquisition modes, depth with single and dual frequency, low-power standby modes and MIPI CSI-2 interface.

The sensor is said to be a cost effective all-in solution for various 3D imaging applications, especially for the mobile market.

“At Opix, we worked hard during the past 18 months in order to make this development successful. 3D imaging becomes ubiquitous in all imaging markets nowadays and as a CEO I am very proud to see us competing already on spec level with known solutions of tech giants,” said Xinyang Wang, CEO at Opix.  “With our 100% focus and dedication to 3D imaging and support of our partners, we have a strong belief we can play an important role in the coming years to serve the market with innovative solutions for the emerging 3D imaging market.”   

“We are very excited about our collaboration with the Opix team of experts who helped  bring to the market this new, world-class iToF technology,” said Avi Strum, SVP and GM of the Sensors and Displays Business Unit, Tower Semiconductor. “This highly advanced technology comprehensively meets the challenging requirements and specifications of a small sized iToF imager and demonstrates our notable capabilities and fervent commitment to provide our customers with market-leading imaging solutions.”

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GlobeNewswire: Tower and China-based OPIX announce a successful development of pulsed iToF technology platform for 3D imaging and face recognition, based on Tower’s pixel level wafer stacking BSI technology.

Utilizing TOWER’s 65nm pixel-level stacked BSI CIS technology and fabricated in its Uozu, Japan facility the sensor is said to be the first in a series of iToF products.

The sensor that is currently being prototyped to customers features a 5µm 3-tap iToF pixel and resolution of 640×480 pixels. The BSI technology improves its NIR sensitivity.  In addition, the wafer stacking enables very high modulation frequencies of up to 165 MHz and 30 depth fps.

The sensor is said to have industry-leading depth accuracy at short, mid and long-range distances even in challenging ambient light conditions by using pulse modulation iToF technique. Advanced features include multiple acquisition modes, depth with single and dual frequency, low-power standby modes and MIPI CSI-2 interface.

The sensor is said to be a cost effective all-in solution for various 3D imaging applications, especially for the mobile market.

“At Opix, we worked hard during the past 18 months in order to make this development successful. 3D imaging becomes ubiquitous in all imaging markets nowadays and as a CEO I am very proud to see us competing already on spec level with known solutions of tech giants,” said Xinyang Wang, CEO at Opix.  “With our 100% focus and dedication to 3D imaging and support of our partners, we have a strong belief we can play an important role in the coming years to serve the market with innovative solutions for the emerging 3D imaging market.”   

“We are very excited about our collaboration with the Opix team of experts who helped  bring to the market this new, world-class iToF technology,” said Avi Strum, SVP and GM of the Sensors and Displays Business Unit, Tower Semiconductor. “This highly advanced technology comprehensively meets the challenging requirements and specifications of a small sized iToF imager and demonstrates our notable capabilities and fervent commitment to provide our customers with market-leading imaging solutions.”

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Sony marketing publishes a video "Key technology for addressing sensing application in automotive:"

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Nature publishes NHK and Tokyo University of Science paper "Enhanced image sensing with avalanche multiplication in hybrid structure of crystalline selenium photoconversion layer and CMOSFETs" by Shigeyuki Imura, Keitada Mineo, Yuki Honda, Toshiki Arai, Kazunori Miyakawa, Toshihisa Watabe, Misao Kubota, Keisuke Nishimoto, Mutsumi Sugiyama, and Masakazu Nanba.

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CURVE-ONE startup (France) announces its first commercial curved sensor (English version starts on p. 2).

"The first public studies in the field of curved sensors are back in the 2000’s. If most of the largest world class sensors companies developed their home-made process, none of them made it a commercial product. The go-to-market strategy applied by the start-up CURVE, supported by the European Commission through the European Research Council programs, made it become an available product. Fruit of years of research and development for astrophysical instrumentation, the commercialization of curved and freeform sensors is now a reality.

The imaging of extended scenes (wide field), has always been a challenge as optical systems naturally curve the focal surface. The bending of photographic plates has been used routinely in many fields, even astronomy with the use of Schmidt telescopes which naturally have a convex focal surface.

The advent of flat electronic sensors has been a revolution, forcing optical designers to introduce additional optics to fit the flatness of these sensors surface. The classical problem of the planisphere appeared then: a huge distortion is created by the imaging system on the edge of the field. Additional complexity came along with the distortion: field flatteners increase the volume and mass of systems, and chromatic aberrations appear. Also, the imaging response is not uniform across the field.

The development of curved sensors is a bio-inspired approach. Mimicking the eye retina, this new technology impacts every future imaging system. By directly correcting the field curvature in the focal plane of imagers, the use of curved sensors suppresses the field flatteners. Less optics means less misalignments and instrumental errors, increases the stability and image homogeneity, and reduces the dependence to environmental condition. Thereby it improves image acquisition quality and then reduces image post-processing costs.

CURVE is now targeting the mass production of its curved sensor, with the support of the European Commission as well as the support of the European Space Agency."

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NHK publishes another article about its 3-layer organic sensor:

"The number of pixels in the organic image sensor we have developed is 320 (horizontal) × 240 (vertical), the pixel pitch is 20 μm, and the frame rate is 60 Hz.

We will continue our R&D efforts to reduce the pixel sizes, increase the number of pixels, and reduce noise, thus accelerating the realization of compact, high-resolution single-chip color cameras.

Note: The blue-sensitive organic film was developed in collaboration with Nippon Kayaku Co., Ltd."

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OSA Advances in Optics and Photonics publishes a tutorial paper "Fundamentals of automated human gesture recognition using 3D integral imaging: a tutorial" by Bahram Javidi, Filiberto Pla, José M. Sotoca, Xin Shen, Pedro Latorre-Carmona, Manuel Martínez-Corral, Rubén Fernández-Beltrán, and Gokul Krishnan from University of Connecticut (USA), Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (USA), Institute of New Imaging Technologies(Spain), University of Burgos (Spain), University of Valencia (Spain).

"This tutorial presents an overview of the fundamental components and basics of the current 3D optical image acquisition technologies for gesture recognition, including the most promising algorithms. Experimental results illustrate some examples of 3D integral imaging, which are compared to conventional 2D optical imaging. Examples of classifying human gestures under normal and degraded conditions, such as low illumination and the presence of partial occlusions, are provided. This tutorial is aimed at an audience who may or may not be familiar with gesture recognition approaches, current 3D optical image acquisition techniques, and classification algorithms and methodologies applied to human gesture recognition."

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MDPI paper "Current-Assisted SPAD with Improved p-n Junction and Enhanced NIR Performance" by Gobinath Jegannathan, Thomas Van den Dries, and Maarten Kuijk from Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, promises dramatic improvements:

"Single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) fabricated in conventional CMOS processes typically have limited near infra-red (NIR) sensitivity. This is the consequence of isolating the SPADs in a lowly-doped deep N-type well. In this work, we present a second improved version of the “current-assisted” single-photon avalanche diode, fabricated in a conventional 350 nm CMOS process, having good NIR sensitivity owing to 14 μm thick epilayer for photon absorption. The presented device has a photon absorption area of 30 × 30 µm2, with a much smaller central active area for avalanche multiplication. The photo-electrons generated in the absorption area are guided swiftly towards the central area with a drift field created by the “current-assistance” principle. The central active avalanche area has a cylindrical p-n junction as opposed to the square geometry from the previous iteration. The presented device shows improved performance in all aspects, most notably in photon detection probability. The p-n junction capacitance is estimated to be ~1 fF and on-chip passive quenching with source followers is employed to conserve the small capacitance for bringing monitoring signals off-chip. Device physics simulations are presented along with measured dark count rate (DCR), timing jitter, after-pulsing probability (APP) and photon detection probability (PDP). The presented device has a peak PDP of 22.2% at a wavelength of 600 nm and a timing jitter of 220 ps at a wavelength of 750 nm."

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OSA publishes a paper "Alignment-free filter array: Snapshot multispectral polarization imaging based on a Voronoi-like random photonic crystal filter" by Kazuma Shinoda and Yasuo Ohtera from Utsunomiya University and Toyama Prefectural University, Japan.

"We develop a photonic crystal filter with a new structure and propose a method to realize a snapshot multispectral polarization camera by mounting the filter on a monochrome imager with no requirement for a specific alignment. The developed filter is based on the Voronoi structure, which forms multilayered photonic crystals with random wave-like structures in each of the Voronoi cells. Because the transmission characteristics of the multilayered photonic crystal can be controlled simply by changing the microstructure, there is no need to change the manufacturing process and materials for each Voronoi cell. Furthermore, the Voronoi cell is randomly distributed so that the filter can be junctioned with the imager at arbitrary positions and angles without the need to position the filter during mounting, although it requires measurement of the camera characteristics and an image restoration process after filter mounting. In this experiment, we evaluated to reconstruct spectra as well as linearly polarized components and RGB images in the visible wavelength range from a single exposure image."