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Brookman publishes a demo video captured by its High Sensitivity BT200C CMOS sensor evaluation board.

• Sensor : BT200C
• Optical format : 2/3 Type
• Pixel size : 5um x 5um
• Active pixel area : 1920x1080
• ADC resolution : 19-bit ADC (BT FI-Cyclic type)

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Paxnet publishes Samsung business overview with interesting data on the company's image sensor operation (DDI stands for Display Driver IC, AP - Application Processor):

• Samsung's Non-Memory Division revenue breakdown by product: Foundry 41%, CIS 19%, DDI 15%, AP 23%
• Cumulative growth since 2010: Foundry + 1,053%, CIS +457%, DDI 60%, AP +229%
• Samsung's Non-memory Growth Engine: Foundry and CIS.
  Cumulative growth forecast for 2018-2021: Foundry +63%, CIS +87%, DDI -3%, AP +14%
• CIS Division Sales KRW 453.2 billion in 2010 → KRW 2.5 trillion in 2018 → 4.1 trillion KRW in 2021
• Samsung CIS Capacity starts to approach Sony
• Samsung is currently producing low and mid-priced CIS on its 8-inch line
• In addition to the existing 12-inch plant, the company is expanding its market share by expanding the S4, a CIS-only plant.
• Manufacturing process technology is similar to DRAM, so CIS expansion will continue using aging DRAM equipment
• Expected to deploy CIS conversion of Line 11 in 2018 and Line 13 in 2020
• SK Hynix is too expected to expand 12-inch CIS lines in its domestic plants

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Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 865 mobile platform with upgraded camera features:

"Gigapixel Speed ISP: The Snapdragon 865’s ISP operates at staggering speeds of up to 2 gigapixels per second and provides brand-new camera features and capabilities. You can capture in 4K HDR with over a billion shades of color, capture 8K video, or snap massive 200-megapixel photos [Old Snapdragon 845 announced in 2017, as well as the newer 855 and 855+ platforms already supported 192MP]. You can also take advantage of the gigapixel speeds to slow things down and capture every millisecond of detail with unlimited high-definition slow-motion video capture at 960 fps. And now, for the first time ever on a mobile platform, Dolby Vision for video capture creates brilliant HDR footage that’s primed and ready for the big screen. In tandem with the 5th generation Qualcomm AI Engine, the gigapixel speed ISP can quickly and intelligently identify different backgrounds, people, and objects, so they can be treated individually for a truly customized photo."




Qualcomm also announces a mid-range Snapdragon 765 platform with somewhat weaker but still impressive camera support:

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PMD and Infineon are going to unveil their 5um ToF pixel sensor at CES 2020:

"Our new VGA 3D imager IRS2877C is the highest resolution, most flexible and robust depth sensor we have ever developed. With our new 5µm pmd pixel core, we offer VGA resolution to give your applications more detailed 3D data – e.g. for secure FaceID, AR applications, or enhanced photography. We also have incorporated additional on-chip functionalities to enable smaller and cheaper 3D modules."


Thanks to RW for the link!

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ON Semi reports that it has won the Innovative Product of the Year award in the sensor category of the World Electronics Achievement Awards (WEAA) 2019 for its recently announced ARX3A0 CMOS sensor.

The 0.3MP sensor features:

• 1/10th-inch Optical Format
• Super-Low Power Mode and Motion Detection Function with Smart Wake
• High Frame Rate of 360fps
• Ultra-Fast Electronic Rolling Shutter
• Small Die Size 3.35 mm x 3.40 mm
• 560 (H) x 560 (V) [1:1] VGA resolution in a square format
• 2.2 µm BSI non-stacked pixel
• Monochrome with NIR+ implementation
• Low Power consumption:
  less than 19 mW at 30fps
  less than 82 mW at 120fps
  less than 140 mW at 360fps
  less than 3.2 mW standby
• Smart wake motion detection function

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Gpixel announces a NIR-enhanced version of its GMAX0505 sensor, a 26MP global shutter CMOS sensor in a square 1.1” optical format. The GMAX0505 and the new NIR-enhanced GMAX0505RF are part of Gpixel’s 2.5 µm pixel family of pin-compatible C-mount sensors for industrial and scientific applications.

Typically, NIR sensitivity is enhanced by increasing the thickness of the sensor’s epitaxial layer. However, this impacts MTF and limits the effective resolution of the sensor. The new Red Fox process modifies the
sensor’s sensitive layer to achieve an optimal balance between NIR sensitivity and MTF.

The GMAX0505RF achieves a QE of almost 34% at 850 nm and 14% at 940 nm. In comparison, based on publicly available EMVA test data some competitive image sensors only offer a QE of 20% at 850 nm. This equates to a 70% improvement in QE performance.

As the Red Fox process can be applied to any GMAX products, Gpixel’s anticipates other GMAX RF products will be released in the near future. Engineering samples of the GMAX0505RF are available now for evaluation.

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ISSCC 2020 to be held in San Francisco on Feb. 16-20 publishes its agenda with heavy emphasis on ToF imaging. The biggest surprise is a joint Prophesee and Sony paper on event-based sensor:

• A 240×192Pixel 10fps 70klux 225m-Range Automotive LiDAR SoC Using a 40ch 0.0036mm2 Voltage/Time Dual-Data-Converter-Based AFE
  S. Kondo, H. Kubota, H. Katagiri, Y. Ota, M. Hirono, T. T. Ta, H. Okuni, S. Ohtsuka, Y. Ojima, T. Sugimoto, H. Ishii, K. Yoshioka, K. Kimura, A. Sai, N. Matsumoto,
  Toshiba, Japan
• A 1200×900 6μm 450fps Geiger-Mode Vertical Avalanche Photodiodes CMOS Image Sensor for a 250m Time-of-Flight Ranging System Using Direct-Indirect-Mixed Frame Synthesis with Configurable-Depth-Resolution Down to 10cm
  T. Okino, S. Yamada, Y. Sakata, S. Kasuga, M. Takemoto, Y. Nose, H. Koshida, M. Tamaru, Y. Sugiura, S. Saito, S. Koyama, M. Mori, Y. Hirose, M. Sawada, A. Odagawa, T. Tanaka,
  Panasonic, Nagaokakyo, Japan
• An Up-to-1400nm 500MHz Demodulated Time-of-Flight Image Sensor on a Ge-on-Si Platform
  C-L. Chen, S-W. Chu, B-J. Chen, Y-F. Lyu, K-C. Hsu, C-F. Liang, S-S. Su, M-J. Yang, C-Y. Chen, S-L. Cheng, H-D. Liu, C-T. Lin, K. P. Petrov, H-W. Chen, K-C. Chu, P-C. Wu, P-T. Huang, N. Na, S-L. Chen,
  Artilux, Hsinchu, Taiwan
• A Dynamic Pseudo 4-Tap CMOS Time-of-Flight Image Sensor with Motion Artifact Suppression and Background Light Cancelling Over 120klux
  D. Kim, S. Lee, D. Park, C. Piao, J. Park, Y. Ahn, K. Cho, J. Shin, S. M. Song, S-J. Kim, J-H. Chun, J. Choi,
  Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon,
  Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, Korea
  Zeeann, Hanam, Korea
• A 2.1e-Temporal Noise and -105dB Parasitic Light Sensitivity Backside-Illuminated 2.3μm-Pixel Voltage-Domain Global Shutter CMOS Image Sensor Using High-Capacity DRAM Capacitor Technology
  J-K. Lee, S. S. Kim, I-G. Baek, H. Shim, T. Kim, T. Kim, J. Kyoung, D. Im, J. Choi, K. Cho, D. Kim, H. Lim, M-W. Seo, J. Kim, D. Kwon, J. Song, J. Kim, M. Jang, J. Moon, H. Kim, C. K. Chang, J. Kim, K. Koh, H. Lim, J. Ahn, H. Hong, K. Lee, H-K. Kang,
  Samsung Electronics, Hwaseong, Korea
• A 1/2.65in 44Mpixel CMOS Image Sensor with 0.7µm Pixels Fabricated in Advanced Full-Depth Deep-Trench Isolation Technology
  H. Kim, J. Park, I. Joe, D. Kwon, J. H. Kim, D. Cho, T. Lee, C. Lee, H. Park, S. Hong, C. Chang, J. Kim, H. Lim, Y. Oh, Y. Kim, S. Nah, S. Jung, J. Lee, J. Ahn, H. Hong, K. Lee, H-K. Kang,
  Samsung Electronics, Hwaseong, Korea
• A 132dB Single-Exposure-Dynamic-Range CMOS Image Sensor with High Temperature Tolerance
  Y. Sakano, T. Toyoshima, R. Nakamura, T. Asatsuma, Y. Hattori, T. Yamanaka, R. Yoshikawa, N. Kawazu, T. Matsuura, T. Iinuma, T. Toya, T. Watanabe, A. Suzuki, Y. Motohashi, J. Azami, Y. Tateshita, T. Haruta,
  Sony Semiconductor, Japan
• A 0.50erms Noise 1.45μm-Pitch CMOS Image Sensor with Reference-Shared In-Pixel Differential Amplifier at 8.3Mpixel 35fps
  M. Sato, Y. Yorikado, Y. Matsumura, H. Naganuma, E. Kato, T. Toyofuku, A. Kato, Y. Oike,
  Sony Semiconductor Solutions, Atsugi, Japan
• A 0.8V Multimode Vision Sensor for Motion and Saliency Detection with Ping-Pong PWM Pixel
  T-H. Hsu, Y-K. Chen, J-S. Wu, W-C. Ting, C-T. Wang, C-F. Yeh, S-H. Sie, Y-R. Chen, R-S. Liu, C-C. Lo, K-T. Tang, M-F. Chang, C-C. Hsieh,
  National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan
• A 1280×720 Back-Illuminated Stacked Temporal Contrast Event-Based Vision Sensors with 4.86μm Pixels, 1.066GEPS Readout, Programmable Event-Rate Controller and Compressive Data-Formatting Pipeline
  T. Finateu, A. Niwa, D. Matolin, K. Tsuchimoto, A. Mascheroni, E. Reynaud, P. Mostafalu, F. Brady, L. Chotard, F. LeGoff, H. Takahashi, H. Wakabayashi, Y. Oike, C. Posch,
  PROPHESEE, Paris, France,
  Sony Semiconductor Solutions, Atsugi, Japan,
  Sony Electronics, Rochester, NY

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Samsung publishes a half-year report listing its recent achievements:

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MarketWatch: Quanergy CEO says that Elon Musk's criticism of Lidar 'makes no sense':



Innoviz decided to put its non-automotive qualified InnovizPro LiDAR into production. The automotive qualified version named InnovizOne is expected to start sampling next year.

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Smartsens presentation at China Public Security Expo (CPSE 2019) held in Shenzhen, China at the end of October has a part about its future products:

• CMOS Sensors with LED Flicker Suppression (LFS) enabled by SmartSens QCell technology for ADAS and Autonomous Vehicles (AV) applications
• Automotive HDR sensors with SmartSens PixGain HDR technology – are capable of capturing fast moving objects in low and high lighted environment without motion blur
• A large optical format 1080P super-starlight sensor, low light night vision video capture is effortless in security surveillance applications, and industrial cameras
• SmartClarity H-series BSI products have improved IQ performance even under extreme hot temperatures.

Smartsens also releases 4 new image sensors featuring "First-in-Industry DSI Imaging Technology known as SmartPixel-2:" SC2320, SC4335, SC5335, and SC8220 with resolutions in range of 2MP to 8MP.

"When compared to other BSI technology, SC4335 performed with 42% higher sensitivity and 16% better dynamic range. Additionally, with an improved signal-to-noise ratio that makes them ideal for Artificial Intelligence applications, DSI sensors have the potential to dominate in the mid-market sector."

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PRNewswire: Smartsens presentation at China Public Security Expo (CPSE 2019) held in Shenzhen, China at the end of October has a part about its future products:

• CMOS Sensors with LED Flicker Suppression (LFS) enabled by SmartSens QCell technology for ADAS and Autonomous Vehicles (AV) applications
• Automotive HDR sensors with SmartSens PixGain HDR technology – are capable of capturing fast moving objects in low and high lighted environment without motion blur
• A large optical format 1080P super-starlight sensor, low light night vision video capture is effortless in security surveillance applications, and industrial cameras
• SmartClarity H-series BSI products have improved IQ performance even under extreme hot temperatures.

Smartsens also releases 4 new image sensors featuring "First-in-Industry DSI Imaging Technology known as SmartPixel-2:" SC2320, SC4335, SC5335, and SC8220 with resolutions in range of 2MP to 8MP.

"When compared to other BSI technology, SC4335 performed with 42% higher sensitivity and 16% better dynamic range. Additionally, with an improved signal-to-noise ratio that makes them ideal for Artificial Intelligence applications, DSI sensors have the potential to dominate in the mid-market sector."

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Nature paper "Non-contact acquisition of brain function using a time-extracted compact camera" by Takamasa Ando, Tatsuya Nakamura, Toshiya Fujii, Teruhiro Shiono, Tasuku Nakamura, Masato Suzuki, Naomi Anzue-Satoi, Kenji Narumi, Hisashi Watanabe, Tsuguhiro Korenaga, Eiji Okada & Yasunori Inoue from Panasonic and Keio University, Japan, describes an optical camera for brain scanning:

"A revolution in functional brain imaging techniques is in progress in the field of neurosciences. Optical imaging techniques, such as high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT), in which source-detector pairs of probes are placed on subjects’ heads, provide better portability than conventional functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) equipment. However, these techniques remain costly and can only acquire images at up to a few measurements per square centimetre, even when multiple detector probes are employed. In this study, we demonstrate functional brain imaging using a compact and affordable setup that employs nanosecond-order pulsed ordinary laser diodes and a time-extracted image sensor with superimposition capture of scattered components. Our technique can simply and easily attain a high density of measurement points without requiring probes to be attached, and can directly capture two-dimensional functional brain images. We have demonstrated brain activity imaging using a phantom that mimics the optical properties of an adult human head, and with a human subject, have measured cognitive brain activation while the subject is solving simple arithmetical tasks."

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Lucid Vision Labs publishes EMVA1288 data of its Atlas 10 camera based on 24MP Sony IMX530 sensor with 2.74um BSI pixels, a part of 4th generation Pregius-S family announced in October 2019:

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Reuters: Panasonic announces the selling of its loss-making semiconductor unit to Taiwan’s Nuvoton, a part of Winbond Group, for $250M. The sale includes image sensor business and Tower-Panasonic JV fabs. The transaction is expected to close by June 2020.

Panasonic says, "...the competitive environment surrounding the semiconductor business has become extremely severe due to aggressive expansion of competitors, huge investments in the focused area, and industry reorganization through M&A. In such an environment, the Company has come to believe that the even stronger business operation and the continuous investment is critical in order to achieve a sustained growth and expansion of the semiconductor business.

Accordingly, it has concluded that the best option would be to transfer the business to Nuvoton, which highly appreciates the Company’s accumulated technical and product capabilities and therefore has a potential to lead stable growth by leveraging those capabilities."

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Esporos November Newsletter promotes the company's ToF power and noise calculation spreadsheet:

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II-VI presentation on 3D sensing compares different approaches and spectral bands:

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IFNews quotes Laoyaoba report that VGA, 2MP, and 5MP image sensor prices went up by 20-40% due to the recent shortages. As more and more multi-camera configurations are now being applied to smart terminal products, the market demand mainly for mobile phones has further expanded, and the shortage and higher prices may continue.

In the past, Galaxycore used to ship ~100-110M sensors a month, but it's out of stock now. The price of Galaxycore 5MP sensors used to be 50-60 cents a piece, 2MP ones - 30 cents, but now 5MP sensor price grew up to 70 cents, while 2MP is 43 cents.

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EurekaAlert reports that Korean POSTECH University developed a photodiode with increased absorption of the NIR light by using the hourglass-shaped silicon nanowire array. The research team was led by Prof. Chang-Ki Baek and consisted of Kihyun Kim, Myunghae Seo, and Sol Yoon. The team has proved that the hourglass-shaped silicon-nanowire photodiodes has 29% increased NIR photoreseponse at 1,000nm in comparison to the existing planar type silicon photodiode.

Prof. Chang-Ki Baek said “this study used the existing silicon processes that can be produced in mass at low cost and 100% compatible to the semiconductor production. It is very meaningful in that we were able to demonstrate increased photoresponse of the near-infrared light at the wavelength where the existing silicon hardly detect. It is possible that the developed device can optimize the absorption of the near-infrared wavelength desired according to the structure of nanowires such as diameter, length, and pitch. It is expected to provide optical solutions to various fields such as LiDAR of a self-driving vehicles, medical laser, military night vision goggles, image sensors and more.”

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A preprint paper "Deep Demosaicing using ResNet-Bottleneck Architecture" by Divakar Verma, Manish Kumar, and Srinivas Eregala from Samsung R&D Institute Bengaluru, India, proposes CNN network to reduce demisaicing artifacts:

"Demosaicing is a fundamental step in a camera pipeline to construct a full RGB image from the bayer data captured by a camera sensor. The conventional signal processing algorithms fail to perform well on complex-pattern images giving rise to several artefacts like Moire, color and Zipper artefacts. The proposed deep learning based model removes such artefacts and generates visually superior quality images. The model performs well on both the sRGB (standard RGB color space) and the linear datasets without any need of retraining. It is based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and uses a residual architecture with multiple `Residual Bottleneck Blocks' each having 3 CNN layers. The use of 1x1 kernels allowed to increase the number of filters (width) of the model and hence, learned the inter-channel dependencies in a better way. The proposed network outperforms the state-of-the-art demosaicing methods on both sRGB and linear datasets."

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PRNewswire: Actlight presents vital signs monitoring sensor based on its Dynamic Photo Diode. Despite ultra small detector area (less than 0.2mm2) and minimal LED power (less than 1uW/Hz), the sensor is said to deliver higher than 70dB SNR. The ActLight solution provides a strong output signal without AFE, further reducing the power consumption of the overall system.

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GlobeNewswire: STMicroelectronics announces the shipment of its 1 billionth ToF module. ST’s ToF sensors utilize SPADs manufactured at ST’s 300mm front-end fab in Crolles, France. The final module, which integrates the SPAD sensor, a VCSEL, and the necessary optical elements, is assembled and tested in ST’s internal back-end facilities.

“ST has pioneered and transitioned Time-of-Flight technology from its research labs to a fully industrialized family of market-leading products that are now being used in more than 150 different smartphone models and have just passed the 1 billion module milestone,” said Eric Aussedat, GM of ST’s Imaging Subgroup. “In continuing to invest, ST has extended the FlightSense roadmap for Time-of-Flight products from high-performance 1-dimensional ranging devices to multi-zone solutions and most recently adding high-resolution 3D depth sensing capabilities to enable innovative applications using advanced proximity sensing, human presence detection, and laser autofocus.”

The VL6180, VL53L0, and VL53L1 families of products, among others, are in high-volume production for consumer, personal computer, and industrial markets. ST’s vertically integrated manufacturing model for the ToF sensors ensures high levels of service, quality, customer support, and performance.

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Israel-based Voyage 81 startup presentation discusses CFA approaches for low-light imaging (video is here):

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European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC) Meeting on LiDAR held at Eindhoven, The Netherlands on October 30-31, 2019, publishes many of its presentations. Few random slides:

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