Archives for June 2015

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ESPROS epc660 BSI ToF sensor is probably the world's only ToF device having its detailed datasheet (106 pages) openly available at the company's FTP site.


ESPROS also publishes a Youtube video with a demo of its sensor's capabilities:



Update: Other than the ToF sensor datasheet, ESPROS publishes the detailed board and system design guide, and eye safety analysis.

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Reuters: Sony announces its plans to raise $3.6 billion via new shares and bonds to expand stacked image sensor R&D and production. It's Sony's first new share issue in 26 years, worth close to a tenth of its current market value. The company expects to raise 321 billion yen ($2.62 billion) from a public stock offering and a further 119 billion yen from a convertible bond issue to fund a boost in sensor output capacity at its advanced plants in Japan.

For some reason, Sony PR document blocks copy/paste function, so I'm showing a snapshot of it:

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DPReview quotes Business Weekly Taiwan newspaper speculations that the next Apple iPhone might have a dual rear camera, similar to HTC M9+ and Huawei Honor 6+ phones. The original article talks about an interview with Largan CEO Linen Ping and the chances that Largan business would surge in future. No credible source was cited for these rumors.

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Glasgow University, UK thesis "Structured Photonic Materials for Multi-Spectral Imaging Applications" by Iain James Hugh McCrindle presents a nice overview of the progress in plasmonic and metamaterials-based color filter designs. There are still not really competitive with pigment-based CFAs, but might improve over time:

Plasmonic CFA response (on planar surface)

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Insights From Leading Edge blog overviews image sensor stacking progress and recent publications. "Given the continued, aggressive stacked CIS development underway from independent device manufacturers (IDM) and foundries it’s predictable that stacked chip adoption will occur very rapidly over the next few years."

Sony ISX014 Stacked dice (Chipworks)

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It came to my attention that The National Academies Press book "Seeing Photons: Progress and Limits of Visible and Infrared Sensor Arrays" (2010) is available for free download. The authors of the book are stated as Committee on Developments in Detector Technologies, Standing Committee on Technology Insight—Gauge, Evaluate, and Review, and Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences. The book is heavily skewed toward military and space applications:


Talking about the progress of single photon detecting technology, the book has predicted in 2010:


There is also in interesting graph comparing DRAM capacity with imager resolution growth:


and a comparison of LWIR technologies:

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Imaging Resource posts a nice compilation of Sony 1-inch sensor 960fps slow motion videos. While other slow motion videos were published in the official RX100 and RX10 Sony playlist, these video clips have long advertisement tails:

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Marketwired: Teledyne Dalsa presents TurboDrive, a proprietary and patent-pending data encoding technology that allows some DALSA GigE Vision cameras to achieve breakthrough speeds, increasing throughput by as much as 150% while retaining 100% image data.

"We're pleased to deliver an innovative speed advantage to customers who need to push beyond the current GigE bandwidth limitations with no loss of data," commented Mark Butler, Product Marketing Manager for Teledyne DALSA, "It's available now in our low-cost Linea line scan cameras, and will continue in future area cameras set to launch in the fall."

The company's technology primer explains how the compression works:

"Leveraging neighborhood effect Image entropy is the first principle used in TurboDrive. But to reduce even further the number of bits required to encode pixel information (with no loss of information), TurboDrive considers the neighborhood effect. The neighborhood of a pixel is the collection of pixels that surround it. Although the exact distance of a neighbor can vary, in this analysis, we will limit our example to the adjacent pixels (i.e. those that directly touch the reference pixel).

For most pixels, there is little pixel to pixel variation and a lot of redundancy. Therefore, it is possible to efficiently use the information of the adjacent pixels to more efficiently encode the reference pixel. One way to see this is looking at a high-pass 2D filter implemented using a convolution. A simple high-pass filter has the sum of all of its coefficients equal to 0. The filter we use in our model has a 3x3 mask and it provides the largest weight to the center pixel.


The result of this filter provides the difference between the reference pixel at the center, and four of its closest neighbor. It can be seen that, for a uniform image, the 9 pixels have the same value and the result out of this filtering operation is 0. Essentially, the less pixel to pixel variation, the smaller the value output by this high-pass filter. One can intuitively understand it takes less bits to encode a small value than to encode a large value. Obviously, it is possible to play with the weights of the 9 filter coefficients of this model to adapt to the image content."

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Marketwired: Teledyne Dalsa presents TurboDrive, a proprietary and patent-pending data encoding technology that allows some DALSA GigE Vision cameras to achieve breakthrough speeds, increasing throughput by as much as 150% while retaining 100% image data.

"We're pleased to deliver an innovative speed advantage to customers who need to push beyond the current GigE bandwidth limitations with no loss of data," commented Mark Butler, Product Marketing Manager for Teledyne DALSA, "It's available now in our low-cost Linea line scan cameras, and will continue in future area cameras set to launch in the fall."

The company's technology primer explains how the compression works:

"Leveraging neighborhood effect Image entropy is the first principle used in TurboDrive. But to reduce even further the number of bits required to encode pixel information (with no loss of information), TurboDrive considers the neighborhood effect. The neighborhood of a pixel is the collection of pixels that surround it. Although the exact distance of a neighbor can vary, in this analysis, we will limit our example to the adjacent pixels (i.e. those that directly touch the reference pixel).

For most pixels, there is little pixel to pixel variation and a lot of redundancy. Therefore, it is possible to efficiently use the information of the adjacent pixels to more efficiently encode the reference pixel. One way to see this is looking at a high-pass 2D filter implemented using a convolution. A simple high-pass filter has the sum of all of its coefficients equal to 0. The filter we use in our model has a 3x3 mask and it provides the largest weight to the center pixel.


The result of this filter provides the difference between the reference pixel at the center, and four of its closest neighbor. It can be seen that, for a uniform image, the 9 pixels have the same value and the result out of this filtering operation is 0. Essentially, the less pixel to pixel variation, the smaller the value output by this high-pass filter. One can intuitively understand it takes less bits to encode a small value than to encode a large value. Obviously, it is possible to play with the weights of the 9 filter coefficients of this model to adapt to the image content."

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Sharp keeps investing in CCD development, presenting 14 new products and few more marked "under development:"

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Sharp keeps investing in CCD development, presenting 14 new products and few more marked "under development:"

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ESA Technology Exchange: Pixpolar pixel has been considered for ESA space programs, although the original article only mentions "A Finnish company [that] has developed a new image sensor technology based on patented MIG (Modified Internal Gate) pixel architecture."

"The Company has participated in the development of a silicon drift detector (SDD) for X-ray applications within the TRP activity. The main goal of the project was to introduce extremely low noise SDD macro-pixels for X-ray detection applications. The Company is able to produce very low noise photon detectors for X-ray, visible, UV, near infra-red, and particle detection applications. MIG sensors are ideally suited for Space application as they enable simultaneously asteroid tracking as well as direct detection of planets around stars through continuous readout. Increasing the frame rate does not increase the noise, there are no interface issues, and they are tolerant to radiation damage."

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Albert Theuwissen continues his IISW review, this time talking about stacked sensors from Omnivision, Sony, Olympus, TSMC, and NHK.

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16-megapixel IISW 2015 group picture and few others are posted on the Workshop site. If participants have interesting photos to post they are welcome to email them to jsolhusvik@imagesensors.org to add them to the web page.

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PRNewswire: Tektronix names Omnivision among early adopters of the new MIPI C-PHY standard, published in September 2014. OmniVision's OV23850 and OV21840 20+ megapixel image sensors for smartphones have implemented the C-PHY 1.0 interface. Using Tektronix C-PHY Essentials analysis software, OmniVision and Tektronix were able to successfully validate and characterize the C-PHY interface used on the two new sensors.

"With an up to 17.1 Gb/s data rate over a nine-wire interface, C-PHY provides the performance needed for high megapixel count image sensors along with low power consumption," said Brian Reich, GM, Performance Oscilloscopes, Tektronix. "Our solution for C-PHY transmitter testing allows engineers to detect issues early on in the product development phase and confidently assures transmitter devices' performance and interoperability."

"OmniVision is excited to have Tektronix's oscilloscope-based C-PHY Essentials software for validating the next generation MIPI interface. With its three-wire signaling, C-PHY represents a significant design and test challenge," said Paul Gallagher, senior director of marketing and business development at OmniVision. "With the help of Tektronix C-PHY Essentials, we were able to easily set up cameras utilizing the OV23850 and OV21840 sensors and confirm the C-PHY interface's compliance with the MIPI specification."

For some reason, the original announcement of OV23850 and OV21840 in Nov. 2014 does not mention C-PHY interface feature.

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e2v publishes its IISW 2015 papers on its web site:

"Electron Multiplying Device Made on a 180 nm Standard CMOS Imaging Technology" by Pierre Fereyre, Frédéric Mayer, Mathieu Fournier, Clément Buton, Timothée Brugière, and Rémi Barbier presents electron multiplying CMOS pixel:


e2v also publishes another IISW paper: "CMOS Charge Transfer TDI with Front Side Enhanced Quantum Efficiency" by F. Mayer, S. Pesenti, F. Barbier, H. Bugnet, J. Endicott, F. Devriere, T. Ligozat

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Albert Theuwissen continues his review of IISW 2015, now posting the part about image sensors for digital photography. This part talks about Samsung BSI APS-C sensor, Canon and Sony sensors with PDAF in every pixel, and DALSA large area CCD.

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GlobeNewsWire: TowerJazz announces that BrightWay Vision has chosen its TS18IS process to manufacture image sensors for its patented automotive cameras, specifically forward looking cameras in vehicles, to allow visibility in all weather conditions. BrightWay Vision has developed BrightEye, an advanced camera for day and night-time forward facing driver assistance functions based on gated imaging technology.

TowerJazz and BrightWay Vision jointly developed a unique gated pixel, something that until now has never been produced on silicon as it requires extremely fast charge transfer on the pixel. This sensor, based fully on a CMOS process, provides superior performance over competing solutions based on thermal vision technologies, and is much more cost effective. A "gated" sensor allows collecting light that is reflected back from objects at a specific distance from the vehicle, thus eliminating the noise level that is usually associated with ambient light. This sensor also allows the system to accurately measure the distance of certain objects from the vehicle and alert the driver accordingly.

BrightWay's Youtube video compares different vision technologies. The clip consists of three video channels captured simultaneously by three different cameras with the same field of view, positioned in the same direction:

• Pulsed Light & Gated Image Sensor (BrightWay Vision active-gated imaging technology).
  Outcome: The image is clear and the person in the kayak is noticeable. The backscatter residual signal originating from the reflected signal from nearby droplets is negligible.
• Continuous Near Infrared Light & HDR Image Sensor.
  Outcome: Backscatter originating from the reflected signal from nearby droplets is masking the image.
• Passive LWIR.
  Outcome: The emitted signal of objects (e.g. person on the kayak) are masked due to the droplets’ emitted signal.

"We are absolutely thrilled with the performance of our sensor using TowerJazz's leading edge CIS technology," said Ofer David, CEO of BrightWay Vision. "The tight cooperation on the development between our R&D team and the excellent pixel development team of TowerJazz, allowed us to produce a very high performing sensor that is now being evaluated by leading car manufacturers."

"Our distinctive technology and deep knowledge and experience in global shutter pixels allowed us to develop a unique pixel that cannot be found elsewhere and can provide a gated image in a high frame rate with extremely good pixel properties," said Avi Strum, VP and GM of the CIS Business Unit at TowerJazz. "We have very high confidence in BrightWay's capabilities and ability to drive this breakthrough solution into the automotive market."

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Qualcomm Research presents deep learning-based object recognition running on mobile device, powered by its Zeroth platform:

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DigiInfo TV publishes a video of a compact 8K camera and environment presented at NHK Open House days at the end of May:



One of the biggest NHK challenges is implementing the high speed video processing and delivering the broadcast traffic. Videonet article discusses a rapid adoption of PERSEUS codec developed by V-Nova, which possibly solves these problems. The London, UK-based startup V-Nova has been established in 2011, but came out of stealth mode in April 2015 "claiming that PERSEUS completely shifts the bit rate curve and makes it possible to deliver UHD in HD bit rates, HD in SD bit rates and SD in sub-audio bit rates."


V-Nova founders discuss the disruptive nature of their proprietary codec technology in this pre-launch Youtube video:

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Eric Fossum posts his papers presented at IISW 2015:

L. Anzagira and E.R. Fossum, Color Filter Array Patterns Designed to Mitigate Crosstalk Effects in Small Pixel Image Sensors, in Proceedings of the 2015 International Image Sensor Workshop, Vaals, The Netherlands, June 8-12, 2015.

L. Anzagira and E.R. Fossum, Two Layer Image Sensor Pixel Concept for Enhanced Low Light Color Imaging, in Proceedings of the 2015 International Image Sensor Workshop, Vaals, The Netherlands, June 8-12, 2015.

S. Masoodian, A. Rao, J.J. Ma, K. Odame and E.R. Fossum, A 2.5pJ Readout Circuit for 1000fps Single-Bit Quanta Image Sensors, in Proceedings of the 2015 International Image Sensor Workshop, Vaals, The Netherlands, June 8-12, 2015.

E.R. Fossum, Multi-Bit Quanta Image Sensors, in Proceedings of the 2015 International Image Sensor Workshop, Vaals, The Netherlands, June 8-12, 2015.

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Chipworks image sensor analyst Ray Fontaine publishes his thoughts on IISW 2015 and related topics, and also covering some parts of Ray's paper at the Workshop. Few quotes:

"As we head into the 3D integration era, I predict packaging inventions will rise as a percentage of the whole. It’s also natural that as the imaging community gains access to lower power and higher density processing all the dreams of years past will come to fruition in the form of innovation at the systems and software level."


"For the time being pixel scaling has essentially plateaued at the 1 µm generation so all the mobile small-pixel leaders have been looking for other knobs to turn. A lot of development has been done to embed color filters into the tungsten aperture grid metal. Sony and ON Semiconductor (Aptina) currently hold the world record (based on Chipworks’ analysis) for getting down to a 1.5 µm thick optical stack, as measured from the back-illuminated (BSI) silicon (Si) surface to the surface of the microlens. There doesn’t seem to be much more to do here, but time will tell."


"Sony has about a two year lead in the domain of stacking image sensor chips... Depending on which flavor of Sony stacked chip system used, the image signal processor (ISP) can be either a homegrown (Sony) 65 nm chip or a TSMC fab’d 40 nm chip... My summary presentation slide and message was: if you aren’t excited about chip stacking, you should become excited about chip stacking!"

Ray's IISW paper can be freely downloaded from Chipworks site.

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Albert Theuwissen posts his brief review and impressions from IISW 2015 held in Vaals, Netherlands last week. "In conclusion : no major new technologies were introduced, neither any pixel size below 1 um, but everything is getting better in performance and more compact in size."

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Beijing, China-based Superpix launches SP8408, "the first excellent price 8-megapixel CMOS image sensor chip, the product in the world’s leading automatic 12 inch BSI process line production, production process without human intervention, to ensure that the product has excellent consistency and stability.

The main performance index of SP8408 is better than other first-class 8M products in the market, the key index sensitivity is 9.5%, and high dynamic range (HDR) camera mode and low illumination enhancement mode. SP8408 pixel size of 1.12um, can be supports 1/4 inch 8 pixel optical lens. SP8408 capacity adequacy, as long as 2.5 months in advance to give demand forecast, can guarantee the stable supply of demand."

The company's LinkedIn article lists SP8408 features:

"The 1/4 inch 8-megapixel RAW data image sensor SP8408 is one of SuperPix’s upgrade products of SP84XX series color image sensors. It is a high performance sensor based on advanced 1.12um BSI pixel architecture. The SP8408 is a high cost-performance image sensor product that can be embedded in portable equipment, and is especially suitable for mainstream smart phones and tablet computer applications.

The SP8408 incorporates 3280 x 2464 effective pixels, advanced low power analog circuits (ASP). The on chip ISP circuits performs sophisticated signal processing including picture flip,auto defect pixel correction,picture flip and lens shading correction,etc.SP8408 supports high frame speed up to 30fps at full resolution, 60fps at 1080P, 120fps at 720p format transferred over a 4-lane Interface. The new "Bright Mode" feature delivers high-frame-rate（slow-motion）video without causing a luminance drop." (sounds a bit like Toshiba "Bright Mode.")


Another Superpix LinkedIn article presents SP0A38 VGA 2.2um pixel SoC.

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Here is the list of the awards presented at last weeks IISW 2015:

IISS Exceptional Lifetime Achievement Award
This Award is made to a member of the image sensor community who has made substantial sustained and exceptional contributions to the field of solid-state image sensors over the course of their career. (Established 2013). The first recipient ; Gene P. Weckler (2013)

2015 Recipient : Dr. Jaroslav (Jerry) Hynecek
“For the invention and development of significant advances in solid-state image sensors including the VP-CCD, impactron, and BCMD devices”

(Jerry Hynecek received his Dipl. Ing. In EE from the Czech Technical University in Prague in 1962 and Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve in Cleveland Ohio in 1974. He joined Texas Instruments in 1976, becoming a TI Fellow in 1990. In 1998 he founded ISETEX and has consulted for several companies. He has published 61 papers and holds 126 US Patents, and among other awards, won the 2003 Walter Kosonocky Award for the Impactron CCD. He has worked on image sensors for most of career, and his seminal work on pinned CCDs and the use of impact ionization is reflected in most of today’s image sensors. He has also served our community through nearly 10 years of editorial work at IEEE TED, as well as technical program committees, and at IISW.)

IISS Pioneering Achievement Award
The Board of Directors of the International Image Sensor Society (IISS) is pleased to announce the creation of a new award, the Pioneering Achievement Award.
This new award is to recognize a person who made a pioneering achievement in image sensor technology, and judged by at least 10 years of hindsight as a foundational contribution.

2015 Recipient : Peter J.W. Noble
“For seminal contributions to early years of MOS image sensors”

(Peter Noble first worked in sensor arrays starting in May 1966, and rapidly developed the basics of MOS based active pixels and self-scanned arrays, now known as image sensors. The first was a simple 7 pixel linear array, then worked through a range of sizes. He set up his own company in the late 60’s and showed the first working moving image system using a 4,916 pixel square array in the early 70’s. For this his company was awarded the Queen’s Award for Technology in 1974. Throughout he looked at and developed other operating systems experimentally, some not published at the time. The company also made and supplied a variety of sensor arrays and systems. His overall ambition was, and still is, being able to give to blind human beings the ability to see well enough to appreciate the world around them. Peter Noble is a consultant to major companies on the strategy combining technology trends, economics and global situations. He is author of two books, and many papers, articles and patents.)

Walter Kosonocky Award
The Walter Kosonocky Award is presented bi-annually 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.

2015 Recipient : “A 1/4-inch 8Mpixel Back-Illuminated Stacked CMOS Image Sensor” ISSCC Dig. Tech. Papers, pp. 484 - 485, Feb. 2013.
Shunichi Sukegawa(1), Taku Umebayashi(1), Tsutomu Nakajima(1), Hiroshi Kawanobe(1), Ken Koseki(2), Isao Hirota(1), Tsutomu Haruta(1), Masanori Kasai(1), Koji Fukumoto(1), Toshifumi Wakano(1), Keishi Inoue(3), Hiroshi Takahashi(1), Takashi Nagano(1), Yoshikazu Nitta(1), Teruo Hirayama(1), Noriyuki Fukushima(1)
1 : Sony, Atsugi, Japan,
2 : Sony LSI Design, Atsugi, Japan,
3 : Sony Semiconductor, Kumamoto, Japan

Best Poster Award
The best poster presentation is selected by the participants of the IISW.

2015 recipient : “Analysis and Reduction of floating Diffusion Capacitance Components of CMOS Image Sensor for Photon-Countable Sensitivity”
Fumiaki Kusuhara, Shunichi Wakashima, Satoshi Nasuno, Rihito Kuroda and Shigetoshi Sugawa, Toholu University, Japan

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A high-profile Kickstarter company Occipital making a structured light 3D sensor integrated onto iPads or iPhone 6 back, presents its internal design in an Youtube video:

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Chipworks has published ST VL6180 ToF proximity sensor reverse engineering report:

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Intel has completed the acquisition of Vancouver, BC, Canada-based smartglass vendor Recon Instruments for an undisclosed amount. Intel has invested in Recon in 2013, and has a time to learn about the company business. The recent Recon Jet glasses launched in April 2015 has an integrated camera, somewhat similar to Google Glass:

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SeekingAlpha publishes comments of Baron Capital's Ron Baron in CNBC appearance: 13 years of data-collection efforts related to driver-assistance technologies has given the company a "essentially a monopoly" position for its ADAS chips and software. "When there's a tilt in the road, these guys will know about it and able to have the car steer a certain way because they've collected millions of miles of traveling [data]..." Mobileye has relationships with 23 out of the 25 top automakers.

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