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SystemPlus publishes a reverse engineering of ams’ NanEye endoscopic camera:Archives for January 2021
ams’ NanEye Endoscopic Camera Reverse Engineering
f-stop Guru UL backpack review
Samsung CIS Capacity Expansion Chart
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IFNews quotes HSBC report showing Samsung CIS capacity expanison chart:SPAD Super-Resolution Sensing
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Nature publishes a joint paper of Bonn University, Germany, and Glasgow University, UK, "Super-resolution time-resolved imaging using computational sensor fusion" by C. Callenberg, A. Lyons, D. den Brok, A. Fatima, A. Turpin, V. Zickus, L. Machesky, J. Whitelaw, D. Faccio, and M. B. Hullin.Brigates Prepares $207M IPO at Shanghai Stock Exchange
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EastMoney, CapitalWhale, ElecFans: Yet another China-based image sensor company prepares an IPO at Shanghai Stock Exchange - Brigates (Chinese name - Ruixinwei or Ruixin Micro-Tech Innovation or Kunshan Ruixin.)Luminar CES Presentation Compares LiDAR Approaches
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Luminar publishes its presentations at CES2021. The first one done by Matt Weed compares the LiDAR technologies:Modeling of Current-Assisted Photonic Demodulator for ToF Sensor
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Hong Kong University publishes a video presentation "Compact Modeling of Current-Assisted Photonic Demodulator for Time-of-Flight CMOS Image Sensor" by Cristine Jin Delos Santos. The work has won Best Student Paper Award at IEEE Student Symposium on Electron Devices and Solid-State Circuits (s-EDSSC) in October 2020.Review of SPAD Photon-to-Digital Converters
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MDPI paper "3D Photon-to-Digital Converter for Radiation Instrumentation: Motivation and Future Works" by Jean-François Pratte, Frédéric Nolet, Samuel Parent, Frédéric Vachon, Nicolas Roy, Tommy Rossignol, Keven Deslandes, Henri Dautet, Réjean Fontaine, and Serge A. Charlebois from Université de Sherbrooke, Canada, reviews the new opportunities coming from SPAD stacked chip integration.Comments on Hamamatsu Patents Ownership Transfer to Sionyx
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It appears that Federal Circuit decision to transfer an ownership of a number of Hamamatsu patents to SiOnyx has attracted quite a lot of attention from lawyers.Apple iPhone 12 Cameras are Cheaper than iPhone 11’s
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Counterpoint Research says that iPhone 12 cameras cost $3.6 less than iPhone 11's:ToF News: Chronoptics, Opnous, Microsoft
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Chronoptics announces its ToF noise filter and ToF camera based on Melexis VGA sensor:Samsung Adds 4th Sensor to its 108MP Lineup
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BusinessWire: Samsung introduces its latest 108MP mobile sensor, the 0.8um 1/1.33-inch ISOCELL HM3. This is the 4th 108MP sensor in the company's lineup after HMX, HM1, and HM2.CES News: Intel Demos Realsense ID and MEMS LiDAR
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Intel posted two videos with demos of its recently announced Realsense ID and L515 MEMS LiDAR:CES News: Trieye, Orbbeck, Guide Sensmart, Sense Photonics, Innolux, Nuralogix, Opsys, Pioneer, Ibeo
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Trieye presents the recent progress with its low-cost SWIR sensor, including DMS application:Wuhan Guide Sensmart Tech Co, a subsidiary of Guide Infrared, presents its compact thermal imaging modules for smartphones:
MIPI A-PHY Gears
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MIPI publishes an article talking about the A-PHY standard gears. The scaling is quite impressive: speeds up to 16Gbps per lane with PAM4, 8, and 16(!) modulation schemes. The symbol rate stays at 4Gs/s, apparently limited by the long physical link bandwidth:Sony FE 35mm f1.4 GM review
CES News: NII, AIStorm, Innovusion, Brightway, Mcnex
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Japan National Institute of Informatics provides a protection from fingerprint recognition from camera images:A Conversation with Eric Fossum
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Youtube channel Reliability Matters publishes "Episode 59: A Conversation with CMOS Image Sensor Inventor Dr. Eric Fossum."Omnivision Unveils 1080p60 Sensor for Mainstream Security Cameras
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BusinessWire: OmniVision announces the OS02H10, a 2.9um, 1080p image sensor adding the NIR and low light performance of its Nyxel and PureCel Plus technologies to mainstream surveillance cameras. This sensor also offers multiple HDR options at 60 fps. Additionally, when paired with the designer’s selected platform, the OS02H10 can enable a system ultra low power mode for battery-powered cameras with AI functionality.ToF Sensor with Delta-Sigma Feedback
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MDPI paper "High-Linearity High-Resolution Time-of-Flight Linear-Array Digital Image Sensor Using Time-Domain Feedback" by Juyeong Kim, Keita Yasutomi, Keiichiro Kagawa, and Shoji Kawahito from Shizuoka University, Japan, presents a sigma-delta feedback approach to linearize a ToF sensor response:
"This paper presents a high-linearity high-resolution time-of-flight (ToF) linear-array digital image sensor using a time-domain negative feedback technique. A coarse ToF measurement loop uses a 5-bit digital-to-time converter (DTC) and a delayed gating-pulse generator for time-domain feedback to find the zero of the difference between ToF and the digital estimate of the gating-pulse delay while maintaining a constant operating point of the analog readout circuits. A fine ToF measurement uses a delta-sigma modulation (DSM) loop using the time-domain feedback with a bit-stream signal form. Because of the self-contained property of the DSM for low distortion and noise exploited by the oversampling signal processing, the proposed technique provides high-linearity and high-range resolution in the fine ToF measurement. A prototype ToF sensor of 16.8 × 16.8 μm2 two-tap pixels and fabricated in a 0.11 μm (1P4M) CMOS image sensors (CIS) process achieves +0.9%/−0.47% maximum nonlinearity error and a resolution of 0.24 mm (median) for the measurement range of 0–1.05 m. The ToF sensor produces an 11-bit fully digital output with a ToF measurement time of 22.4 ms."
AI Sensor with In-Pixel Charge Domain Processing
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Arxiv.org paper "An Ultra Fast Low Power Convolutional Neural Network Image Sensor with Pixel-level Computing" by Ruibing Song, Kejie Huang, Zongsheng Wang, Haibin Shen from Zhejiang University, China, is also published in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems in December 2020.
"The separation of the data capture and analysis in modern vision systems has led to a massive amount of data transfer between the end devices and cloud computers, resulting in long latency, slow response, and high power consumption. Efficient hardware architectures are under focused development to enable Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the resource-limited end sensing devices. This paper proposes a Processing-In-Pixel (PIP) CMOS sensor architecture, which allows convolution operation before the column readout circuit to significantly improve the image reading speed with much lower power consumption. The simulation results show that the proposed architecture enables convolution operation (kernel size=3*3, stride=2, input channel=3, output channel=64) in a 1080P image sensor array with only 22.62 mW power consumption. In other words, the computational efficiency is 4.75 TOPS/w, which is about 3.6 times as higher as the state-of-the-art."
CES News: Intel Shows its FMCW LiDAR
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BusinessWire: Intel-Mobileye CTO Amnon Shashua shows the company FMCW LiDAR named EyeC. Its mass production is expected to start in 2025:CES News: Intel Shows its FMCW LiDAR
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BusinessWire: Intel-Mobileye CTO Amnon Shashua shows the company FMCW LiDAR named EyeC. Its mass production is expected to start in 2025:CES News: Intel Shows its FMCW LiDAR
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BusinessWire: Intel-Mobileye CTO Amnon Shashua shows the company FMCW LiDAR named EyeC. Its mass production is expected to start in 2025:Omnivision Unveils 3MP Automotive Sensor
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BusinessWire: OmniVision announced the OX03F10 automotive sensor. This sensor expands OmniVision’s ASIL-C viewing camera family with higher 3MP resolution and cybersecurity features that are required as vehicle designers make the transition from Level 2 and 3 ADAS to higher levels of autonomy. The OX03F10 also maintains the family’s unique combination of a large 3.0um pixel with a HDR of 140dB and LED flicker mitigation. The sensor is offered in a 1/2.44” optical format and features a 4-lane MIPI CSI-2 interface.
“In addition to excellent image quality across all lighting conditions, higher resolution and cybersecurity are becoming must haves for the designers of viewing cameras—particularly for SVS,” said Kavitha Ramane, staff automotive product marketing manager at OmniVision. “Our new OX03F10 maintains OmniVision’s unique combination of the industry’s top HDR and LFM capabilities over the entire automotive temperature range, along with ASIL-C functional safety and the best low light performance, while adding the 3MP resolution and cybersecurity features that are required as designers begin to integrate viewing cameras into autonomous vehicle systems.”
This new OX03F10 image sensor is available now for limited sampling in a-CSP and a-BGA packages, and is planned to be AEC-Q100 Grade 2 certified.
Omdia: Samsung Increases its CIS Prices by 40%
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IFNews quotes Omdia reports that 5MP and 8M CIS for low-end and mid-range smartphones are in short supply now. As a result, Samsung has increased the prices by 40% starting December 2020, while other CIS suppliers have increased their prices by ~20%.Smartsens Announces 9MP APS-C Sensor with 3D Stacked Voltage Domain Global Shutter
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Smartsens launches a 9MP Global Shutter sensor product for Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) applications, the SC910GS. Also, the previously launched 4MP SC410GS targets the same market.Yole Webcast on Rise of Thermal Imaging Market
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Yole Developpement publishes its webcast "Thermal imaging: The rise of fever detection – global market applications and evolution" held on Dec. 8, 2020.Image Sensor Noise Tutorial
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Richard Crisp, VP of New Product Development for Etron, continues his image sensor tutorial series. The part 5 title is "Eliminate noise sources in CMOS image sensor designs:"
The following actions can be taken to minimize the noise:Dark noise components can be reduced by:
- Reducing exposure time
- Reducing operating temperature of sensor
- Dark fixed pattern noise for non-saturated pixels can be removed by dark subtraction a.k.a. despiking. It involves subtracting a dark frame from the image frame, pixel by pixel.
- Fixed pattern noise can be removed via a process called flat fielding. The process involves dividing the image frame by a pixel calibration image frame on a pixel-by-pixel basis. The calibration frame is simply a high SNR image of a uniformly illuminated featureless background taken using a focused optical system.
The only noise components that cannot be removed from an image with non-saturated pixels are the read noise, the image shot noise and the dark shot noise. If it is feasible to cool the sensor, the dark shot noise can be reduced to arbitrarily low levels so as to be a non-factor.
Emberion Productizes Graphene-based VGA SWIR Sensor
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Emberion publishes a product page for its graphene-based VGA imager and camera:- Based on Emberion’s VGA-resolution VIS-SWIR image sensor: spectral response range spanning from 400 nm up to 2000 nm
- Fully functional camera core ready for vision system integration comprising implementations for sensor readout & control, AD conversion, calibration, image pre-processing, thermal control and power management
- Optimized readout modes: full VGA & selected ROIs
- A standard C-mount optical interface with one inch sensor form factor
- Potential applications include: machine vision, multispectral and hyperspectral imaging, night vision, medical, automotive, defense










