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Ibeo publishes a video on LiDAR performance in fog and ways to improve it:

TI video shows an importance of clean power supply for image sensors:

Trioptics publishes its active alignment system video:

ST publishes a video on choosing cover glass for its dToF proximity sensors (a longer version of this video is here):

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 Yole Developpement's Q4 2021 Quarterly CIS Market Monitor updates on the market status:

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SeekingAlpha publishes a transcript of Onsemi Q4 2021 earnings report. Few quotes:

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0033.com: On August 18, 2021, Lalaxycore was officially listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Before the market, the total market value of Galaxycore once exceeded 100 billion yuan. On the first day of trading, Galaxycore  shares surged by 145.13%, and a total market value of 88.086 billion yuan.

As of January 28, 2022, Galaxycore's market value was 64.096 billion yuan, down by 17% within half a year of listing.

Zhao Lixin, the founder, chairman and CEO of Galaxycore worth is 28.2 billion yuan ($4.4 billion), down from $5.7 billion in August.

From January to June 2021, Galaxycore achieved operating income of 3.69 billion yuan, an increase of 50.99% over the same period last year. The net profit was 640 million yuan, an increase of 92.14% over the same period last year. The main reasons for the increase in the company's operating performance from January to June 2021 were that the company's business continued to grow, unit prices rose, and gross profit margins also improved.

Although the growth rate is high, the share of Galaxycore is still small. In 2020, the global share of Gekewei's CIS sales revenue accounted for 4%, ranking fifth.

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NHK reports that it was able to develop a 240fps 33MP broadcast camera for 4x slow motion video:

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BusinessWire: The MIPI Alliance announces a major update to its MIPI Camera Serial Interface 2 (MIPI CSI-2) interface. CSI-2 v4.0 adds an always-on imaging that operates over as few as two wires to lower cost and complexity for ultra-low-power machine vision applications. CSI-2 v4.0 also adds multi-pixel compression for the latest generation of advanced image sensors and RAW28 color depth.

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2018 NHK paper "Flicker-Free Method for Video Captured at 120-Hz Frame Frequency by Interlaced Scanning and Electrical Shutter" by Toshiki ARAI and Hiroshi OHTAKE proposes interlaced approach to eliminate 50/60Hz flicker in 8K video:

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Vrije Universiteit Brussel publishes a PhD thesis "Current-assisted SPAD sensors fabricated in conventional CMOS process" by Gobinath Jegannathan.

"In this work, a novel SPAD sensor is presented where the novelty arises from the integration of a large absorption volume and a very small avalanche multiplication volume. Such a detector topology allows to have a thick absorption layer which leads to higher quantum efficiencies for NIR wavelengths. This integration is enabled by “current-assistance” principle where a drift field is created in the substrate by applying a potential gradient. This “current-assisted SPAD” is fabricated in a cost-effective CMOS process which is commercially available."

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trinamiX Face Authentication is the world’s first to fulfill highest biometric security demands while the hardware is invisibly mounted behind an OLED display. The solution was lately put to the thorough test of accredited assessment institutes. It was certified to be spoof-proof behind OLED according to the top standards defined by Android and FIDO Alliance.

To give proof of its higher security, trinamiX has put their technology to the test of accredited assessment institutes. Over a period of several months, it has undergone thousands of spoof attempts including the use of silicone masks with accurate three-dimensional shape. As a result, their face authentication solution has successfully been certified as spoof-proof (Spoof Acceptance Rate = 0 %) according to Android Biometric Class 3 (strong). It furthermore showed to fulfill the high requirements of FIDO Level C – the alliance’s soon-to-be top standard. Based on these assessments, trinamiX Face Authentication is officially approved for integration into Android phones as well as for use in sensitive applications like mobile payment. As the world’s first face authentication solution, it passed all biometric security tests while the hardware was mounted behind an OLED display.

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Semiconductor Engineering publishes "Startup Funding: January 2022" There is a number of imaging startups in the list, mostly from China:

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Sony reports its quarterly results for the quarter ended on January 31, 2021:

• Despite severe conditions in the smartphone market, such as weakness in the Chinese market and shortages of components, especially semiconductors, the efforts we have made heretofore to expand and diversify our mobile sensor customer base, as well as to recover our market share on a volume basis, are having some success.
• However, it is taking longer than expected to introduce the high-performance, high resolution custom sensors that we have been working on with Chinese smartphone makers, so the speed of profitability improvement resulting from an increase in addedvalue products going into next fiscal year will be slightly lower than originally planned.
• Recently, the trend toward Chinese smartphone makers purchasing larger-sized sensors for their high-end products is improving after having stagnated due to the contraction of our business with a certain Chinese customer. We expect the Chinese smartphone market to normalize in the second half of next fiscal year.
• Since we feel better about the possibility of sales growth and further market share expansion next fiscal year, we will focus even more on increasing the added-value of our products and strive to improve profitability.
• On January 25, 2022, Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation completed its initial investment in Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (“JASM”), as a minority shareholder.
• Sony will support JASM by assisting with the start-up of this new logic wafer factory which aims to begin mass production during calendar year 2024.

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IC Insights market report says that "Optoelectronics sales growth was muted in the 2021 rebound due to the lack of a surge in CMOS image sensors, which were held back by trade frictions and technology disputes between the U.S. and China, fluctuations in some key end-use applications, and shortages of ICs and other components used in digital-imaging systems. Optoelectronics sales increased 9% in 2021 to a record-high $47.9 billion, and the large CMOS image sensor category only grew 6% to $20.3 billion last year, says the January report."

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Center for Quantum Devices at Northwestern University publishes a presentation on superlattices for low noise imaging from UV to VLWIR by Manijeh Razeghi:

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MIPI Alliance adopts A-PHY v1.1 automotive SerDes, doubling the maximum downlink data rate from 16 Gbps to 32 Gbps, doubling the uplink data rate and providing manufacturers with additional implementation options. 

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PRNewswire: A physical unclonable function (PUF) is a physical feature that takes advantage of microscopic differences in electronics to create unique security "keys." These keys, when read by an electronic device, help establish or refute the authenticity of the input, thereby either granting or denying access. Now, researchers from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Korea, have designed the first natural PUF. Using native silk fibers obtained from Bombyx mori (domesticated silkworms), the research team designed PUF-based tags. These tags were then used to devise a lens-free, optical (light-based), and portable PUF (LOP-PUF) module.

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PRNewswire: A physical unclonable function (PUF) is a physical feature that takes advantage of microscopic differences in electronics to create unique security "keys." These keys, when read by an electronic device, help establish or refute the authenticity of the input, thereby either granting or denying access. Now, researchers from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Korea, have designed the first natural PUF. Using native silk fibers obtained from Bombyx mori (domesticated silkworms), the research team designed PUF-based tags. These tags were then used to devise a lens-free, optical (light-based), and portable PUF (LOP-PUF) module.

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BusinessKorea: Keeping an earlier promise, SK Hynix has started to mass-production of 50MP sensors with 0.7㎛ pixels. The image quality is said to be "at the same level as Sony products."

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SecuritiesTimes: Omnivision's net profit in 2021 is expected to be in range of 4.468 billion to 4.868 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 65.13% to 79.91%. The net profit after deducting "non-deductible items" (?) is 3.918 billion to 4.268 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 74.51% to 90.10%.

Galaxycore too expects operating income of 6.652 billion to 7.492 billion yuan in 2021, net profit of 1.135 billion to 1.35 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 46.83% to 74.57%; Profits ranged from 1.086 billion to 1.291 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 41.75% to 68.52%, both of which are expected to exceed the revenue growth rate over the same period.

Indeed, Strategy Analytics reports show that Omnivision and other Chinese companies increase their smartphone market share at the expense of Sony and Samsung:

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Panasonic has developed a mass production technology of low-cost far-IR aspherical lenses. These lenses are made of chalcogenide glass having excellent transmission characteristics in the far-IR. In addition to realizing low-cost (approx. half compared to the company’s conventional method) by newly developed glass molding method and mold processing technology, Panasonic is now able to offer a variety of lenses such as diffractive lens, the world's first* highly hermetic frame-integrated lens without using adhesive (leak detection accuracy of less than 1x10-9 Pa･m3/sec in helium leak test).

A low-cost silicon that has been commonly used as the lens material for far-IR sensors is not suitable for high pixel counts due to its low transmittance, so germanium spherical lenses having high transmittance are widely used as the number of pixels increases. However, as the pixel count increases further, the effect of aberration caused by a spherical lens becomes more pronounced. To reduce this effect, combination of many spherical lenses and an aspherical lens will be required, which leads to increase in cost and size.

To resolve this problem, Panasonic has developed a new technology for the low-cost production of high-performance aspherical lenses suitable for far-infrared optical systems, based on the glass molding technology the company cultivated through the production of visible light aspherical lenses for cameras.

Hermetic sealing is important for thermal imaging camera modules. A low cost lens solution makes thermal cameras more accessible to general consumer applications.

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PRNewswire: PDF Solutions announces that SmartSen has selected Exensio Fabless as the platform to perform data management and analytics for their entire family of CIS products.

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CEA-Leti publishes a video about its low power always-on image sensor presented in May last year:Himax also presents its low-power face detecting module:

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Espros presents its new CCD-CMOS process OHC15L:

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In June 2021, Sony introduced STARVIS 2 pixel technology for security cameras:

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Sony publishes a web page devoted to its notable inventions in stacked image sensors:The second notable invention is BSI-optimized photodiode structure in Japanese Patent Number 3759435 by Ryoji Suzuki, Keiji Mabuchi (distinguished inventor at Omnivision now), and Tomonori Mori:

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EET-China and Yahoo-Japan report: "Sony will expand the outsourcing of CMOS image sensor chip manufacturing, of which the pixel layer chip is the first to be manufactured by TSMC.

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IEEE Sensors publishes a video presentation "Multi-Layer ToF: Comparison of Different Multipath Resolve Methods for Indirect 3D Time-of-Flight" by Jonas Gutknecht and Teddy Loeliger from ZHAW School of Engineering, Switzerland.

Abstract: Multipath Interferences (MPI) represent a significant source of error for many 3D indirect time-of-flight (iToF) applications. Several approaches for separating the individual signal paths in case of MPI are described in literature. However, a direct comparison of these approaches is not possible due to the different parameters used in these measurements. In this article, three approaches for MPI separation are compared using the same measurement and simulation data. Besides the known procedures based on the Prony method and the Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) algorithm, the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is applied to this problem. For real measurement data, the OMP algorithm has achieved the most reliable results and reduced the mean absolute distance error up to 96% for the tested measurement setups. However, the OMP algorithm limits the minimal distance between two objects with the setup used to approximately 2.7 m. This limitation cannot be significantly reduced even with a considerably higher modulation bandwidth.

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PRNewswire: Owl Autonomous Imaging (Owl AI), a developer of patented monocular 3D thermal imaging and ranging solutions for automotive active safety systems, today announced $15M in Series A funding.

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Meta (Facebook) publishes a research post "AI that understands speech by looking as well as hearing:"

"People use AI for a wide range of speech recognition and understanding tasks, from enabling smart speakers to developing tools for people who are hard of hearing or who have speech impairments. But oftentimes these speech understanding systems don’t work well in the everyday situations when we need them most: Where multiple people are speaking simultaneously or when there’s lots of background noise. Even sophisticated noise-suppression techniques are often no match for, say, the sound of the ocean during a family beach trip or the background chatter of a bustling street market.

To help us build these more versatile and robust speech recognition tools, we are announcing Audio-Visual Hidden Unit BERT (AV-HuBERT), a state-of-the-art self-supervised framework for understanding speech that learns by both seeing and hearing people speak. It is the first system to jointly model speech and lip movements from unlabeled data — raw video that has not already been transcribed. Using the same amount of transcriptions, AV-HuBERT is 75 percent more accurate than the best audio-visual speech recognition systems (which use both sound and images of the speaker to understand what the person is saying)."

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Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation (SSS) held "Sense the Wonder Day," an event to share with a wide range of stakeholders, including employees, the concept behind the company's new corporate slogan, "Sense the Wonder."

At the event, SSS President and CEO Terushi Shimizu introduced SSS as "a company driven by technology and the curiosity of each individual," and explained that SSS's technology "will create the social infrastructure of the future, and will no doubt lead to a 'sensing society' in which image sensors play an active role in all aspects of life." In addition, he said, "The imaging and sensing technologies we create will allow us to uncover new knowledge that makes us question the common sense of the world and discover new richness hidden in our daily lives.”

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University of Paris-Saclay publishes o PhD thesis "Modeling and simulation of the electrical behavior and the quenching efficiency of Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes" by Yassine Oussaiti.

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