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AlliedSens becomes an official representative of Caeleste for custom design CMOS image sensor in Asia and America.

Patrick Henckes, CEO of Caeleste says “With the growing demand of custom design sensors, it is critical for Caeleste to rely on the best possible partners to expand our activities worldwide.“

Eiji Watanabe, CEO of AlliedSens says “We are happy to have Caeleste’s cutting edge custom image sensor into our product line in order to fulfill the rapid growing demand of high performance image sensors for industrial, medical and automotive applications in Asia and Americas.”

AlliedSens also represents CMOSIS, PixelPlus and Awaiba.

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Albert Theuwissen continues his report from ISSCC imaging session. The second part presents Forza and NHK 133MP 60fps sensor in 35mm FF format. 484 12b SAR ADCs support that high pixel rate. The pixel size is 2.45 um, 2×1 shared, 2.5T/pixel.

Samsung presents an always on low power sensor having an ultra-low power, low resolution, low quality mode, but waking up as soon as there is any movement in the scene and switching to a normal higher resolution, higher quality mode.

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Business Wire: ON Semiconductor (Aptina) successfully demonstrated its second generation Phase Detect Auto Focus (PDAF) technology featuring a unique pixel micro-lens technology that enables fast focus at 25 Lux light levels. This PDAF has been implemented on a 13MP test chip with 1.1µm pixels and will be utilized in a new product introduction for mobile end-market customers later this year.

The PDAF technology uses two pixels to measure phase information from the target image. This phase information is then used to calculate the direction and the amount the lens needs to move to focus in less than 0.3 seconds, depending on focus actuator speed. Furthermore, ON Semiconductor has implemented a unique pixel micro-lens structure which maintains sensitivity in the PDAF pixels and ensures enough light is captured for PDAF to perform in low-light conditions as low as 25 Lux (similar to a dimly lit room). Competing technologies on the market employ methods that compromise pixel sensitivity and low light auto focus performance.

“ON Semiconductor’s PDAF technology is the result of innovations in both pixel and optical stack design,” said Shung Chieh, VP Mobile and Consumer Division for ON Semiconductor. “The outcome is a reduction of auto focus time by nearly a factor of four and delivers a great experience to the mobile device user. The leading low-light capability of our technology enables smartphone manufacturers to deliver a fast AF experience across all light levels to their customers.”

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Business Wire: Toshiba started mass production of the previously announced 8MP, 1.12um pixel T4KA3 BSI sensor.

The sensor has a new low power circuit design that cuts power consumption to 46% that of Toshiba’s previous generation 8MP T4K35, an improvement over the earlier announcement that only stated 15% improvement. The sensor fits into 6.5mm square camera module, said to be the smallest in the class of 8MP sensors. The 8MP output at 30fps is possible using 2 Lane MIPI interface. The sensor incorporates "Bright Mode" that boosts image brightness up to four times, realizing HD video capture at 240 fps equivalent.

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Allied Vision, vendor of machine vision cameras, confirms Sony plans to stop CCD production. Michael Cyros, Chief Commercial Officer of the company, says in an interview: "Many in the industry had expected this to happen sooner or later. As you know, CMOS sensors have become more and more popular in the last couple of years. With greatly improved image quality, sensitivity, dynamic range and speeds, they have outpaced CCD technology of late. Sony’s decision is a logical step in that context to provide further capacity for CMOS growth."

Thanks to PJ for quoting the link in comments to the earlier post.

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Albert Theuwissen starts publishing his overview of ISSCC 2015 imaging session. The first part talks about the new Sony 20MP/1.43um stacked sensor with two ADCs per column. The dual ADC can be used:

• for increased readout speed (120fps in 16MP/10b mode)
• for 3db noise improvement
• to achieve 1.3e- noise level by multiple reads
• simultaneous stills and video capture

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Optics.org publishes an article on AIT and Sharp development of a colorized IR-illuminated camera: "The technology performs the color processing based on the weak correlation between the reflectance properties in the visible light region of objects and those in the infrared region, and obtains color images of the objects in the same or similar colors as the colors of the objects in visible light." The AIT colorizing algorithms require a modification of image sensor in the camera, but article gives no details on what kind of modification is needed.

Left- nightime image with no active IR illumination Right - IR illumination is on and colorizing algorithms enabled

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PR Newswire: OmniVision and eyeSight announced their co-development of next-generation gesture recognition technology in the industry's smallest form factor. eyeSight's gesture recognition technology, together with OmniVision's OVM6211 global shutter camera solution brings gesture recognition to a wide range of applications. The OVM6211 CameraCubeChip is a complete camera solution with a lens, sensor and packaging that uses a 3um OmniPixel3-GS global shutter pixel to capture 400 x 400 pixel video at 120fps.

"One of the frustrations with gesture recognition solutions in the market today is that they tend to work poorly in low light conditions," said Gideon Shmuel, CEO at eyeSight. "OmniVision's easily integrated OVM6211 global shutter sensor, working in tandem with our gesture recognition technology, can overcome the inherent challenges of recognizing gestures in difficult lighting conditions. This is critical for enhancing user experience and further broadening the scope of potential applications."

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Business Wire: ON Semiconductor presents 1/2.7-inch AR0230CS image sensor aimed to 1080p IP cameras with data rates up to 60fps. The sensor features 3um DR-Pix pixels, an integrated support for HDR video, improved motion compensation, advanced local tone mapping (ALTM), and digital lateral overflow (DLO) that minimizes motion artifacts and enhances HDR colors:


The company also presents AF controller LC898214XD and AF/OIS controller LC898123XC having quite a complex internal structure with 32b DSP and relatively large memories:

AF/OIS controller block diagram

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PR Web: ICAP Patent Brokerage announces for sale of Samsung Techwin Co., Ltd. imaging patents. The portfolio is directed to methods and apparatuses for camera phone modules, including:

1. Nine patents directed to a lens system. These address reduction of an entire length, correction of distortion, increase in viewing angle, high resolution power, securing similar optical performance with fewer lenses, and reduction of variation of resolution power in automatic zooming, etc.
2. Six patents directed to the structure and driving mechanism of the lens module. These allow for the minimization of the size of an optical system, auto-focus or zooming module, cost-saving of materials, and facilitation of electrical connection, etc.
3. Four patents directed to the sliding structure. These address compact size with less thickness, reduction of friction, increase in sliding stroke, user convenience, smooth sliding operation, and better readability of a key pad, etc.
4. One software patent addresses improvement of user convenience in combining images for panorama image.

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ISSCC posts the 2014 demo of Microsoft Kinect-2 ToF sensor on Vimeo:

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This info originally appeared in a number of forums, such as this one, but it has no official confirmation. The info can be a hoax.

Said all that, it seems that Sony intends to discontinue its entire line of CCD products. The story started unfolding at the end of January with closing the production line for the complementary color filters and the Kagoshima 200mm wafer production line. Last week, Framos, one of the Sony CCD distributors, sent the following email to its customers:

"Dear Customer!

This message is to inform that SONY decided to discontinue all their CCD image sensor products! Attached please find the official letters from SONY!

The CCD End-of-Life plan of SONY is the following:
- customers need to order their last-time-buy quantities by end of Aug 2015
- SONY fab will shut-down March 2017
- deliveries can be made until March 2020

Please note: for new designs, especially with CMOS sensors we can offer in-depth technical support and are able to provide reference designs etc to you under certain conditions. Especially we are already working on reference designs of the upcoming IMX25x-series.

If there are any questions or any further need, please contact your FRAMOS account manager, or sales@framos.com as soon as possible!"

Before that, Sony reportedly sent to its customers two announcements dated by the end of January:


Thanks to NA for the info!

Update: According to Sony Semiconductor flyer dated by Feb. 4, 2015, CCD used to be manufactured at Kagoshima and Kumamoto fabs:

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Sony IMX249 low-cost global shutter sensor has already appeared in Point Grey cameras. Now Sony publishes an official IMX249 flyer. There is a difference between Point Grey's announced speed of 41fps and Sony's official 30fps at full 2.35MP resolution. However, on the sample photograph Sony states 60fps for FHD resolution:

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Omnivision patent application US20150041627 "Partitioned silicon photomultiplier with delay equalization" by Eric A. G. Webster proposes 3-wafer stacked photomultiplying imager. The top wafer has photomultiplier diodes with quenchers, the bottom wafer has the readout electronics, while the mid interposer-wafer ensures equal-length interconnects to ensure the equal delay between the PDs in each pixel, and so improve the timing resolution:

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poLinght publishes its TLens brief datasheet.

The POL10-3215 TLens Silver features:

• Suitable of 1/4-inch sensors
• Supports 3MP to 8MP resolutions
• Easy to add on camera module
• ESD and stray light protection option
• Package size: 4.8mm x 4.8mm
• Minimize additional thickness at fixed focus camera module level
• Centering accuracy < +/-0,05mm
• Response time down to 1ms
• Power consumption as low as 1mW
• Small footprint 3.2mm x 3.2mm
• Focus distance from infinity down to 10cm
• No sensitivity to gravity
• Voltage range at Bottom electrode: 0V to 5V
• Voltage at Top electrode: 0V to 40V
• Maximum applied current: 1mA
• Operating temperature from -10°C to 60°C

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Qualcomm Research publishes Youtube videos of its 8-axis video image stabilization:



and scene classification:

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Videantis and Gestigon partner to team Videantis’s low-power vision processing IP platform with Gestigon’s tracking and gesture recognition. The main aim of the cooperation is to bring gesture and pose recognition technology to the automotive market, which is rapidly adopting a wide variety of vision-based technology. More and more image sensors are entering cars, including depth-sensing technologies. These sensors can be used for skeleton tracking inside and around the car. The driver and passenger’s poses, behavior, and signals can be used for “classical” gesture control but also for more advanced, UX-focused comfort and security features.

“Videantis is the perfect partner for gestigon”, gestigon CEO, Moritz von Grotthuss, says. “Their scalable, efficient processor IP already powers millions of cars on the road, and is a great target for low-power implementations of our algorithms that enable an innovative state-of-the-art user experience. The partnership is a perfect match -- both companies excel in their field of work and have already built a significant customer network among global automotive Tier 1s and OEMs.”

Videantis products

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Broadcom patent application US20150042843 "Systems and methods for improving images" by Ike Aret Ikizyan and Noam Sorek proposes to use network connectivity to improve smartphone camera image processing:

"Systems and methods are provided for improving image accuracy and/or perceptual quality by using supplemental data from sources external to an image sensor and/or a light sensor of an imaging device without requiring users to manually enter this data. The supplemental data, for example, may include lighting condition information retrieved from databases that provide general weather information, color temperature models, images in a similar environment, control setting information of those images, statistical information of those images, and/or any other information that may be used to improve the accuracy and/or perceptual quality of an image that was or will be captured. In some aspects, if the image has not yet been captured, the supplemental data may be used by the imaging device to adjust appropriate control settings (e.g., a color balance setting, a flash setting, an aperture setting, a shutter speed setting, an exposure compensation setting, an ISO setting, a light frequency setting, a noise reduction setting, a sharpening setting, etc.) such that the image can be captured accurately and/or with higher perceptual quality. In some aspects, if the image has already been captured, the supplemental data may be used to adjust the image itself so that it accurately reflects the environment in the image and/or improves the perceptual quality.

...environment identification module 202 may determine the environment using a global positioning system (GPS) sensor, a Wi-Fi-based positioning system (WPS) sensor, a gyroscopic sensor, an accelerometer, a magnetometer, and/or other sensors. One or more of these sensors may be part of imaging device 102."


One could expect such kind of patents come from Apple, Broadcom is a surprising source for that.

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Samsung patent application US20150041940 "Image sensor and electronic device including the same" by Gae Hwang Lee, Kyu Sik Kim, and Yong Wan Jin proposes a micro color splitter instead of color filter in front of the pixels, somewhat similar to what Panasonic presented 2 years ago. Samsung's application shows nano-structures splitting the light:


Update: Incidentally, Nokia patent application US20150042850 "Apparatus and a method for imaging" by Radu Bilcu and Martin Schrader published almost simultaneously with the Samsung one. Nokia presents a hierarchical color splitter between different image sensors or parts of them:

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Image Sensors Conference, to be held in a month in London, UK, publishes an interview with one of its presenters, David Stork, Fellow and Research Director of the Computational Sensing and Imaging Group at Rambus Labs. The interview is mostly devoted to the lensless image sensor with grating instead of lens, already shown earlier on other conferences. Few quotes:

"In short, the grating produces an image blob on the sensor array that is meant for computers, not humans and unlike in a traditional camera, in our lensless smart sensor the image is computed using special algorithms. I’m particularly intrigued and encouraged by our most recent work on designing gratings and subsequent digital processing to address particular image sensing tasks such as image change detection, visual flow estimation, face detection, object tracking, people counting, and so on."

"Several facts are clear, though: our resolution is lower than that typically discussed at Image Sensors—thousands or tens of thousands of effective pixels, not millions or billions. Moreover, because of our sensor small size, we do not collect much light compromising our low-light sensitivity. We are confident that there are many large application areas for our sensors, even given these constraints."

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Among many comments on yesterday's Sony Corporate Strategy meeting, Financial Times stands out claiming that Sony will likely spin off its image sensor business in future. Here is the quote, believe it or not:

"Sony plans to make the department responsible for the Walkman brand a separate subsidiary in October. This would likely be followed by the spin-off of the device division including image sensors in the future, according to Kazuo Hirai, [Sony] chief executive."

Update: EETimes too quotes FT article on the image sensor business spin-off.

Update #2: Nikkei quotes Sony CEO intending to spin-off most businesses and keep the HQ small:

"We will spin off businesses that are currently run by the main body one by one," Hirai said. "(By leaving only departments related to management, R&D, etc to the main body), we will make small headquarters to increase the speed of making management strategies and decisions."

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TI has updated its ToF imaging web page. The new version includes a fairly detailed ToF camera system design guide, and a comparison of different 3D depth imaging approaches:

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Business Wire: MIPI Alliance introduces CSI-2 v1.3, an update to its Camera Serial Interface (CSI) spec. The new interface operates CSI-2 on either of two physical layer specs: D-PHY, which CSI-2 has used traditionally, as well as MIPI C-PHY, a new PHY that MIPI Alliance released as v1.0 in September 2014. Products may implement CSI-2 solutions using either or both PHYs in the same design.

MIPI C-PHY uses 3-phase symbol encoding of about 2.28 bits per symbol to transmit data symbols on 3-wire lanes, or “trios,” with embedded clocking, facilitating longer trace reach and maximizing camera port configurations on mobile platforms. MIPI CSI-2 v1.3 with C-PHY provides performance gains, increased bandwidth delivery of 22.7 Gbps over four lanes at 2.5 Gsps (Giga-symbols per second) for realizing higher resolution, better color depth, and higher frame rates on image sensors while providing pin compatibility with MIPI D-PHY. Popular imaging formats including 4K video at 30fps using 12 bits per pixel may be delivered using a single MIPI C-PHY lane.

CSI-2 with D-PHY v1.2 can achieve a peak transmission rate of 2.5 Gbps over a single lane or 10 Gbps over four lanes. A 12bpp, 30 FPS 4K video can be transmitted using two data lanes.

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Sony announces 4 new image sensors.

IMX290LQR and IMX291LQR are 1/2.8-inch, 2.3MP 2.9um BSI pixel CMOS sensors featuring an improved IR sensitivity and WDR modes. The new 2.9 µm BSI pixel is said to provide two or more times the sensitivity in the visible-light region and three or more times the sensitivity in the NIR region than that of the existing Sony product (IMX236LQJ). In addition, two types of WDR are provided: IMX290LQR has multiple exposure and DOL (Digital Overlap) -WDR function, while IMX291LQR has only multiple exposure WDR.

The multiple exposure-type WDR outputs one set of two or four frames with different exposure times. The gain can also be set separately for each frame in addition to the exposure time.

The DOL-type WDR function outputs the data for up to three frames with different storage times line by line. By performing special signal processing with an ISP or other device at the image sensor rear-end, this is said to improve the picture quality under low illumination compared to the multiple exposure-type WDR function.

Sony publishes quarter-resolution low-light images comparing the new sensors with the older IMX236LQJ, both shot at 0.08 lux, F1.4 lens 1080p30 mode (click to expand):

Older IMX236LQJ, gain 48dB

New IMX290LQR, gain 63dB

2.35MP IMX302LQJ is yet another member of 5.86um pixel-based global shutter sensor (Pregius) aimed to industrial and machine vision market. The sensor's speed is 64.1fps with 12b ADC.


Update: Talking about Sony global shutter sensors, IMV Europe quotes Thad Smith, director of business for image sensor products at ON Semiconductor: "IMX174 can indeed be considered a disruptive technology. The technology demonstrates the possibilities of the new charge-based pixel approach and sets a new benchmark for image quality. However, while IMX174 is a single part in the portfolio, On Semiconductor’s image sensors offer a larger range of solutions for the industrial market. This is a key differentiator." In recent months, Sony appears to release quite a few IMX174 derivatives featuring the same 5.86um global shutter pixels. And there is a 2nd generation of its global shutter pixel coming.

The 6.84MP ICX816AQG 1/1.1-inch CCD targets traffic monitoring cameras and features 3.69um pixels with high sensitivity and low smear:


Update: For some reason, as of Feb. 21, 2015, Sony has withdrawn the ICX816AQG CCD announcement. The links to it are broken.

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PR Newswire: OmniVision is collaborating with Almalence to bring DSC-like performance to mobile applications. The coupling of 10MP OV10823 and 13MP PureCel OV13850 image sensors with Almalence's computational imaging algorithms allows for the capturing of high resolution images or videos in low-light conditions.

"When using Almalence's algorithms, our high performance OV13850 PureCel image sensor can enable high quality video recording in full resolution at 30 frames per second for zero shutter lag, and also can support high frame rate 1080p HD video at 60 frames per second with electronic image stabilization," said Tehzeeb Gunja, senior partnership and business development manager at OmniVision.

1.4um OmniBSI-2 pixel OV10823 performance is augmented by Almalence's low-light enhancement technology, which can enable 10dB reduction in noise without washing out desirable image details. Cameras using super resolution can experience a 1.5 to 2x effective resolution increase. Almalence's super resolution and low-light enhancement technologies are pure software solutions.

"As a result of this technology partnership between Almalence and OmniVision, consumers can benefit from the advantages of marrying advanced hardware and software solutions," said Eugene Panich, CEO of Almalence. "Our companies have developed complementary technologies and our passions are very much aligned. We are delighted to see our computational imaging solution paired with image sensors that operate at this level of performance."

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Sony mid-term corporate strategy for FY2015-17 declares its image sensor business one of the main growth drivers. "In Devices, Sony aims to further bolster its competitive edge in the area of CMOS image sensors by investing to increase production capacity and enhance R&D."

From Sony strategy presentation:

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Pixart Q4 2014 earnings report reveals that "the revenue in 2014 Q4 decreased by 7.7% QoQ to NT$1,097.0 million. Due to favorable product mix and the appreciation of US dollar, 2014 Q4 gross margin increased to 47.8% from 46.4% in 2014 Q3." The company's investor presentation shows the segment sales proportions:

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Qualcomm Snapdragon blog presents few camera features implemented in its recent ISP pipeline. The presented features exploit modern sensors ability of taking few snapshots in a quick succession, and use it for flash and no-flash images combination, all in focus feature, and ghost-free HDR imaging. A new Optizoom feature is supposed to rival the optical zoom quality "by capturing 12 images in a burst capture, and then creating a sharper image by comparing the differences and similarities in the micro movements of the pixels you’ve captured:"


For some reason, Optizoom presented a year ago works in a different way:

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