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Thechniavio prepares "Mobile Image Sensor Market in China 2014-2018" report. There is no much data is available in public domain, other than the forecast that Mobile Image Sensor market in China will grow at a CAGR of 15.35% over the period 2013-2018. Previous Technavio reports have been quite controversial.

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Business Wire: Samsung NX1 DSLR features what it calls the world's first APS-C-sized BSI sensor. The sensor has 28.2MP (pixel size 3.6um) and features 205 phase detect AF points covering 90% of the frame. The AF pixels allow the camera to achieve 15fps of continuous shooting while continuously tracking focus. The camera also supports shooting 4K video with H.265 HEVC codec.

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Reuters: A federal judge has ruled in favor of Sony, overturning a jury verdict for L-3 Communications and invalidating several parts of an image sensor patent held by the defense contractor. The judge said that the jury in 2013 was wrong to find L-3's patent claims were not "obvious" and thus insufficiently unique to be patented. New York-based L-3 sued Sony in 2010 over two patents for the image sensors, which it said were originally developed for military low-light applications.

Law360: The patent in the lawsuit is:

US5541654 "Focal plane array imaging device with random access architecture" by Peter C. T. Roberts

This is a divisional patent. The original patent under the same name has been dropped earlier in the dispute:

US5452004 "Focal plane array imaging device with random access architecture" by Peter C. T. Roberts

Update: The official judge opinion on the case is published here.

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Apple patent application US20140246568 "Photodiode with different electric potential regions for image sensors" by Chung Chun Wan proposes a vertically stacked fully pinned PDs, whereas the bottom one is used as a storage node (SN) for a GS pixel: "The storage node in global shutter pixels is usually located on the same surface of a semiconductor wafer as the photodiode region, and thus typically needs to be shielded in order to maintain the integrity of the charge stored in the storage node. Also, positioning the storage node on the same surface of a semiconductor wafer as the photodiode reduces the amount of surface area of the photodiode that can be exposed to light, and hence reduces the sensitivity of the pixel." So, here is the proposal:

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Omnivision's patent application US20140246561 "High dynamic range pixel having a plurality of photodiodes with a single implant" by Gang Chen, Dajiang Yang, Jin Li, Duli Mao, Hsin-Chih Tai proposes a dual-PD-size pixel where each PD exposure can be independently controlled. This approach is known, "however, one challenge with manufacturing HDR image sensors using this approach is that additional photo masking and implantation steps are required during manufacture, which add to the overall complexity and cost of implementing the HDR image sensors." So, Omnivision proposes to use the same PD implant and masking layer:


Some other possibilities of the large PD implant layouts:

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PR Web, Opli.net: Anitoa Systems, a Palo Alto startup established in 2011, announces what it calls the industry’s first 3e-6 lux ultra low-light CMOS Bio-optical Sensor and solution kit aimed to portable medical and scientific instruments. Anitoa’s single chip CMOS Bio-optical Sensor is capable of detecting 3e-6 lux narrow band light at 550nm with 20nm bandwidth with a better than 13dB SNR in the operating temperature between -25 to 85C, consuming only 30mW.

Anitoa sensor is a small, 5mm x 5mm, and said to be manufactured in mature 0.18um process by "a world-leader specialty foundry." The new compact sensor is expected to replace the bulky and expensive PMTs and cooled CCDs widely used today in molecular diagnostic instruments.

"Anitoa uses process optimization and novel circuit techniques to reduce the various noises of CMOS image sensor to achieve high signal-to-noise ratio. The excessive noise that cannot be eliminated in the chip, due to limitations of physics, is further computed and filtered through software algorithms that “understand” the statistical nature of different sources of noises and signals in the system," the company's whitepaper says.

Anitoa’s single-chip CMOS Bio-optical Sensor is available in the form of a “Solution Kit” for customer evaluation and early adoption. This Solution Kit includes Anitoa’s ULS 24 CMOS Bio-optical Sensor IC, an interface board, and integrated Intelligent Dark-current Management algorithm. The solution kit is priced at $1,500 each. Volume production of Anitoa’s ULS24 CMOS Bio-optical Sensor kit is estimated at 2Q15.

Anitoa executive team members have played leadership roles in well-known Silicon Valley IT and biotech companies such as Philips, ST Micro, Agilent, SST, Promega, Chiron, and Novartis. Anitoa partners with Zhejiang Nano-systems Institute (ZCNI), and the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University in China for clinical application validation and field deployment in that region.

Anitoa ULS24 imager

ULS24 parameters from opli.net article

Update: As noted in comments, Anitoa's whitepaper gives a table with different resolution, SNR and lux rating:

USL24 parameters from Anitoa's whitepaper

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Startup Juncture reports that Qualcomm has acquired Amsterdam, Netherlands-based image and video recognition startup Euvision Technologies. The deal is rumored to be in the range of tens of millions of euros. Euvision was founded in 2010 as a spin-off from University of Amsterdam. Euvision software is capable of recognizing faces, license plates and can identify ID cards, checks, Excel sheets, sunsets, beaches, etc.

A Vimeo video shows the company's pitch:



Thanks to BVB for the info!

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Sharp has announced its GP2Y8E01 3D motion sensor almost a year ago, but, apparently, only in Japanese. The sensor uses LED and 30x30 pixel image sensor integrated in a single module:


For those who can read Japanese, EETimes-Japan explains how it works.

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Business Wire: TowerJazz enhances its customer support through a partnership with Etesian Semiconductor, a provider of ‘boutique’ foundry program management services for products with low to medium volume production. The collaboration offers TowerJazz’s customers the option of using Etesian as program and supply chain manager throughout various stages of design/prototyping, yield analysis, and production. The engagement will focus on the European market and will include projects using all the various process technologies TowerJazz offers, starting with CMOS image sensor applications.

"Etesian employees are very familiar with TowerJazz processes and are located near our Migdal Haemek facility which enables them to react fast," said Avi Strum, TowerJazz’s VP and GM, CMOS Image Sensors Business Unit and VP Sales, Europe. "By utilizing the Etesian team's capabilities and support model, our customers benefit from additional foundry services beyond wafers such as test, packaging, and special starting material."

"With the recent years’ growth of TowerJazz and its superb foundry technology offerings, we are enhancing the support to the customers for the high complexity projects through our ‘boutique’ support model," said Etesian’s Founder and CEO, Elie Toledano.

One notable example of Etesian customer is Anafocus.

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I got an unusual request from Dario Clocchiatti, a fresh graduate from Università degli Studi di Udine, Italy. After reading critical responses on many theses posted in this blog, Dario would like to present his MS degree thesis for a review. The thesis work has been done over a period of six months in CMOSIS, under Guy Meynants supervision.

The thesis "Characterization of Single Pixels in CMOS Image Sensors" is available for download at Google Drive. It covers a wide range of information, starting from various pixel operation aspects, all the way to the electrical measurements (optical characterization is not covered) and even PPD device simulations. Some figures from the thesis:

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Business Wire: ON Semiconductor announces 8.6MP APS-H format CCD aimed to industrial imaging applications. The KAI-08670 TRUESENSE CCD has 7.4um pixel size and is available in monochrome, Bayer Color and TRUESENSE Sparse Color Filter Pattern configurations.

"Many applications, such as those found in industrial inspection, intelligent traffic and surveillance markets, can’t compromise on imaging quality," said Chris McNiffe, VP, Image Sensor Business unit at ON Semiconductor. "The KAI-08670 Image Sensor extends the superior performance of our 7.4 micron CCD family to a new resolution node, expanding options for customers who require this advanced level of imaging performance."

As always, Truesense releases all significant performance parameters with no NDAs:


Engineering Grade devices are available today, with full production planned by the end of the year.

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ISSCC publishes an interesting video of 2014 Plenary Talk by Erik Heijne on particle imaging "How Chips Pave the Road to the Higgs Particle and the Attoworld Beyond" (requires Microsoft Silverlight). Few slides from the presentation:


And here is a Vimeo link to the presentation. Thanks to DSSB for the link!

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ElectroIQ: CMOSIS publishes a fairly detailed article "Global shutter image sensors" by Guy Meynants. The article compares few types of GS pixels, dividing them into charge domain and voltage domain families:

CDS charge domain pixel

CMOSIS' CDS voltage domain pixel

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Apple iPhone6 and iPhone6 Plus smartphones feature new 8MP camera and sensor. While keeping the same pixel size and count, the new sensor features "Focus pixels" and 1080p60 video with HDR mode and "auto image stabilization" (on top of OIS in 6 Plus model and EIS in iPhone 6):

"Focus Pixels are enabled by the new Apple-designed image signal processor. They provide the sensor with more information about your image, giving you better and faster autofocus that you can even see in preview."

"Auto image stabilization makes up for motion blur and hand shakiness by taking four photos with a short exposure time. Then the best parts of those photos are combined into one image with as little noise, subject motion, and hand shake as possible."

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SeekingAlpha: ADAS vision processor maker Mobileye climbs to about 2x of its IPO valuation a month ago, crossing $11b mark. The most recent surge is attributed to Toyota design win:

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Marketwired: Ziptronix Direct Bond Interconnect (DBI) hybrid bonding has been used by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in is three-layer imager, made with wafer-to-wafer and die-to-wafer processes. The demonstrator, a vertically integrated x-ray photon imaging chip (VIPIC) detector, was developed by a collaboration of scientists and engineers from Fermilab, Brookhaven National Laboratory and AGH University from Poland.

First, the wafer-to-wafer bonding was used to bond two ASIC wafers with TSVs. Then, the bonded wafer pair is thinned to expose the TSVs on one side, then singulated. The singulated die stacks are then bonded to an x-ray sensor wafer using die-to-wafer hybrid bonding. Subsequent thinning of the other side of the bonded wafer pair allows backside connections to the 3-layer assembly.

"Implementing DBI hybrid bonding enables us to design sophisticated combinations of sensors and readout electronics," said Ron Lipton, Staff Scientist, Fermilab. "By enabling vertical signals through stacked sensor, readout and processing layers, we can design large-scale arrays that are side-edge buttable with high fill factor."

"This is an advanced three-layer imaging chip manufactured using DBI hybrid bonding," said Paul Enquist, CTO, Ziptronix. "Electrical data shows that this approach achieves lower noise, higher bandwidth and higher gain due to lower capacitive load when compared with parts stacked using bumping. This increases the sensitivity of the 3D image sensors, making them ideal for use in high-end applications."

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Toby Delbruck, Zurich University, Switzerland, posted a Youtube demo of his Dynamic Vision Sensor: "Conventional vision sensors see the world as a series of frames. Successive frames contain enormous amounts of redundant information, wasting memory access, RAM, disk space, energy, computational power and time. In addition, each frame imposes the same exposure time on every pixel, making it difficult to deal with scenes containing very dark and very bright regions.

The Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS) solves these problems by using patented technology that works like your own retina. Instead of wastefully sending entire images at fixed frame rates, only the local pixel-level changes caused by movement in a scene are transmitted – at the time they occur. The result is a stream of events at microsecond time resolution, equivalent to or better than conventional high-speed vision sensors running at thousands of frames per second."

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SeekingApha's Ambarella quarterly call transcript has an update on the company's upcoming 14nm products:

Fermi Wang - President and CEO:

First of all, 14 nanometer is still one of our main focuses on the R&D side this year, and it’s essential to us, because we believe when we deliver our 14 nanometer products for our next generation camera products, it will help us continue to improve our performance and also increase the gap between us and competitors in terms of power consumption and video performance.

And the current schedule, we are still on track, and we believe we will have a product coming out next year.

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EETimes-Asia publishes an interview with Nicky Lu, chairman of Etron (Hsinchu, Taiwan), chair of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association and chair of the World Semiconductor Council, talking about China intentions in semiconductors. Few quotes on the offer to Omnivision:

If it succeeds in the OmniVision acquisition, China can easily take OminVision's business away from TSMC and bring it to SMIC. As far as Lu is concerned, "The game is fair, and things in China are moving faster than ever."

By taking over the world's leading CMOS image sensor vendor, China will gain instant access to the global market and the company's formidable market share. More importantly, such a deal generates demand for volume production of CMOS image sensors in China (not in Taiwan)—enough to fill the capacity of home-grown Chinese fabs like Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) based in Shanghai.

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Tech-On: Sony developed three IP cameras featuring the new BSI sensor with 10x sensitivity over the previous products. The lowest illuminance of a subject is 0.05 lux comparing with 0.5 lux in the previous generation of Sony BSI sensors. Sony is expected to announce the three cameras in series, starting on Sept. 12, 2014. The news cameras also feature HDR mode based on fusion of two frames with different shutter speeds:

An HDR image taken by the newly-developed camera using infrared light in the dark (right) and an image taken by an existing camera (source: Sony)

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Evertiq: CMOSIS, has assigned Bruce Bradford as the new Director of Business Development based in Cary, North Carolina to manage CMOSIS operations and growth in America. Bruce Bradford used to work for Fairchild Imaging and e2v.

"We are extremely delighted with this important step in the further development of CMOSIS as a leading player in advanced CMOS image sensors," said Lou Hermans, COO, CMOSIS. "We are investing in establishing CMOSIS America and the assignment of Bruce Bradford to support our existing customer base and to pursue new relationships and opportunities. We are delighted to have Bruce Bradford joining our team as the newly appointed Director of Business Development. We see America as an important region with lots of opportunities for our business. Bruce’s long history with CMOS sensors, CCD’s and camera systems marketplace will bring our business in America to the next level. A local, US presence was the logical step to achieve this."

"The investment in the new entity shows the dedication to support the business in the region," Bruce Bradford said.

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Albert Theuwissen publishes a call for papers for a Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices on Solid-State Image Sensors. Previous special issues on solid-state image sensors were published in 1976, 1985, 1991, 1997, 2003 and 2009.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

1. Pixel device physics (New devices and structures, Advanced materials, Improved models and scaling, Advanced pixel circuits, Performance enhancement for QE, Dark current, Noise, Charge Multiplication Devices, etc.)
2. Image sensor design and performance (New architectures, Small pixels and Large format arrays, High dynamic range, 3D range capture, Low voltage, Low power, High frame rate readout, Scientific-grade, Single-Photon Sensitivity)
3. Image-sensor-specific peripheral circuits (ADCs and readout electronics, Color and image processing, Smart sensors and computational sensors, System on a chip)
4. Non-visible “image” sensors (Enhanced spectral response e.g., UV, NIR, High energy photon and particle detectors e.g., electrons, X-rays, Ions, Hybrid detectors, THz imagers)
5. Fabrication, packaging and manufacturing (stacked image sensors, back-side illuminated devices)
6. Miscellaneous topics related to image sensor technology

Submission Deadline: February 28th, 2015
Targeted Publication Date: January 2016

Guest Editor-in-Chief:
Prof. dr. Albert Theuwissen, Harvest Imaging, Bree, Belgium, and Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands.

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EETimes: While MIPI M-PHY is still struggling to be adopted in mobile cameras, MIPI comes up with a multi-level signalling scheme in its newest C-PHY standard proposal. "C-PHY uses a 3-pin architecture and an embedded clock. Each of the pin trios represents one lane with up to three lanes supported for a total of 9 pins. It also uses a new encoding scheme to increase the number of bits transmitted to approximately 2.28 bits per symbol. The projected data rate is 2.5 Gsymbols/s for an effective data rate of about 5.7 Gbits/s.

A further C-PHY nuance is that the signal is transmitted single-ended, but received as a differential signal. Clock is recovered from the earliest edge of the symbol transition. A delay circuit with negative hold times is used to sample data, an approach that is potentially more resistant to noise and jitter."

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Image Engineering publishes explanations on why ISO changed the resolution chart in Feb. 2014.


"The problems users had with the old chart:

1. It is defined as a high contrast test chart with a white background. This sometimes causes clipping in the highlights or/and the shadows.
2. Visual analysis is often impossible
3. The high contrast edge is subject to sharpening which leads to misleading results when looking at an SFR derived from the edge"

The new chart is sine Siemens star image considered to be better suited for the resolution measurements, although system sharpening can still present a measurement challenge.

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Mike Electric publishes a video teardown of FLIR One camera and its thermal sensor Lepton core (part 1, part 2):

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Rice University group presented a paper on Google Glass power consumption breakup at Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems 2014 (APSYS) at Beijing, China:

"Draining our Glass: An Energy and Heat Characterization of Google Glass"
Robert LiKamWa, Zhen Wang, Aaron Carroll, Felix Xiaozhu Lin, and Lin Zhong

The power is by far dominated by camera and image processing:


The same is seen in the temperature profiles:

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Microsoft-sponsored research on low power image sensor is now published as a patent application US20140232932 "Energy-proportional image sensor" by Robert LiKamWa, Nissanka Arachchige Bodhi Priyantha, Matthai Philipose, Lin Zhong, and Paramvir Bahl. Basically, it says that all the circuits need be to in power down mode during the idle time, and the resolution needs to be lowered when not necessary:

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Sony and Stanford University files a patent application US20140231620 "Image sensor and imaging method with single shot compressed sensing" by Yusuke Oike and Abbas El Gamal aimed to save the image sensor power: "Low power consumption is a primary concern in many CMOS image sensor applications. As the resolution of these sensors has increased while maintaining or increasing their frame rate, the analog to digital conversion (A/D) associated with the sensors has become a dominant component of power consumption. Typical image compression techniques reduce the readout rate (and hence the I/O power consumption), but cannot reduce the power consumption associated with the A/D conversions."

So, the application proposes to modify the image sensor readout architecture so that compressed sensing techniques can be applied to save power. The idea is to divide the pixel array into small blocks 12 and add a MUX at the ADC input combined with an ADC activation generator "generating a random activation code that determines which of the plurality of A/D converters is activated; and obtaining a digital read-out of the analog signals from the activated A/D converters."


The readout timing is modified, so that for each pixel block 12, first the reset level is digitized and then the signal level goes through oversampled ADC, such as 1st order sigma-delta modulator:


Then the MUX select control PMX and ADC activation code ACT work in concert to distribute the signal across a number of ADCs, whereas the reset and signal level from the each pixel are processed by the same ADC:


"According to compressed sensing a compressible signal can be recovered from a small number of random measurements by sparsity promoting non-linear recovery algorithms. Therein, the number of A/D conversions represented by M can be sufficiently less than the number of pixels in a unit of pixel block represented by N, to recover the original image. When M number of A/D converters are simultaneously dedicated to N pixels, the image sensor outputs M digital codes for the N pixels so that the compression ratio M/N can be sufficiently less than 1.

The power consumption and bandwidth of both the A/D conversion and input-output transmission can be suppressed by a factor of M/N in comparison to a normal operation wherein N, A/D conversions are required to obtain an image of N pixels. For example, 16 A/D converters dedicated for a unit of pixel block of 256 pixels achieves a compression ratio of 1/16. Note that the compression ratio can easily be varied by changing the number of A/D converters dedicated for a unit of pixel block at the multiplexers. Further, this feature also enhances the frame rate for a given power consumption level, as frames are outputted at the rate of N/M"

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