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Yole Développement publishes an interview with SensL CTO Carl Jackson and VP Marketing Wade Appelman. These days, SensL is focusing primarily on LiDAR for ADAS and consumer robotics and drones. Few quotes:

"Our core product is the Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM). The SiPM is a solid-state sensor that is closely related to SPADs (single photon avalanche diode). A simplistic description of SPAD is a binary photon-activated ‘switch’. An SiPM is formed of a close-packed array of SPADs with a summed output. This summed-matrix of SPADs, that forms the SiPM, acts as a quasi-analog sensor that retains single-photon sensitivity upon a large surface area.

SiPMs have very high internal gain and therefore do not require external amplification that would contribute additional noise to the signal. Therefore the SiPM will have a better SNR than the APD in many use cases.

The histogramming ToF approach reveals the time-correlated photons that would otherwise be lost in the background noise of the ambient light and is used to extract the distance measurement."

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Softkinetic publishes its automotive gesture control promotion video:

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Shizuoka University publishes PhD Thesis "A study on low-noise high-sensitivity multiaperture camera with selective averaging" by Bo Zhang. From the abstract: "a prototype 3×3-aperture camera is developed. Under a low-light condition, in which the maximum average signal per aperture is 11e-, the RTS noise and dark current white defects are removed and the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of the image is increased by 6.3dB."

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IDTechExShow Show held in Berlin publishes Youtube video about ISORG products:

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Proceedings of the Electronic Imaging conference 2016 are available on-line, free of charge, with no registration.

Thanks to AT for the link!

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Robert LiKamWa publishes his presentation at ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA) 2016, Seoul, Korea "RedEye: Analog ConvNet Image Sensor Architecture for Continuous Mobile Vision" by Robert LiKamWa, Yunhui Hou, Julian Gao, Mia Polansky, Lin Zhong (Rice University). Few slides:

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e2v announces the Onyx EV76C664 1.3MP global shutter CMOS sensor. The new sensor features an embedded active imaging system which synchronises external illumination and internal electronic shuttering. This allows discernible color images to be produced at extremely low light levels and through diffusing environments (e.g. fog and smoke) by range-gating, making it ideal for Intelligent Traffic Systems (ITS) and security cameras.

The sensor has an innovative 10um-large pixel with extended sensitivity and performance in NIR, and can also cater for ‘all-light’ environments (typical of outdoor camera applications) where wide dynamic range is also needed. The new sensor is available in sparse colour and monochrome filter (EV76C664ACT) and black and white (EV76C664ABT).

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Albert Theuwissen announces a start of registration for 2016 Harvest Imaging Forum "Robustness of CMOS Technology and Circuitry outside the Imaging Core : integrity, variability, reliability."

The Imaging forum is split into two parts, divided over two days:

1. The basic required knowledge to understand the robustness of CMOS integrated circuits. This first part of the forum will include physics, state-of-the-art CMOS processes and related design issues,
2. The robustness of advanced CMOS integrated circuits. The second part of the forum includes:
   
   Signal integrity issues: cross talk, signal propagation, interference between ICs, current peaks, supply noise, substrate and ground bounce, on-chip decoupling capacitors and design consequences,
   
   Variability issues: difference between random variations and systematic variations, causes of process parameter spread, proximity effects, random dopant fluctuations, transistor matching and design consequences,
   
   Reliability issues and topics: electro-migration, latch-up, hot-carrier effect, NBTI, soft-errors (by cosmic rays and alpha-particles), electro-static discharge, etc.

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EETimes: Rambus presented a poster "Lensless Smart Sensors: Optical and Thermal Sensing for the Internet of Things" at VLSI Symposia 2016. The sensor utilizes a phase anti-symmetric diffraction grating on top of a conventional pixel array and computational algorithms that extract the relevant information from the image.

"In some applications such as range-finding or eye-tracking, it may not even be necessary to reconstruct a full image. Instead, extracting distance measurements may suffice and the particular phase anti-symmetric diffraction structure makes it very simple, explains the poster.

The ultra-low power 2x2mm2 image sensor with a 128x128 pixel array and integrated image change detection circuitry on the same die was enough to measure distances up to 50cm with an error of less than 8%, they reported."

"We do see this as a better, more accurate replacement for head-mounted eye tracking systems like those found in Virtual and Augmented Reality systems. We don’t target the LSS product for remote eye tracking, such as PC display or television based implementations", said Paul Karazuba, Director of Product Marketing for Imaging at Rambus.

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Toshiba presented an imaging technique that can simultaneously acquire a color image and a depth map from a single image taken by a monocular camera at The 22nd Symposium on Sensing via Image Information (SSII2016) held at Pacifico Yokohama on June 8, 2016. The approach is based on color aperture in the lens:

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SonyAlphaRumors says it got this rumor from the known source:

"Sony is currently prototypeing Image Sensors based on SiOnyx or better known as “black silicon”. Basically it uses a porous silicon etch on the front side to reduce reflectance. However, while this works well in reducing the visible light reflectance of bare silicon wafers with no backside layers or materials from 46 % to a few %. For image sensors a sensitivity invrease of 30% is estimated."

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SoftKinetic announces it has been named a finalist for the prestigious Car HMI Award, part of the Car HMI conference taking place in Berlin, June 20-21, 2016, for the automotive ToF-based gesture control interface.

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PRNewswire: Seek Thermal announces the company's line of high performance, affordable, infrared thermal cameras for experts and contractors in industrial and commercial building trades. The CompactPRO is said to be the first thermal imaging camera built for a smartphone to ever feature 76,800 measurement pixels, a thermal sensor array of 320x240, and an unprecedented price point under $500. The camera has less than 70mK sensitivity.

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Mobileye’s CTO and Chairman Amnon Shashua talks about the Three Pillars of Autonomous Driving:

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Altera shows a demo of its AlexNet Convolution Neural Network (CNN), said to be able to identify many common objects in the image:

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Autosens Conference publishes an interview with Valeo Senior Expert and Adjunct Professor of Automotive Electronics at the University of Ireland Patrick Denny. Few points on image sensor implications:

"The pervasive tendency in the industry is a transition from component-level thinking to system-level, where the products and applications are considerably more than the sum of their parts.

This calls for: glass-to-glass thinking for the video chain (for viewing), and; glass-to-bit appreciation (for machine vision).

These instincts must be further widened in multi-sensor architectures that support sensor fusion to include photon/phonon-to-bit thinking. The day of daisy-chaining black boxes to make an automotive product is gone and stakeholders in the video chain need to have an appreciation of, and accommodation for, the interaction of the elements which originate both inside and outside of the automotive industry."

"A typical colour megapixel automotive camera generates a data bit for every man, woman and child on Earth in under 6 seconds and is connected in turn to multi-sensor systems that perform ever more complex processing, and this is the tip of the data iceberg among the sensor fusion systems on a vehicle.

The introduction of cameras on to vehicles caused a leap in the volume, variety and velocity of data available to the vehicle and a rock solid mathematical appreciation of how these data sets work is vital for automotive technologists trying to make product differentiators."

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EETimes publishes an article "Mobileye Chief Engineer Explains EyeQ5" by Junko Yoshida. Few quotes:

"12 to 18 months ago, automakers were more inclined to develop an autonomous car that allows a driver to take his mind off driving on the highway, according to Mobileye. That would be a Level 3 autonomous car – according to the SAE standard -- defined as “within known, limited environments (such as freeways), the driver can safely turn their attention away from driving tasks.”

Now, automakers want autonomous cars that can operate without a driver – much sooner than later, according to Mobileye.

In keeping up with its customers’ more aggressive timetable, Mobileye has also “slightly pulled forward” — to 2020 — its plan for EyeQ5.

[Elchanan Rushinek, Mobileye’s SVP of Engineering] said that EyeQ5 was designed to support more than 16 cameras in addition to multiple radars and LIDARs, including the low-level processing of all sensors.

More at the technical level, he explained, “There are 16 virtual MIPI channels and more than 16 sensors can be supported by multiplexing several physical sensors on a single virtual MIPI channel.”

“Camera processing is the most computationally intensive, so any solution would include dedicated vision processing ECUs in addition to sending some of the raw data to the central ECU. Both EyeQ4 and EyeQ5 can support both goals -- specific vision processing, as well as master ECU,” he added. “The EyeQ controls each sensor via I2C bus on a frame basis in order to get the optimized output, which is deeply aligned with real time algorithms.”

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BGR quotes a rumor that the upcoming iPhone 7 will not have dual camera: "Apparently, an unnamed Foxconn employee told people that the dual lens camera in the iPhone 7 Plus has been canceled because of “immature technology.” It’s not clear what that means, or whether the claim is even accurate."

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Sony publishes a promotional video of its SmartEyeGlass equipped with a 3MP camera:

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ALA News: ULIS announces the selection of its VGA 17um Gen2 thermal sensor in Bertin Technology’s FusionSight camera. “Bertin Technology’s choice of ULIS’ VGA 17µm 640x480 thermal image sensor is further evidence of the true competitiveness and sustainability of our 17 micron Gen2 products, designed to offer peak performance, environmental hardiness and reductions in the overall cost of system ownership,” said Emmanuel Bercier, senior marketing manager at ULIS.

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LabRoots publishes Photometrics Youtube presentation on new generation of image sensors and image processing by Rachit Mohindra, Photometrics' Life Science Research Cameras Product Manager:

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The 10th International Meeting on Front-End Electronics (FEE 2016) publishes "Single-Photon Imager" presentation by Edoardo Charbon, TU Delft. Few slides out of the deck of 92:

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The 10th International Meeting on Front-End Electronics (FEE 2016) publishes "The Pinned Photodiode" lecture by Nobukazu Teranishi, University of Hyogo and Shizuoka University. Few slides out of the stack of 41:

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A group of researches from China Hangzhou Dianzi University publishes their theoretical RTN noise model in the paper "Modeling random telegraph signal noise in CMOS image sensor under low light based on binomial distribution" by Yu Zhang, Xinmiao Lu, Guangyi Wang, Yongcai Hu, and Jiangtao Xu in Chinese Physics B Journal Vol. 25, No. 7 (2016). The paper describes a theoretical model and announces the plans to verify some of its predictions in a future experiment:

"the long channel device has the longer tail in the RTS noise histogram when the density of the oxide trap is high, while the short channel device has the longer tail in the RTS noise histogram in the case of low oxide trap density. The simulation results also illustrate that the longer tail in the RTS noise histogram will appear at the high environmental temperature if the device dimension and the density of the oxide trap are fixed."

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BidnessEtc: Pacific Crest believes that ADAS is ON Semi's future growth drive. ON Semi is said to have a 70% share in the automotive image sensor sector and a three-year design-win visibility. Pacific Crest projects that this could drive the company’s image sensor over 3x to $28 per vehicle in next three years, which may lead to better earnings.

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Sony updates its Semiconductor Business flyer with the new data, mostly in line with the previously announced ones. Ex-Toshiba Oita fab that Sony intended to use for non-imaging products, is now listed as the one that is fully devoted to CMOS sensors:

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Lenovo Phab 2 Pro Tango-enabled smartphone features PMD-Infineon ToF Sensor. PMD put together a nice Youtube playlist with the product videos.



“Through the Tango-enabled PHAB2 Pro, we are opening a complete new era of mobile applications”, says Hua Zhang, VP, Lenovo Android and Chrome Computing Business Group.

“This is just the beginning of a journey and we are really proud to contributing our unique technology to Project Tango and this great new Lenovo product. We believe that with the miniaturization of depth sensing for mobile device integration, while staying extremely robust and efficient, we have broken a barrier, which will make our 3D ToF cameras as common as conventional cameras in the next years,” says Bernd Buxbaum, CEO of pmd.

“It was a long journey, and this remarkable success became possible due to the very intense cooperation between pmd and Infineon technically as well as businesswise,” adds Jochen Penne, Director Business Development at pmd.

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New Scale Technologies has increased the lifetime specification for its M3-FS Focus Module and M3-LS Linear Smart Stage to greater than 10 million random moves within 1.2 km of total distance traveled.

The lifetime specification of >10 million moves is a 10x improvement and is based on months of performance testing, in which standard M3-FS modules achieved more than 56 million movements of approximately 21 µm each for a total distance moved of 1.2 kilometers, with no performance reduction or sign of failure at teardown. Testing conditions included vertical motion and a 10g load. Actual performance will depend on the application and use case.

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Tokyo Institute of Technology announces 3rd International Workshop on Image Sensors and Imaging Systems (IWISS2016) to be held on Nov. 17-18, 2016 at Tamachi Campus. The Workship is accepting approximately 20 poster papers. Submission of papers for the poster presentation starts in September, and the deadline is on September 23, 2016.
The preliminary list of invited presentations is impressive:

• Ion implantation technology for image sensors
  Nobukazu Teranishi, Genshu Fuse, and Michiro Sugitani,
  Shizuoka Univ./ Univ. of Hyogo, Sumitomo, Heavy Industries Ion Technology Co., Ltd., Japan)
• 3D-stacking architecture for low-noise high-speed image sensors
  Shoji Kawahito,
  Shizuoka Univ., Japan
• A Dead-time free global shutter stacked CMOS image sensor with in-pixel LOFIC and ADC using pixel-wise connections
  Rihito Kuroda, Hidetake Sugo, Shunichi Wakashima, and Shigetoshi Sugawa,
  Tohoku Univ., Japan
• 3D stacked image sensor featuring low noise inductive coupling channels
  Masayuki Ikebe, Daisuke Uchida, Yasuhiro Take, Tetsuya Asai, Tadahiro Kuroda, and Masato Motomura,
  Hokkaido Univ., Keio Univ., Japan
• Low-noise CMOS image sensors towards single-photon detection
  Min-Woong Seo, Keiichiro Kagawa, Keita Yasutomi, and Shoji Kawahito,
  Shizuoka Univ., Japan
• Bioluminescence imaging in living animals
  Takahiro Kuchimaru, Tetsuya Kadonosono, Shinae Kizaka-Kondoh,
  Tokyo Inst. of Tech., Japan
• Restoration of a Poissonian-Gaussian color moving-image sequence
  Takahiro Saito and Takashi Komatsu,
  Kanagawa Univ., Japan
• Always-on CMOS image sensor: energy-efficient circuits and architecture
  Jaehyuk Choi,
  Sungkyunkwan Univ., Korea
• Low-voltage high-dynamic-range CMOS imager with energy harvesting
  Chih-Cheng Hsieh and Albert Yen-Chih Chiou,
  National Tsing Hua Univ., Taiwan
• Various ultra-high-speed imaging and applications by Streak camera
  Koro Uchiyama,
  Hamamatsu Photonics K. K., Japan
• Time-of-flight image sensors toward micrometer resolution
  Keita Yasutomi and Shoji Kawahito,
  Shizuoka Univ., Japan
• Toward the ultimate speed of silicon image sensors: from 4.5 kfps to Gfps and more
  Goji Etoh,
  Osaka Univ., Japan
• Studies on adaptive optics and application to the biological microscope
  Masayuki Hattori,
  National Inst. for Basic Biology, Japan
• Application of light-sheet microscopy to cell and development biology
  Shigenori Nonaka,
  National Inst. for Basic Biology, Japan
• Non-contact video based estimation for heart rate variability spectrogram using ambient light by extracting hemoglobin information
  Norimichi Tsumura,
  Chiba Univ. , Japan
• Development of ultraviolet- and visible-light one-shot spectral domain optical coherence tomography and in situ measurements of human skin
  Heijiro Hirayama or Sohichiro Nakamura,
  FUJIFILM Corp., Japan
• Extremely compact hyperspectral camera for drone and smartphone
  Ichiro Ishimaru,
  Kagawa Univ., Japan

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BusinessWire: Photometrics and Gpixel announced the release of the Photometrics Prime 95B Scientific CMOS camera featuring scientific-grade CMOS sensor available with 95% QE, the GSENSE400BSI-TVISB. It BSI technology with 11um large pixels and low-noise characteristics to maximize light collection.

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