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BusinessWire: ON Semiconductor presents AR1337, a 1/3.2-inch 13MP BSI device for consumer products such as smartphones and tablets. The AR1337 incorporates SuperPD PDAF technology, which delivers focus speeds of 300 ms or less - even in low lighting conditions below 25 lux. Furthermore, by utilizing its on-chip PDAF processing the AR1337 simplifies integration into smartphone platforms.

This AR1337 image sensor has a 4208 x 3120 array of the company’s proprietary advanced 1.1µm pixels, said to have the best in class SNR. Its QE reaches up to 82%, providing industry-leading sensitivity. The AR1337 speed at full resolution is 30fps and supports many video modes including 4K video at 30 fps and 1080P video at 60 fps. The camera synchronization controls enable dual camera video capture.

“Consumers expect increasingly high performance for their smartphone cameras. They demand great image quality, the ability to take photos in lower light conditions and more recently, the desire for lightning fast autofocus,” comments Vladi Korobov, GM and Senior Director of Technology for the Mobile & Consumer Image Sensor at ON Semiconductor. “With the AR1337 we are responding to each of these demands. Not only does it have great image quality, but its SuperPD technology enables OEMs to achieve fastest possible autofocus locking times.”

The AR1337 is sampling in Bare die format today and is expected to be in mass production in Q2 2016.

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Samsung has increased the pixel pitch from 1.12um to 1.4um in its latest flagship smartphones Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, reducing the resolution from 16MP in the previous generation to 12MP now. The new sensor feature Dual Pixel AF (all pixel PDAF):


"The advantage of the Dual Pixel image sensor in the Galaxy S7 is most evident when taking pictures in a low-light environment. The newest smartphone model is equipped with 1.4um pixels (a 56 percent increase in size compared to the Galaxy S6) and a large F1.7 aperture (which allows for 25 percent more brightness). Combined, these features enable for 95 percent more light compared to its predecessor, which subsequently results in a much brighter and sharper image. Furthermore, the new model employs autofocusing at considerably faster speeds, allowing for faster shooting."

The company's Youtube videos emphasize the PDAF speed and low light capabilities of the new camera:

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SPIE publishes an article on curved sensor optics benefits "Current trends in miniature camera lens technology" by Dmitry Reshidko and José Sasian. The curved sensor are said to give a 1-stop advantage due to allowing optics with a larger aperture:

MTF of a mobile camera. (a) Conventional flat field design at f/2.2. (b) Representative lens imaging on a curved sensor at f/1.6. The lens imaging on a curved sensor is one f-number faster and shows more uniform performance over the field. OTF: Optical transfer function.

Sensitivity to lens element decenter (left) and tilt (right). Lens imaging on a curved sensor shows better as-built performance. The horizontal line indicates the nominal criterion value. RSS RMS: Root sum square, root mean square.

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It was brought to my attention that in 2007, IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science published Max Plank Institute paper "A Novel Way of Single Optical Photon Detection: Beating the 1/f Noise Limit With Ultra High Resolution DEPFET-RNDR Devices" by Stefan Wolfel, Sven Herrmann, Peter Lechner, Gerhard Lutz, Matteo Porro, Rainer Richter, Lothar Struder, and Johannes Treis. The paper is also available for free download here. The described pixel structure allows a multiple reading and averaging of the photoelectric signal, so that 1/f noise can be averaged:


"In this work we demonstrate theoretically and experimentally the capability to reduce the readout noise of an optical and X-ray photon detector based on the semiconductor DEPFET device below a level of only 0.3e- ENC (equivalent noise charge). The readout method used is called "repetitive non destructive readout" (RNDR) and was realized by placing two single DEPFET-devices next to each other and by coupling their charge storing region by an additional gate. By transferring the stored charge from one DEPFET to the other and vice versa the same charge can be measured non-destructively and arbitrarily often. Taking the average value of a large number n of these measurements, the noise is reduced by 1/radicn. The main advantage of such a detector is to greatly reduce the contribution of the 1/f noise to the readout noise. The theoretically and experimentally achievable resolution for different operating parameters (leakage current, readout noise, number and duration of readouts) was investigated by Monte-Carlo simulations and verified on a real RNDR minimatrix (pixelarray). Single optical photon detection with high quantum efficiency and, even more fascinating, the possibility to distinguish between different numbers of photons, e.g., 100 from 101 are demonstrated in measurements."


Thanks to LP for the link!

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IMV Europe interviews Yang Ni, the founder of New Imaging Technologies, located in Paris area, France. Few quotes about the machine vision market trends:

What do you see as the major growth sectors?
From my point of view, the machine vision market is divided into simple photocells and complex camera-based systems. There is great potential in the middle of these two areas, combing the high speed and low cost of photocells with the programmability and versatility of complex camera-based systems. This goal is achievable only with smart image sensors, by integrating highly adaptive pixel designs, such as that of NIT, and on-chip processing capabilities. Otherwise, the product will fall either into the category of a simple photocell by being oversimplified or into a complex camera-based system with its high cost. This could explain the absence of products in this sector.

What do you see as being the most significant commercial change in the industry during the years ahead?
With the development in consumer electronics, all the individual components such as camera chips, FPGAs, DSPs, etc., have become cheaper and more powerful. In the future it will become harder and harder to justify the high price of machine vision system. We can reasonably assume that the same cost issues will be placed on the automation system, but a lot of pressure will be placed on machine vision system providers.

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ExtremeTech seems to get some exclusive marketing materials on the Invisage SparkP2 sensor:


"Due to the composition of our atmosphere, the sun emits only about a quarter of the radiation at 940nm than it does at 850nm. That means that a much-less-powerful LED can be used for outdoor applications, and still be effective. That is why the SparkP2 out-performs current-model back-side illuminated (BSI) sensors outdoors — even using a much-lower-power 10 mW LED instead of a 750 mW LED — at least according to Invisage’s tests:"

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A lawsuit of HSM Portfolio LLC and Technology Properties Limited LLC against Micron shows how easy image sensor company can be accused in patent infringement. Some of Micron image sensor products allegedly infringe on some of 3 patents:

US5001367 "High speed complementary field effect transistor logic circuits" filed in 1989 and describing an inverter chain with a sequential size scaling.
US5030853 "High speed logic and memory family using ring segment buffer" filed in 1990, describing an inverter chain with a positive feedback.
US5391949 "Differential latching inverter circuit" filed in 1995, describing a latched logic buffer.

Neither patent has a direct relation to the image sensor technology.

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BusinessWire: Invisage announces SparkP2 sensor featuring global shutter, 3x higher light response in 940nm NIR band and over 20x lower power consumption than competing solutions. SparkP2 is a 1.1 um pixel, 2MP QuantumFilm sensor in 1/7-inch format for a less than 3mm thin z-height.

Talking about structured light 3D sensors, InVisage QuantumFilm global shutter works in tune with a pulsed LED, which optimizes the LED battery usage to be just 10 mW (versus 750 mW for LEDs used with rolling shutter NIR cameras). SparkP2’s fast global shutter allows the NIR light source to be pulsed for extremely short intervals instead of remaining continuously illuminated, thus overcoming sunlight while at the same time capturing movement more accurately and using far less net power.

SparkP2 is sampling in April 2016 with mass production scheduled by Summer 2016.

Brian O’Rourke, Senior Principal Analyst, Consumer Devices and MEMS & Sensors at IHS Technology, said in an email to VentureBeat, “There’s certainly opportunity here for InVisage. The types of use cases that they’re going after, such as facial and iris recognition, depth-mapping and eye and gesture tracking, have a wide variety of imaging applications, from security to online banking to gaming. These will all benefit from better performance in the IR range. These applications should grow significantly over the next few years, from a limited current base. The barrier for InVisage is the strong, established companies that they will be competing against in the image sensor market, companies like Sony, Samsung, OmniVision and ON Semiconductor. As a start-up, it’s extremely difficult to compete against companies that currently generate billions of dollars in revenue in your target market. You not only have to build a better mouse trap, but you have to be able to market it effectively.”

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Hynix has re-designed its CMOS sensor web site and made available flyers of many of its imaging products, including the newest 1.12um BSI-2 pixel, 13MP Hi-1332 mobile sensor:

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Hamamatsu expands its CMOS sensors with a slit-based micro-spectrometers portfolio with the new C10988MA and C11708MA models:


With the addition of these new models, Hamamatsu micro-spectrometer lineup becomes even more impressive:

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PRNewswire: CEVA announces that LG has licensed the CEVA imaging and vision DSP for its mobile device products. "We are delighted to announce LG Electronics as a customer for our imaging and vision DSP," said Gideon Wertheizer, CEO of CEVA. "Their market leadership and stellar reputation for leading edge innovation in mobile enables them to fully leverage the capabilities of our DSP to add feature-rich, differentiated vision-based technologies to their mobile devices."

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ALA-News: ULIS announces that the company experienced strong growth in 2015, with close to a 20% increase in volume sales over 2014. New customers in outdoor leisure equipment, continued sustainable growth in traditional markets, such as surveillance, thermography and defense, and several key contract wins drove the bulk of ULIS’ €48M ($52.3M) activity in 2015. ULIS’ unit sales climbed to 94,286 in 2015, up from 79,350 the previous year.

“The pattern of ULIS’ volume sales performance appears to reflect market analyst forecasts of rapid growth within the uncooled infrared camera market, indicating +22% CAGR in units between 2015 – 2020,” said Dr Eric Mounier, senior technology and market analyst, MEMS & Sensors at Yole Développement.

“We exceeded our objectives for 2015; gearing ULIS towards even higher prospects in 2016. I am very happy with my team and their dedication. I thank them for their drive and support,” said Jean-François Delepau, managing director of ULIS. “Our customer base also grew in 2015. The price/performance of our complete portfolio of Pico Gen2 products made a significant impact; they struck the right chord with camera makers and system developers across many market applications. In 2016, we will aim even higher to bring even greater product and service satisfaction to our customers.”

ULIS is said to be the second largest producer of microbolometric thermal image sensors. Since its creation in 2002, the company has delivered 500,000 thermal sensors to equipment makers. Delepau is confident that the company’s growth rate will maintain the same pace for the next two years, then accelerate due to further penetration into new markets, such as smart buildings and automotive. “As early as January 2015, we saw initial signs that we would secure a high percentage of sales. This year, we have already begun seeing other positive indicators.”

Currently, ULIS is close to going to market with its Pixel Level Packaging (PLP), which is at the industrial process stage. As the pioneer of the 17um pixel pitch thermal image sensor, the current industry standard, ULIS is pursuing development of its 12um pixel pitch thermal image sensors, which is nearing completion.

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Sony announces the commercialization of IMX318 stacked image sensor for smartphones and other devices, a 1/2.6-inch, 22.5MP stacked CMOS sensor with the industry's first built-in high-speed hybrid autofocus (PDAF), as fast as 0.03s (and as fast as 0.017s when shooting video at 60fps), and built-in 3-axis EIS for video. Sony 4K video stabilization relies on the signal output obtained from the external 3-axis (pitch, yaw, and roll) gyro sensor and is said to consume low power. Sony's unique image stabilization technology incorporated into the IMX318 corrects not only camera shake, but also lens distortion. The sensor features Sony new 1.0um pixel. Sony aims to begin shipments for this new CMOS image sensor in May, 2016.


Sony publishes Youtube demos of 3-axis video stabilization and HybridAF of IMX318 "innovative CMOS image sensor" (video 1, video 2):

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EETimes: "Two French scientists, Ryad Benosman and Christoph Posch... founded Chronocam in 2014. They’ve developed an image sensor designed to capture images not based on artificially created frames, but driven by events within view.

“Each pixel individually controls its sampling – with no clock involved – by reacting to light, or changes in the amount of incident light it receives,” explained Posch, Chronocam’s CTO.

“Frame-based video acquisition is fundamentally flawed,” Chronocam CTO Posch decreed.

Chronocam has applied and tested its sensor’s principles in restoring people’s vision at Pixium Vision, a retina prosthetic company founded by Chronocam’s co-founders.

Chronocam has raised 1.5 million euro so far. Among investors are CEA Investment and Robert Bosch VC.

Chronocam’s CCMA ATIS 1.1 sensor, whose supply voltage is 3.3V (analog), 1.8V(digital), comes in a 9.9 x 8.2mm2 chip size, featuring 2/3-inch optical format. Its array size is 304 x 240 QVGA, with a pixel size of 30μm × 30μm. The power consumption is less than 10mW.

Asked about the company’s next steps, Verre, the CEO, said, “We aim at decreasing pixel pitch and increasing resolution. Our next steps are the VGA tape out and the migration to a CIS process.”

Chronocam is open to licensing its technology to others."

How Chrononcam's image sensor sees motions of hand (left)

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Imec presents a new hyperspectral sensor with extended spectral range, going from the visible light (VIS) up to near infrared (NIR). The new line-scan VNIR (visible to near-infrared) sensor and snapshot mosaic VNIR camera outperform current solutions in spectral range and compactness.

Example applications for the line-scan sensor are machine vision and remote sensing applications, e .g. precision agriculture using UAVs and satellites. It features 140+bands in the 470-900nm range. Its small form factor is the result of extreme integration of the hyperspectral filter onto the CMOS sensor.

“Working closely with two of our camera partners, VRmagic and Cubert Gmbh, we have realized one of the most advanced snapshot hyperspectral imaging cameras. It captures 40+ bands ranging from 450-875 m, at video-rate speed acquisition. This achievement clearly sets a new milestone for the real-time snapshot hyperspectral imaging camera market,” explains Jerome Baron, Business development manager integrated imaging at imec.

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ON Semi reports its Q4 2015 and full year results. The image sensor group keeps increasing its share of the company business:


Few quotes from the company's earning call:

"Revenue for Image Sensor Group was approximately $184 million, down approximately three percent as compared to the third quarter.

Our momentum in CMOS image sensors for automotive application remained intact driven by steep adoption of ADAS and viewing cameras.

Though Aptina has been a key driver of our growth, especially in the automotive market, our performance on organic basis exceeded that of the industry in 2015.

We successfully integrated Aptina, and results from Aptina far exceeded our expectations and the guidance we provided to the investment community. We believe that we are in early stages of realizing full potential of our acquisition of Aptina. With Aptina, we believe that ON Semiconductor is among the best positioned companies to benefit from steep adoption of ADAS in automobiles.

In 2015, we significantly improved our market positon in security related imaging market with year over year revenue growth of 15%."

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IMEC presents a lens-free microscope for large field-of-view live imaging at micrometer resolution. Its key benefits include super-large field-of-view at micrometer resolution and a compact and modular design. In a lens-free digital microscope, images are captured on a CMOS sensor, and digitally reconstructed using software. Imec’s lens-free microscope features a comparable micrometer-scale accuracy as traditional optical microscopes. While being much smaller and less expensive, imec’s microscope captures a larger field-of-view in one shot, enabling shorter sample processing times. The lens-free microscope paves the way to new applications with living cells and tissues.


“Imec’s lens free imaging solution is now available as a full, ready-to-use demo kit evaluation system including a light source, image sensor, control and read-out electronics and a software interface,” stated Jerome Baron, business development manager of integrated vision systems at imec. “Companies can use it to try out their own applications, supported by our engineers to fine-tune the hardware and software and customize the systems toward their exact application requirements.”

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PRNewswire: OmniVision announces the OV2744, a 1.4um PureCel sensor featuring its second-generation RGB-Ir technology which delivers quality IR output without compromising RGB images. The OV2744 targets biometric applications such as facial recognition for front-facing cameras in notebooks, tablets and smartphones.

"Notebook and mobile device OEMs have traditionally relied on two-camera solutions for image capturing and facial recognition functionalities," said Arun Jayaseelan, product marketing manager at OmniVision. "The OV2744 is capable of delivering both premium RGB imaging and high quality IR information required for biometric and other emerging IR applications. The OV2744 thus gives OEMs the opportunity to move to single camera solutions, thereby reducing cost and space requirements for their devices."

The OV2744 is said to have less color aliasing than competing RGB-Ir sensors that are currently available in the market.

The OV2744 captures 1080p video at 60fps while consuming less power than any other 1080p sensor currently on the market. The 1/6-inch OV2744 supports full frame staggered high dynamic range and features an ultra-low power mode, which reduces the resolution and frame rates to conserve additional power.

The OV2744 is currently available for sampling and is expected to enter volume production in Q1 2016.

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Qualcomm announces its mid-range and low-end SnapDragon mobile processors: 625, 435, and 425. Even the lowest cost 425 model features dual ISP and 16MP imaging support:

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Brigates publishes a fairly detailed datasheet of its BG0601D MCCD sensor:

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Albert Theuwissen reviews ISSCC 2016 Sensor Noise Forum and compares different ways of read noise reporting, based on Neale Dutton's presentation.

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Albert Theuwissen concludes his ISSCC review with NHK/Shizuoka Univ./Brookman 33MP, 1.1um pixel sensor for 8K UHDTV, and FBK SPAD imager that only reacts when a pre-set number of photons is registered by a pixel.

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Technical Group on Information Sensing Technologies (IST), the Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers (ITE), holds an image sensor conference at NHK Lab facilities, Tokyo, Japan, on March 11, 2016. Participation is free of charge, no prior registration is required. The IST conference proceeding is about 1000-2000 yen. The agenda of the conference is full of interesting presentations:

• Invited Talk: Low-Noise Image Sensors
  Shoji Kawahito (Shizuoka Univ.)
• Multi-storied photodiode CMOS image sensor for multiband imaging with 3D technology
  Yoshiaki Takemoto, Kenji Kobayashi, Mitsuhiro Tsukimura, Naohiro Takazawa, Hideki Kato, Shunsuke Suzuki, Jun Aoki, Toru Kondo, Haruhisa Saito, Yuichi Gomi, Seisuke Matsuda, Yoshitaka Tadaki (Olympus)
• A CMOS Image Sensor Using Multiple Tap Lateral-Electric-Field Charge Modulators for Time-of-Flight Range Imaging
  Taichi Kasugai, Sang-Man Han, Hanh Trang, Taishi Takasawa (Shizuoka Univ.), Satoshi Aoyama (Brookman Tech.), Keita Yasutomi, Keiichiro Kagawa, Shoji Kawahito (Shizuoka Univ.)
• Stacked Image Sensor Using Chlorine-doped Crystalline Selenium Photoconversion Layer Composed of Size-controlled Polycrystalline Particles
  Shigeyuki Imura, Kazunori Miyakawa, Hiroshi Ohtake, Misao Kubota, Kenji Kikuchi (NHK), Toru Okino, Yutaka Hirose, Yoshihisa Kato (Panasonic), Nobukazu Teranishi (University of Hyogo)
• A 1280x720 single-photon detecting image sensor with 100dB dynamic range using a sensitivity boosting technique
  Manabu Usuda, Yusuke Sakata, Seiji Yamahira, Shigetaka Kasuga, Mitsuyoshi Mori, Yutaka Hirose, Yoshihisa Kato, Tsuyoshi Tanaka (Panasonic AIS)
• A 1.1μm 33Mpixel 240fps 3D-Stacked CMOS Image Sensor with 3-Stage Cyclic-Based Analog-to-Digital Converters
  Toshiki Arai, Toshio Yasue, Kazuya Kitamura, Hiroshi Shimamoto (NHK STRL), Tomohiko Kosugi, Sungwook Jun, Satoshi Aoyama (Brookman Technology), Ming-Chieh Hsu, Yuichiro Yamashita (TSMC), Hirofumi Sumi (The University of Tokyo), Shoji Kawahito (Shizuoka University)
• Visualization of Ultra High-Speed Phenomena by 10 Mfps Ultra High-Speed Camera with Improved Photosensitivity of ISO 16000
  Manabu Suzuki, Masashi Suzuki, Fan Shao, Rihito Kuroda (Tohoku Univ.), Nobuyuki Tokuoka, Yasunori Kawaguchi, Hideki Tominaga (Shimadzu), Shigetoshi Sugawa (Tohoku Univ.)
• An APS-H size 250Mpixel CMOS Image Sensor Using Column Signal ADCs with Dual Gain Amplifiers
  Takashi Muto, Hirofumi Totsuka, Toshiki Tsuboi, Daisuke Yoshida, Yasushi Matsuno, Masanobu Ohmura, Hidekazu Takahashi, Katsuhito Sakurai, Takeshi Ichikawa, Hiroshi Yuzurihara, Shunsuke Inoue (Canon)
• A 1.2e- Temporal Noise 3D-Stacked CMOS Image Sensor with Comparator-Based Multiple Sampling PGA
  Kei Shiraishi, Yasuhiro Shinozuka, Tomonori Yamashita, Kazuhide Sugiura, Naoto Watanabe, Ryuta Okamoto, Tatsuji Ashitani, Masanori Furuta, Tetsuro Itakura (Toshiba)
• An 18M-pixel CMOS Image Sensor Using 12-bit Column-Parallel Single-Slope ADCs with Operation-Period-Reduced Time-to-Digital Converters
  Yoshio Hagihara, Yusaku Koyama, Takanori Tanaka, Atsuko Kume, Yosuke Kusano, Mai Arita, Masashi Saito, Yoshihisa Okada (Olympus)
• High-Speed Range Finding using Smart Image Sensor
  Daisuke Uehara, Makoto Ikeda (UTokyo)
• CMOS Biosensor IC Focusing on Dielectric Relaxations of Biological Water with 120GHz and 60GHz Oscillator Arrays
  Takeshi Mitsunaka, Akira Saito, Nobuyuki Ashida, Kunihiko Iizuka (SHARP), Tetsuhito Suzuki, Yuichi Ogawa (Kyoto Univ.), Minoru Fujishima (Hiroshima Univ.)
• Device Simulations for Ultrahigh-Speed and High-Voltage Image Sensors
  Hideki Mutoh (Link Research)
• Color Image Sensor with Three-stacked Organic Photoconductive Films
  Toshikatsu Sakai, Hokuto Seo, Tomomi Takagi, Misao Kubota, Hiroshi Ohtake (NHK), Mamoru Furuta (Kochi Univ. of Tech.)
• Organic-Photoconductive-Film CMOS Image Sensor -- 120dB Wide-Dynamic-Range,Photoelectric conversion controlled Global Shutter --
  Masashi Murakami, Kazuko Nishimura, Sanshirou Shishido, Masayuki Takase, Yasuo Miyake, Tokuhiko Tamaki, Yoshihiro Sato, Yasunori Inoue (Panasonic)

Thanks to RK for the info!

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Albert Theuwissen publishes the second part of his ISSCC review. This part covers CMOSIS 391MP sensor and Canon 250MP APS-H imager, as well as Toshiba and TSMC papers.

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EV Group (EVG) joins the 3D integration consortium of IRT Nanoelec headed by CEA-Leti and includes STMicro and Mentor Graphics to develop advanced 3D wafer-to-wafer bonding technologies. SET also joined recently the consortium.

Séverine Chéramy, director of the 3D integration program of IRT Nanoelec, said the consortium expects to achieve an interconnection pitch of about 1µm.

"Wafer-to-wafer stacking using direct Cu-to-Cu bonding is key for advanced 3D technologies, specifically for imaging application and 3D partitioning," Chéramy said. "EVG's knowledge on bonding will leverage the process expertise of the original members. The participation of EVG in the consortium will create new opportunities and optimized and cost-effective solutions for 3D IC devices."

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Albert Theuwissen publishes a review of Panasonic organic sensor papers presented at ISSCC 2016 this week. This is the first part of his ISSCC review.

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Himax reports its Q4 and full fiscal 2015 year results. There are few updates on the company's image sensor business:

"CMOS image sensor business was the main factor behind the year-over year decline. As mentioned in our previous earnings call, our CMOS Image sensor business suffered becaucse we didn’t ramp our 8MP and 13MP sensors as planned due to the lack of Phase Detection Auto Focus (PDAF), a new but nowadays required feature for high end smartphone. We remained one of the market share leaders in notebook sector.

In terms of our 8MP and 13MP CMOS image sensors with PDAF feature, we are catching up fast. We believe we will be one of the few players capable of providing PDAF-equipped CMOS image sensors in the very near future. We will report progress in due course."

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BusinessWire: Panasonic develops a new WDR technology which can improve simultaneous-capture DR 100 times wider than the conventional results, using a CMOS image sensor with an organic photoconductive film (OPF). The Dual-Sensitivity WDR Pixel Technology has two sensitivity detection cells in each pixel, taking advantage of a high-saturation performance and flexibility of a sensitivity setting of OPF CMOS image sensor, in order to achieve simultaneous-capture 123dB WDR. Capacitive-Coupled Noise Canceller Technology cancels pixel reset noise, in order to improve SNR of dark objects.

Panasonic holds 58 Japanese patents and 44 overseas patents (including pending) related to this technology.


Update: Nikkei publishes a 3-page article on this sensor.

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Businessire: Panasonic develops a new global shutter CMOS sensor using organic photoconductive film (OPF). The technology is said to enable capturing high speed moving object up to 10 times brighter scene in global shutter mode. In OPF CMOS image sensor, charge-storage function and photoelectric-conversion function can be set independently. Motion direction can be detected from acquired object's signal level in one picture by fine control of shutter sensitivity by changing applied voltage to OPF which is hardly realized by conventional CMOS image sensors.

The new technology has the following advantages:

1. Wide incident angle (60 degrees), high sensitivity, high saturation and highly-functional circuits due to a unique feature of OPF, in which an OPF for photoelectric-conversion and a readout circuits are independent.
2. High saturation signal up to 10 times larger than conventional image sensors with global shutter function due to Photoelectric Conversion Controlled Global Shutter Technology.

This development is based on the following new technologies:

1. CMOS Image Sensor Design Technology, in that, an OPF photoelectric-conversion part and a circuit part can be designed independently.
2. Photoelectric Conversion Controlled Global Shutter Technology that is realized by controlling of organic photoconductive film sensitivity.
3. Variable Sensitivity Multiple Exposure Technology which can detect the motion and its direction by changing image capturing sensitivity in each frame.

Panasonic holds 60 Japanese patents and 41 overseas patents (including pending) related to this technology.

Panasonic presented a part of the research at 2016 ISSCC.

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BusinessWire: Panasonic developed APD CMOS sensor with avalanche photodiodes (APDs) in each pixel. The in-pixel APDs multiply the photoelectrons by 10,000 times. This is said to allow getting sharp color images even under starlight (illuminance of 0.01 lux) or in other similarly dark places. Variable sensitivity technology in which multiplication is controlled in a thousandth of a second by controlling the voltage applied to the APDs, realizing 30-fps video imaging that can follow the changes in illuminance.

The new sensor has been presented on the 2016 ISSCC on February 1, 2016.

This development brings the following advantages:

• Highly sensitive color imaging:
  40 million/lux・sec・μm2 (10,000 times sensitive in comparison to conventional devices)
• Wide dynamic range:
  100 dB (+ 40 dB in comparison to conventional CMOS image sensors)

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