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NAERINGSPH-Nærings-phd

Novel pixel and circuit solutions for low-power CMOS image sensors

Alternative title: Nye piksel- og kretsløsninger for CMOS-bildesensorer med lav effekt

Awarded: NOK 1.9 mill.

Project Number:

337622

Application Type:

Project Period:

2022 - 2026

Funding received from:

Location:

CMOS image sensor chips, used in digital cameras, are very efficient in terms of light to analog signal conversion. However, the on-chip analog and digital signal processing circuits, which are used to read out, digitize, and process the image, are less power efficient. The focus in this project is to implement novel circuit solutions to improve the power efficiency. The purpose is to enable future higher resolution camera sensors, with more advanced image processing functions, without increasing the total power consumption. The CMOS image sensor industry is facing a huge power consumption challenge as the image sensor resolution (that is the number of mega-pixels on the chip) keeps increasing whilst the output video speed (the number of output image frames per second) remains unchanged at typically 30-60Hz. With more pixels per frame, and constant frame rate, the pixel output frequency increases, and the CMOS image sensor chip circuitry must operate faster to support the increased pixel output rate. Typical power consumption in commercial CMOS image sensor used in mobile phone cameras, laptop computers, surveillance cameras, etc., is around 300-500mW. If the power becomes much higher, the sensor chip tends to heat up due to its own power consumption. As the pixels get warmer, they generate more noise due to charge leakage (also known as dark current) which reduces the image quality. The project aims to model how low the power consumption could be, taken images quality into account. A sub-set of all the proposed circuit solutions will be designed into an image sensor. This test chip image sensor will be sent for manufacturing, and then used in the evaluation of the proposed circuit solutions (test and characterization).

The CMOS image sensor industry is facing a huge power consumption challenge as the image sensor resolution (i.e. number of mega-pixels on the chip) keeps increasing whilst the output video speed (i.e. number of output image frames per second) remains unchanged at typically 30-60Hz. With more pixels per frame, and constant frame rate, the pixel output frequency increases, and the CMOS image sensor chip circuitry must operate faster to support the increased pixel output rate. Typical power consumption in commercial CMOS image sensor used in mobile phone cameras, laptop computers, surveillance cameras, etc, is around 300-500mW. If the power becomes much higher, the sensor chip tends to heat up due to its own power consumption. As the pixels get warmer they generate more noise due to charge leakage (a.k.a. dark current) which reduces the image quality. Hence, novel circuit solutions are needed to enable higher resolution and more advanced image processing functions without increasing power consumption.

Funding scheme:

NAERINGSPH-Nærings-phd