This paper presents a development of automatic complementary metal-oxidesemiconductor (CMOS) camera inspection system to examine defects. The image capture board based on embedded linux using system-on-a-chip (SoC) and a complex programmable logic device (CPLD) is developed to capture CMOS sensor data. The captured sensor data is transferred to the host computer through TCP/IP socket communicat...

CMOS image sensor designers take advantage of technology scaling either by reducing pixel size or by adding more transistors to the pixel. In both cases, the distance from the chip surface to the photodiode increases relative to the photodiode planar dimensions. As a result, light must travel through an increasingly deeper and narrower "tunnel" before it reaches the photodiode. This is especial...

In this work, a semi-analytical model, based on a thorough analysis of experimental data, is developed for photoresponse estimation of a photodiode-based CMOS active pixel sensor (APS). The model covers the substrate diffusion effect together with the influence of the photodiode active-area geometrical shape and size. It describes the pixel response dependence on integration photocarriers and c...

This paper reports on the investigation of charge-transfer noise and lag in CMOS image sensors. Noise and lag are analyzed for buried-photodiode CMOS active-pixel-sensor (APS) devices using a simple Monte-Carlo technique. Since the main mechanism of charge-transfer noise involves carrier emission over a barrier, the results are applicable to the soft reset of photodiode-type CMOS APS devices, a...

An ultra-low power CMOS image sensor with on-chip energy harvesting and power management capability is introduced in this paper. The photodiode pixel array can not only capture images but also harvest solar energy. As such, the CMOS image sensor chip is able to switch between imaging and harvesting modes towards self-power operation. Moreover, an on-chip maximum power point tracking (MPPT)-base...

Pixel size scaling is a development trend in CMOS Image Sensor (CIS) to achieve high array resolution and chip miniaturization for lower cost and smaller device form factors. The latter is especially important for mobile smart handset market. Technology challenges arise due to the scaling for maintaining optical and electrical pixel performance. The limited pixel size constraints the in-pixel t...

The picture element (pixel) in conventional image sensors are placed in the form of a lattice for ease of implementation. Lattice placement of pixels intrinsically has directional singularity on the clarity of image representation, and the clarity is significantly dependent on the directions of the objects in the image. For example, horizontal lines are perfectly represented, while slanted line...