Final day of the workshop with only sessions in the morning. After such a huge amount of information, just half-a-day of sessions is more than welcome !
The first session in the morning focussed on global shutter devices, apparently a very hot topic in the CMOS imaging world. Global shutters can be made in the charge domain or in the voltage domain. Both were presented at the workshop. Charge domain shutters implement several techniques known from the CCD world. Examples were shown by Aptina (in-pixel pinned storage node) and by Luxima (floating storage gate). A voltage domain shutter was shown by CMOSIS (8T pixel in a shared configuration). Forza (5T pixel) and GrassValley (5T pixel) illustrated the well-known global-shutter technique based on a 4T pinned photodiode, with a parallel second reset transistor responsable for shuttering and anti-blooming. Interesting statement from GrassValley : “The noise level in broadcast imagers/sensors is improving at a pace of 1dB/year”.
Final session showed progress in oversampled imaging systems and HDR. Nokia tried to convince the audience about oversampling by having more pixels (41.5 Mpix, 1.4 um pitch) even in a mobile phone. Oversampling can also be applied in the time domain to create HDR, also an already known technology. Omnivision showed an oversampling system in the spatial domain (with a high sensitivity diode in combination with a low sensitivity diode) implemented in CMOS. A similar CCD device was (maybe still is) applied by Fujifilm. Apparently the ideas earlier implemented in CCD technology find a new life in the CMOS world. Why not ?
Sunday noon time, the workshop came to an end. Again another high-quality one ! The next one will take place in 2015, somewhere in Europe. Looking forward to see all these imaging friends (at the workshop even your competitors become your friends) in 2 years from now.
Albert, 21 June 2013.