Active pixel sensor array with electronic shuttering

An active pixel cell includes electronic shuttering capability. The cell can be shuttered to prevent additional charge accumulation. One mode transfers the current charge to a storage node that is blocked against accumulation of optical radiation. The charge is sampled from a floating node. Since the charge is stored, the node can be sampled at the beginning and the end of every cycle. Another aspect allows charge to spill out of the well whenever the charge amount gets higher than some amount, thereby providing anti blooming

CMOS active pixel sensor type imaging system on a chip

A single chip camera which includes an .[.intergrated.]. .Iadd.integrated .Iaddend.image acquisition portion and control portion and which has double sampling/noise reduction capabilities thereon. Part of the .[.intergrated.]. .Iadd.integrated .Iaddend.structure reduces the noise that is picked up during imaging

Single chip camera device having double sampling operation

A single chip camera device is formed on a single substrate including an image acquisition portion for control portion and the timing circuit formed on the substrate. The timing circuit also controls the photoreceptors in a double sampling mode in which are reset level is first read and then after an integration time a charged level is read

Single substrate camera device with CMOS image sensor

Single substrate device is formed to have an image acquisition device and a controller. The controller on the substrate controls the system operation

Image sensor with high dynamic range linear output

Designs and operational methods to increase the dynamic range of image sensors and APS devices in particular by achieving more than one integration times for each pixel thereof. An APS system with more than one column-parallel signal chains for readout are described for maintaining a high frame rate in readout. Each active pixel is sampled for multiple times during a single frame readout, thus resulting in multiple integration times. The operation methods can also be used to obtain multiple integration times for each pixel with an APS design having a single column-parallel signal chain for readout. Furthermore, analog-to-digital conversion of high speed and high resolution can be implemented

Integrated infrared and visible image sensors

Semiconductor imaging devices integrating an array of visible detectors and another array of infrared detectors into a single module to simultaneously detect both the visible and infrared radiation of an input image. The visible detectors and the infrared detectors may be formed either on two separate substrates or on the same substrate by interleaving visible and infrared detectors

CMOS active pixel sensor type imaging system on a chip

Single substrate device is formed to have an image acquistition device and a controller. The controller on the substrate controls the system operation

Active pixel sensors with substantially planarized color filtering elements

A semiconductor imaging system preferably having an active pixel sensor array compatible with a CMOS fabrication process. Color-filtering elements such as polymer filters and wavelength-converting phosphors can be integrated with the image sensor

Active pixel sensor with intra-pixel charge transfer

An imaging device formed as a monolithic complementary metal oxide semiconductor integrated circuit in an industry standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor process, the integrated circuit including a focal plane array of pixel cells, each one of the cells including a photogate overlying the substrate for accumulating photo-generated charge in an underlying portion of the substrate, a readout circuit including at least an output field effect transistor formed in the substrate, and a charge coupled device section formed on the substrate adjacent the photogate having a sensing node connected to the output transistor and at least one charge coupled device stage for transferring charge from the underlying portion of the substrate to the sensing node

Active pixel sensor array with multiresolution readout

An imaging device formed as a monolithic complementary metal oxide semiconductor integrated circuit in an industry standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor process, the integrated circuit including a focal plane array of pixel cells, each one of the cells including a photogate overlying the substrate for accumulating photo-generated charge in an underlying portion of the substrate and a charge coupled device section formed on the substrate adjacent the photogate having a sensing node and at least one charge coupled device stage for transferring charge from the underlying portion of the substrate to the sensing node. There is also a readout circuit, part of which can be disposed at the bottom of each column of cells and be common to all the cells in the column. The imaging device can also include an electronic shutter formed on the substrate adjacent the photogate, and/or a storage section to allow for simultaneous integration. In addition, the imaging device can include a multiresolution imaging circuit to provide images of varying resolution. The multiresolution circuit could also be employed in an array where the photosensitive portion of each pixel cell is a photodiode. This latter embodiment could further be modified to facilitate low light imaging