Agenda
Special EI Colloquium
- Monday, 25 June 2018
- 16:00
- Collegezaal D (Lecture Hall D@ta)
Low noise global shutter pixels and readout circuits for CMOS image sensors
Guy Meynants
The read noise of CMOS image sensors has been reduced by a factor 10 in the last 15 years. As a result, photon-counting applications are now in reach with CMOS image sensor technology. In the first part, the talk will address the most important measures that have led to this noise reduction, such as CMOS scaling, improved readout circuits and low-noise CMOS transistor process technology. In most cases, the low-noise image sensors use a rolling shutter to control the exposure. Today, we also see a large interest in global shutter image sensors for a variety of consumer, automotive and industrial applications. In global shutter image sensors, all pixels acquire the image at the same time. The more complex global shutter pixel structure poses some challenges for noise reduction techniques, which will be discussed. Small global shutter pixels also enable fast detection of photons in CMOS technology, which can be used in a variety of applications such as fluorescence lifetime measurements and time-of-flight 3D imaging.