Computational image sensors for on-sensor-compression

In this paper, we propose novel image sensors which compress image signal. By making use of very fast analog processing on the imager plane, the compression sensor can significantly reduce the amount of pixel data output from the sensor. The proposed sensor is intended to overcome the communication bottle neck for high pixel rate imaging such as high frame rate imaging and high resolution imaging. The compression sensor consists of three parts; transducer, memory and processor. Two architectures for on-sensor-compression are discussed in this paper that are pixel parallel architecture and column parallel architecture. In the former architecture, the three parts are put together in each pixel, and processing is pixel parallel. In the latter architecture, transducer, processor and memory areas are separated, and processing is column parallel. We also describe a prototype chip of pixel-parallel-type sensor with 32×32 pixels which has been fabricated using 2 μm CMOS technology. Some results of examinations are shown in this paper