New design and implementation of adaptive-integration-time image sensor

We describe a novel approach to enhance the performance of image sensing by integrating the processing element with an image sensor. We have been investigating a smart sensor which controls the integration time of every pixel independently. The integration time is controlled so that it has higher temporal resolution and wider dynamic range. We describe a new adaptive-integration-time image sensor which has 128×64 pixels. We have designed the VLSI prototype by using a column parallel architecture. In this new chip, the scheme to control the integration time is extended, and the pixel pitch processing speed and power consumption are much improved in comparison with our previous prototype. A 7-bit address encoder is newly implemented. We show some experimental results obtained with the prototype