A novel adaptive logarithmic digital pixel sensor

Author

Bermak, Amine ; Kitchen, Alistair

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Sci. & Technol., Kowloon

Volume

18

Issue

20

fYear

2006

Firstpage

2147

Lastpage

2149

Abstract

A major problem associated with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor and charge couple device imagers is their limited dynamic range (DR), typically 60-70 dB. This falls far short of covering the wide illumination ranges found in natural scenes (typically 120-140 dB). Biological retinas are known to feature adaptive, logarithmic-type responses enabling them to cover a very wide DR, without compromising the resolution. This letter presents a novel way to realize such an adaptive logarithmic response by combining a digital time domain vision sensor and a simple adaptive digital quantizer. This letter presents the theory and experimental results for an adaptive logarithmic response sensor featuring over 100-dB DR

Keywords

CMOS image sensors; adaptive optics; adaptive digital quantizer; adaptive logarithmic digital pixel sensor; digital time domain vision sensor; dynamic range; Biological information theory; Biosensors; CMOS image sensors; Dynamic range; Image sensors; Layout; Lighting; Sensor phenomena and characterization; Transfer functions; Voltage; Adaptive logarithmic pixel; complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors; digital pixel sensor (DPS);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2006.883893

Filename

1705513