Title :
A White-RGB CFA-Patterned CMOS Image Sensor with Wide Dynamic Range
Author :
Egawa, Yoshitaka ; Tanaka, Nagataka ; Kawai, Nobuhiro ; Seki, Hiromichi ; Nakao, Akira ; Honda, Hiroto ; Iida, Yoshinori ; Monoi, Makoto
Author_Institution :
Toshiba, Kawasaki
Abstract :
CMOS image sensors is important for mobile phone cameras. But, when very small pixel sizes are used, the sensor SNR is limited by photon shot noise. In order to improve the sensor SNR Honda and Luo proposed the use of a sensor with a white (W) pixel in the color filter area. The white pixel, however, saturates at low light levels and sufficient dynamic range cannot be obtained as a result. In order to overcome the dynamic range problem, we propose a CIS with a WRGB color filter array (two white pixels per 2x2 block) incorporating the wide dynamic-range (WDR) technology.
Keywords :
CMOS image sensors; mobile handsets; optical filters; CMOS image sensors; WRGB color filter array; color filter area; mobile phone cameras; white-RGB CFA-patterned image sensor; wide dynamic-range technology; CMOS image sensors; CMOS technology; Cameras; Color; Colored noise; Computational Intelligence Society; Dynamic range; Filters; Image sensors; Sensor arrays;
Conference_Titel :
Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2008. ISSCC 2008. Digest of Technical Papers. IEEE International
Conference_Location :
San Francisco, CA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2010-0
Electronic_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2011-7
DOI :
10.1109/ISSCC.2008.4523052
