On-Screen-Display (OSD) and SPI Interface on CMOS Image Sensor for Automobile Application

In this paper, we propose an on-screen-display (OSD) architecture and SPI interface on CMOS image sensor (CIS) suitable for automobile camera system applications. By displaying a set of real-time images on top of the captured image, the sensor can indicate the track of the car or the security warning information based on the position of the car, which is necessary to some automobile applications. The set of images are stored in the on-board flash memory and read into the sensor using SPI interface during the sensor is capturing a image, so as to ensure the real-time reading and image displaying. This architecture has been implemented in the commercial available 0.13um CMOS Image Sensor technology. The CMOS sensor can output an image in the NTSC/PAL format with on-chip digital image processing, i.e., AEC/AGC/AWB, etc.