An 8-stage time delay integration CMOS image sensor with on-chip polarization pixels
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Yu, Hang; Varghese, Vigil; Qian, Xinyuan; Guo, Menghan; Chen, Shoushun; Low, Kay Soon
- Source
- 2015 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), 2015 IEEE International Symposium on. :1098-1101 May, 2015
- Subject
- Bioengineering
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Computing and Processing
Signal Processing and Analysis
Robot sensing systems
Capacitors
Image sensors
Signal to noise ratio
Thermal noise
Gratings
- Language
- ISSN
- 0271-4302
2158-1525
Machine vision applications involving the assistance of robots for scene mapping or object classification encounter issues when faced with smooth transparent surfaces, such as glass. Specular reflection from such surfaces saturate the image sensor pixels, restricting their vision of objects beyond the surface. The problem is aggravated by the movement of the robot, making traditional approaches unfeasible. We propose a solution that uses on-chip polarizers to limit the specular reflection and improve scene visibility while overcoming the limited SNR and motion artifacts by using a time delay integration image sensor. We have fabricated a 256×8×5 prototype sensor using a 0.18μm CIS process which achieves a DR of 52.3dB while providing an SNR improvement of 8.8dB over a single-stage linear scanner.