5.5 Dual-Tap Pipelined-Code-Memory Coded-Exposure-Pixel CMOS Image Sensor for Multi Exposure Single-Frame Computational Imaging

Navid Sarhangnejad, Nikola Katic, Zhengfan Xia, Mian Wei, Nikita Gusev, Gairik Dutta, Rahul Gulve, Harel Haim, Manuel Moreno Garcia, David Stoppa, Kiriakos N. Kutulakos and Roman Genov

IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference-(ISSCC) 2019

Abstract

Modern computational photography applications such as 3D sensing, gesture analysis, and robotic navigation drive the growing need for programmability, or coding, of the camera exposure at the individual-pixel level. Unlike conventional cameras, which record all light incident onto a pixel, the emerging class of coded-exposure-pixel (CEP) cameras can be programmed to selectively detect only some of that light [1] or, better, sort all of the light [2, 3], depending on the pixel code. In conjunction with a concurrently coded illumination, this enables a wide range of new coded multi-exposure single-readout-frame imaging capabilities at video rates. This work demonstrates such an image sensor where multiple pixel-wise-coded exposures, or subframes, are accumulated during one video frame.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada under the RGPIN, RTI and SGP programs, of DARPA under the REVEAL program, and of CMC Microsystems. We also wish to thank Hui Feng Ke, Hui Di Wang and Gilead Wolf Posluns for help on test system development.

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