Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Andrew Dean Payne

Cyrus Soli Bamji

Barry Thompson

Zhanping Xu

Travis Perry

John Peter Godbaz

Dawson Yee

Minseok Oh

Matthew D Morris

Algird Michael Gudaitis

Michael Scott Fenton

Swati Mehta

Sunil Prakash Acharya

Brock McCray Roland

Andrew David Daniel

Mike Fenton

Larry Prather

Michael Fenton

Examples are disclosed herein that relate to a time-of-flight camera that performs phase unwrapping in an efficient manner. In one example, a time-of-flight camera includes a light emitter, a sensor array, and a controller. The controller is configured to select a frequency mode from a plurality of frequency modes, each frequency mode including two or more different frequencies, and at least two different frequency modes of the plurality of frequency modes having a common frequency shared between the at least two frequency modes, control the light emitter to illuminate a scene with modulated light of the two or more different frequencies of the frequency mode selected, control the sensor array to receive the modulated light reflected from objects within the scene, and process the modulated light received to determine unwrapped phases for the frequency mode selected based on the two or more different frequencies of the frequency mode selected.

Multiple-mode frequency sharing for time-of-flight camera

An imaging system includes a sensor array of differential pixels. A controller operates a first differential pixel of the sensor array in a first, lower power mode. The controller supplies a first clock signal to selectively activate a first collection terminal of the first differential pixel for a first duration, and a second clock signal to selectively activate a second collection terminal of the first differential pixel for a second duration. In an analog domain, a first amount of charge accumulated at the first collection terminal over the first duration is readout and compared to a readout of a second amount of charge accumulated at the second collection terminal over the second duration. Responsive to the first amount of charge being different from the second amount of charge by more than a threshold, the first differential pixel of the sensor array is operated in a second, higher power mode.

Low power operation of differential image sensor pixels

Embodiments disclosed herein are directed to time-of-flight (TOF) systems, and methods for use therewith, that substantially reduce interference that the TOF system may cause to at least one other system that is configured to wirelessly receive and respond to IR light signals. Some such embodiments involve emitting IR light having a low frequency (LF) power envelope that is shaped to substantially reduce frequency content within at least one frequency range known to be used by at least one other system that may be in close proximity to the TOF system. Such embodiments can also involve detecting at least a portion of the emitted RF modulated IR light that has reflected off one or more objects. A TOF system can produce depth images in dependence on results of the detecting, as well as update an application in dependence on the depth images.

Interference reduction for TOF systems

Data compression is described herein. The encoder transmits a coded word having replacement bits, as well as a code that defines the starting location of the replacement bits in a data sample. The replacement bits may be actual bits from a selected location in the new data sample. The selected location of the replacement bits can vary from data sample to data sample. The encoder may select the location based on the most significant bit that has changed. Thus, reconstructed data will be bit-accurate from the replaced bits all the way to the highest-order bit. A limited number of key values can be transmitted losslessly. Moreover, the data compression does not need forward error correction (FEC), which is a necessary part of many lossy delta encoding schemes. Furthermore, the encoding and decoding can be done very efficiently in terms of hardware and/or software.

Data compression

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Mountain View, CA, United States of America

Andrew Dean Payne