Caeleste Cvba

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Benoit Dupont

A method and device of driving a radiation sensor pixel is disclosed. The sensor pixel comprises a sensing element capable of charge generation as a response to impinging radiation, a floating diffusion node, a transfer gate between the sensing element and the floating diffusion node, and a charge storage device connected to the floating diffusion node via a switch. The method comprises biasing the transfer gate to three or more bias voltages OFF, ON and an intermediate bias between OFF and ON. During the period in which the transfer gate is biased to the intermediate bias, if the sensor reaches saturation, the overflown charges may be collected and part of them stored in the charge storage device, for further analysis and merging.

Three level transfer gate

A CMOS image sensor having one or more pixels, e.g. in an array, whereby each of the pixels having two or more sub-pixel elements for generating charge according to incident light intensity as well as a common charge sensitive device such as an amplifier coupled to two or more sub-pixel elements of a respective pixel. Charges generated by the two or more sub-pixel elements are added and integrated over respective integration time periods, to provide a signal representing the integrated charges. The circuit can be configured so that the two or more sub-pixel elements have different integration time periods. By combining charges at the charge sensitive device rather than combining outputs of multiple such devices, the amount of read noise can be reduced.

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Schaarbeek, Belgium

Benoit Dupont