E2v Semiconductors

Teledyne E2v Semiconductors Sas

Henri Bugnet

Frédéric Mayer

Alexandre Tatat

Vincent Hibon

Joel Vaillant

Joël Vaillant

The invention relates to time-delay and charge integration image sensors employing active CMOS technology pixels. The sensor comprises N rows of pixels and each pixel of generally square shaped comprises two (though possibly also three or four) photodiodes and charge storage nodes, having means for transferring charges from each photodiode to one or other of the storage nodes. Control of transfer from the photodiodes to one then the other of the storage nodes is carried out in such a way that one storage node receives in succession, during two successive phases of a periodic cycle, the charges from two photodiodes that have seen the same image portion during the two phases. The charges received by one of the storage nodes during the first phase is added to the charges received by the other storage node in the following phase.

Moving image sensor having multiphase digital summation and charge storage nodes separated from photodiodes by charge transfer gates

The invention relates to an image sensor with N rows of P active photosensitive pixels using MOS technology. The sensor comprises digitizing circuits organized with N rows of P processing circuits, each processing circuit of row rank i and of column rank j comprising a respective sampler for carrying out a correlated double sampling of the signals present on a column conductor of rank j and corresponding to the observation of an image dot over the same integration time for all the rows, and an analog-digital conversion means in order to supply digital values of the analog signals sampled. The sensor is particularly suited to operating in TDI (image scanning and integration) mode.

Image sensor having a sampler array

The invention relates to scanning linear image sensors with signal integration, in which an image of a line of points from an observed scene is reconstructed by the addition of successive images taken by a plurality of photosensitive lines which successively observe the same line of the scene as the scene moves across the sensor perpendicularly to the lines. The sensor according to the invention uses charge transfer pixels (P) grouped into M groups of N lines; an analog charge summation is carried out in each group; and the results of this summation are read by read circuits (READ) associated with each group, and then digitized and added to those of the other groups.

Growing community of inventors

Moirans, France

Henri Bugnet