Siemens Aktiengesellschaft

Matthias Niemeyer

Heiner Herbst

A monolithically integrated circuit for linear image scanning is coupled through clock pulse-supplied transfer gates to a number of readout charge transfer devices and has an overflow drain zone and an overflow gate disposed between the drain zone and the sensors connected to a clock pulse for selectively permitting transfer of charge between the sensors and the drain zone, with the sensors divided into groups representing image lines. The linear image scanning circuit operated by the interlacing method by which partial images are generated by different groups of sensors. The clock pulse controlling the overflow gate restricts the integration times of the various groups of sensors so that during the scanning of the partial images generated thereby, overlapping of the image data of one line of adjacent partial images is eliminated.

Readout circuit for a monolithically integrated circuit for linear image

A color image scanning circuit has a linear image sensor with photodiode sensor elements disposed in two adjacent rows integrated on a semiconductor substrate. The sensor elements are divided into groups with all sensors in each group being covered with one of several different color filters. An overflow gate is provided on the substrate between the rows of sensor elements for each group of sensor elements and are provided with individually variable clock pulse voltages for selectively varying the integration time of each group of sensor elements. By selective dimensioning of the respective integration times, compensation of the varying spectral light-sensitivities of the sensor elements can be accurately and simply achieved for generating balanced output signals for each sensor element group.

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Munich, Germany

Matthias Niemeyer