Kenet Incorporated

Other

Imaging Devices, Inc.

William D Washkurak

Michael P Anthony

Munib A Wober

Gerhard Sollner

James R Toker

Robert Daniel McGrath

Joao Pedro Carreira

A technique for operating a source follower buffer circuit, such as employed in a charge domain pipeline, to eliminate floating diffusion signal charge contamination from downstream circuits. The method and apparatus places an output of the circuit in a known state immediately prior to charge transfer into a floating diffusion, and again in known state immediately prior to charge transfer out of the floating diffusion.

Avoiding floating diffusion contamination

A method and structure of providing a doped plug to improve the performance of CCD gaps is discussed. A highly-doped region is implemented in a semiconductor, aligned beneath a gap. The plug provides a highly-conductive region at the semiconductor surface, therefore preventing the development of a region where potential is significantly influenced by surface charges.

Doped plug for CCD gaps

An image sensing device comprising active pixels is disclosed, each pixel having a charge accumulation region for collecting charges generated by a photosensitive element such as a photodiode. A linear voltage to current converter, current mirrors, and a differential amplifier generate an output signal and minimize fixed pattern noise and improve the signal to noise ratio. Image quality is improved by reducing pixel blooming and image smearing through an improved method for resetting the pixels with a bias voltage reference which is less than Vdd. Active circuitry and physical device layout reduce the effects of IR voltage drops along the bus lines in a massive pixel array.

Active-pixel image sensing device with linear mode voltage to current conversion

An imaging processor microcircuit incorporating an integral image buffer, preferably a synchronous random-access memory device. Access to the image buffer is controlled by an image buffer access prioritizer. When the prioritizer detects that a device desires image buffer access, it signals all lower-priority devices to suspend accesses until the higher-priority device has completed access. An image sensor interface transfers image sensor data to the image buffer. As each pixel data is read, it is modified by reference data read from the image buffer then stored in the image buffer. The read, modify, write process takes three of a possible five cycles, leaving two unused cycles for image buffer access by other devices. The image buffer is also temporary image storage for an optional LCD and an optional print engine. The LCD interface uses the unused cycles to read LCD image data.

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Acton, MA, United States of America

William D Washkurak