Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Omnivision Technologies, Inc.

William Qian

Cyrus Soli Bamji

Sohei Manabe

Vei-Han Chan

Onur Can Akkaya

Hidetoshi Nozaki

Johannes Klein

Ashish A Shah

Swati Mehta

Tamer Elkhatib

Ganapathy V Raman

Oliver Bruno Colbert

Aurelio Navarro Belletti Garcia

Sasidhar Saladi

Ernesto Miranda Pedrosa Da Silva

Rafael Alberto Marques Torres

Eduard Ostrovsky

Edgar Pereira Alves

Nagaraja Satyadev

Hsin-Chih (Dyson) Tai

Howard M Rhodes

Ashish Shah

A CMOS time-of-flight image sensor must be robust to interface traps and fixed charges which may be present due to fabrication and which may cause an undesired induced electric field in the silicon substrate. This undesired induced electrical field is reduced by introducing a hydrogen-enriched dielectric material. Further remedial techniques can include applying ultraviolet light and/or performing a plasma treatment. Another possible approach adds a passivation doping layer at a top of the detector as a shield against the undesired induced electric field. One or more of the above techniques can be used to prevent any unstable behavior of the time-of-flight sensor.

CMOS image sensor with a reduced likelihood of an induced electric field in the epitaxial layer

Securing an out-of-band message from a server to a mobile computing device. After requesting a service ticket from a trusted third party (e.g., via a pre-existing ticketing infrastructure), the requested service ticket and a shared secret are obtained from the trusted third party via a first channel. The mobile computing device thereafter sends the service ticket with the shared secret to a server via a second channel. The server encrypts a message (e.g., an SMS message) using the shared secret. The mobile computing device receives the encrypted message from the server via a third channel that is out-of-band relative to the first channel. The encrypted message is decrypted via the shared secret and the decrypted message is provided to a user of the mobile computing device. In some embodiments, the message includes commands for controlling the mobile computing device.

Securing out-of-band messages

An image sensor has at least two photodiodes in each unit pixel. A high dynamic range is achieved by selecting different exposure times for the photodiodes. Additionally, blooming is reduced. The readout timing cycle is chosen so that the short exposure time photodiodes act as drains for excess charge overflowing from the long exposure time photodiodes. To improve draining of excess charge, the arrangement of photodiodes may be further selected so that long exposure time photodiodes are neighbored along vertical and horizontal directions by short exposure time photodiodes. A micro-lens array may also be provided in which light is preferentially coupled to the long exposure time photodiodes to improve sensitivity.

High dynamic range sensor with blooming drain

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William Qian