The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 14, 1999
Filed:
Sep. 10, 1996
Applicant:
Inventors:
Richard Billings Merrill, Daly City, CA (US);
Kevin E Brehmer, San Jose, CA (US);
Assignee:
Foveon, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Assistant Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
H04N / ; H04N / ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
348241 ; 348308 ; 348310 ; 348312 ; 257292 ; 2502081 ;
Abstract
The noise in the photo information extracted from an active pixel sensor cell is reduced by resetting the voltage on the photodiode of the cell to the power supply voltage, and by reading the cell immediately before and after the cell is reset. The voltage on the photodiode is reset to the power supply voltage by applying a reset voltage to the gate of the reset transistor conventionally used to reset the photodiode where the reset voltage is sufficiently larger than the power supply voltage to cause the voltage on the photodiode to be pulled up to the power supply voltage.