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:
Mar. 04, 2003
Filed:
Nov. 18, 1999
Charles M. C. Tan, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Wayne M. Greene, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Francis Joseph, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Agilent Technologies, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
An imaging device includes a Gray Code generator and an array of pixels. Each pixel includes a complimentary metal oxide semiconductor (“CMOS”) sensor, a comparator and random access memory (e.g., ferroelectric random access memory). The Gray Code generator is started at the beginning of capture mode and begins providing a sequence of code words. Within each pixel, an output of a CMOS sensor is compared to a threshold, and a code word in the sequence is stored in random access memory when the sensor output crosses the threshold. Thus, the random access memory of each pixel stores a code word that represents the intensity of light detected by its associated CMOS sensor.