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:
Aug. 11, 2015
Filed:
Mar. 12, 2013
Tower Semiconductor Ltd., Migdal Haemek, IL;
Amos Fenigstein, Haifa, IL;
Raz Reshef, Tel-Aviv, IL;
Shay Alfassi, Ramot Menashe, IL;
Guy Yehudian, Kfar Saba, IL;
Tower Semiconductor Ltd., Migdal Haemek, IL;
Abstract
A single-exposure high dynamic range (HDR) image sensor utilizes a charge amplifier having two different charge-to-voltage conversion capacitors that read a single photodiode charge during a two-phase readout operation. The first capacitor has a lower capacitance and therefore higher conversion gain (sensitivity), and the second capacitor has a higher capacitance and therefore lower conversion gain (sensitivity). The two-phase readout operation samples the photodiode charge twice, once using the high sensitivity capacitor and once using the low sensitivity capacitor. The high sensitivity readout phase provides detailed low light condition data but is saturated under brighter light conditions, and the low sensitivity readout phase provides weak data under low light conditions but provides high quality image data under brighter light conditions. The final HDR image is created by combining both high and low sensitivity images into a single image while giving each of them the correct weighted value.