CMOS Image Sensors With Multi-Bucket Pixels for

Abstract

This paper presents new image sensors with multi- bucket pixels that enable time-multiplexed exposure, an alter- native imaging approach. This approach deals nicely with scene motion, and greatly improves high dynamic range imaging, struc- tured light illumination, motion corrected photography, etc. To implement an in-pixel memor y or a bucket, the new image sen- sors incorporate the virtual phase CCD concept into a standard 4-transistor CMOS imager pixel. This design allows us to create a multi-bucket pixel which is compact, scalable, and supports true correlated double sampling to cancel kTC noise. Two image sensors with dual and quad-bucket pixels have been designed and fabricated. The dual-bucket sensor consists of a array of 5.0 m pixel in 0.11 m CMOS technology while the quad-bucket sensor comprises array of 5.6 m pixel in 0.13 m CMOS technology. Some computational pho- tography applications were impl emented using the two sensors to demonstrate their values in eliminating artifacts that currently plague computational photography.