Makoto Ikeda received his BE, ME, and PhD in Electronic Engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1991, 1993, and 1996, respectively. He joined EE department, and VDEC, the University of Tokyo as a research associate in 1996, and now is a professor in Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Systems, the University of Tokyo. He has been working for VDEC activities for more than 17 years for supporting Japanese academia to design and fabricate LSIs. His research interests include smart image sensor design and high-speed, and real-time 3D capture with the smart image sensors, and dependable digital circuits designs.

He has been working for many conferences, including ISSCC IMMD (Imager-MEMS-Medical-Display) sub-committee member and ISSCC FE Officers, including FE Chair in 2013.

Abstract

CMOS Image sensors have shown enormous improvements realizing better sensitivities, lower noise characteristics and higher frame-rate for last 20 years. CMOS Image sensors enable functions into pixels, columns and next to pixel arrays.

This tutorial will cover the basics of CMOS image sensor processes, noise characteristics of CMOS Image sensors, including thermal noise, flicker noise, reset noise and Vth variations of readout source follower, and signal chain from pixel to column parallel ADCs to achieve low noise readout as low as 1e-. This tutorial will also cover some of dynamic range extension techniques, including multiple exposure techniques, logarithmic compression techniques and frequency conversion techniques, and low power techniques. In addition, this tutorial will highlight several 3-D range-finding techniques, including, high-speed 3-D range-finding techniques based on light-section method, lockin-pixel and SPAD techniques based on ToF.