资 源 简 介
This book starts with a detailed presentaTIon of the basic concepts ofphoto transducTIon, modeling, evaluaTIon, and opTImization of Active PixelSensors (APS). It continues with the description of APS design issues usinga bottom-up strategy, starting from pixels and finishing with imageprocessing systems. Various focal-plane image processing alternatives eitherto improve imaging or to extract visual information are presented. The bookcloses with a discussion of a completely non-traditional method for imagenoise suppression that utilizes floating-gate learning techniques. The finalthree chapters in fact provide a glimpse into a potential future of CMOSimaging and image processing, where concepts gleaned from otherdisciplines, such biological vision, are combined with alternative mixedsignalcomputation circuits to perform complex visual informationprocessing and feature extraction at the focal plane. This benefit of CMOSimaging and image processing is still largely unexploited by the commercialsector.The first chapter reviews the background knowledge and concepts ofsilicon-based photo transduction, and introduces relevant concepts fromsemiconductor physics. Several silicon-based photo detectors are examined,including the photodiode and the photogate. This chapter also describes theoperation of the charge-coupled device (CCD) imager, the predominanttechnology available for digital imaging. CCD technology is compared witha promising alternate technology, the APS imager. In addition, the functionalperformances of several basic pixel structures are compared by consideringthem as communication channels and determining their ability to conveyinformation about an incident optical signal. At 30 frames per second,information rates are similar for charge-, voltage-, and current-mode pixels.
