Tower Semiconductor is working with Panavision Imaging on the production of a family of re-configurable line scan CMOS image sensors.
The sensors were developed using Tower’s photo diode pixel process and pixel IP with Panavision’s patented imager architecture.
The claim is this enables a 4x32 micron pixel with sensitivity exceeding 100 V/Lux.sec.
Intended for use in spectroscopy, barcode, touch screen and machine vision, the DLIS-2K Imager is a Quad Line Sensor with 11-bit A/D and Correlated Multi-Sampling (CMS) for enhanced sensitivity.
“Our goal is to address the expanding bar code and touch screen markets with a programmable image sensor at a highly competitive price point,” said Jeffrey Zarnowski, CTO for Panavision Imaging LLC.
The design provides ambient light subtraction, oversampling, non-destructive read mode, binning of different integrations, auto-thresholding and a high resolution mode with an unprecedented 120MHz pixel readout.
The DLIS sensors have ambient light subtraction in combination with up to 12-bit digitisation and auto-thresholding. "This provides a simple binary output on chip, allowing removal of many of the system components for barcode, touchscreen or any application that needs to locate a position or a centroid," said the companies.
Fabbed on a 0.18-micron technology, the device has on-chip, bit-selectable, analogue-to-digital converter as well as higher data transfer rates versus prior products. Tower’s APD process and pixel IP exhibit improved charge transfer characteristics for a higher sensitivity over standard photodiodes.