A 2×2k photo line sensor for high-speed applications

A bilinear line sensor with a spatial resolution of 2×2048 pixels has been developed for high-speed imaging and applications in machine vision. The sensor delivers up to 320 Mpixels/s or 80,000 lines/s at the full resolution of 2×2048 pixels using all eight analogue output channels and, hence, is one of the fastest line sensors worldwide. The programmable full-well capacity and signal-to-noise ratio can be traded off against noise performance for various application-specific performance requirements. Moreover, the sensor is largely programmable, providing for example numerous addressing modes and the capability of defining regions of interest. The modular architecture allows the sensor to be easily adapted/scaled to other chip sizes and sensor resolutions. The 2×2k image sensor has been manufactured in a standard 0.5 μm mixed-signal CMOS technology. The present paper describes the architecture of this high-speed line sensor, as well as experimental results on the electro-optical performances. Finally, further developments or potential improvements are discussed.