Active Pixel Sensor - History

History

The term active pixel sensor was coined by Tsutomu Nakamura who worked on the Charge Modulation Device active pixel sensor at Olympus, and more broadly defined by Eric Fossum in a 1993 paper.

Image sensor elements with in-pixel amplifiers were described by Noble in 1968, by Chamberlain in 1969, and by Weimer et al. in 1969, at a time when passive-pixel sensors – that is, pixel sensors without their own amplifiers – were being investigated as a solid-state alternative to vacuum-tube imaging devices. The MOS passive-pixel sensor used just a simple switch in the pixel to read out the photodiode integrated charge. Pixels were arrayed in a two-dimensional structure, with access enable wire shared by pixels in the same row, and output wire shared by column. At the end of each column was an amplifier. Passive-pixel sensors suffered from many limitations, such as high noise, slow readout, and lack of scalability. The addition of an amplifier to each pixel addressed these problems, and resulted in the creation of the active-pixel sensor. Noble in 1968 and Chamberlain in 1969 created sensor arrays with active MOS readout amplifiers per pixel, in essentially the modern three-transistor configuration. The CCD was invented in 1970 at Bell Labs. Because the MOS process was so variable and MOS transistors had characteristics that changed over time (Vth instability), the CCD's charge-domain operation was more manufacturable and quickly eclipsed MOS passive and active pixel sensors. A low-resolution "mostly digital" N-channel MOSFET imager with intra-pixel amplification, for an optical mouse application, was demonstrated in 1981.

Another type of active pixel sensor is the hybrid infrared focal plane array (IRFPA) designed to operate at cryogenic temperatures in the infrared spectrum. The devices are two chips that are put together like a sandwich: one chip contains detector elements made in InGaAs or HgCdTe, and the other chip is typically made of silicon and is used to readout the photodetectors. The exact date of origin of these devices is classified, but by the mid-1980s they were in widespread use.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the CMOS process was well established as a well controlled stable process and was the baseline process for almost all logic and microprocessors. There was a resurgence in the use of passive-pixel sensors for low-end imaging applications, and active-pixel sensors for low-resolution high-function applications such as retina simulation and high energy particle detector. However, CCDs continued to have much lower temporal noise and fixed-pattern noise and were the dominant technology for consumer applications such as camcorders as well as for broadcast cameras, where they were displacing video camera tubes.

Eric Fossum, et al., invented the image sensor that used intra-pixel charge transfer along with an in-pixel amplifier to achieve true correlated double sampling (CDS) and low temporal noise operation, and on-chip circuits for fixed-pattern noise reduction, and published the first extensive article predicting the emergence of APS imagers as the commercial successor of CCDs. Between 1993 and 1995, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed a number of prototype devices, which validated the key features of the technology. Though primitive, these devices demonstrated good image performance with high readout speed and low power consumption.

In 1995, personnel from JPL founded Photobit Corp., who continued to develop and commercialize APS technology for a number of applications, such as web cams, high speed and motion capture cameras, digital radiography, endoscopy (pill) cameras, DSLRs and of course, camera-phones. Many other small image sensor companies also sprang to life shortly thereafter due to the accessibility of the CMOS process and all quickly adopted the active pixel sensor approach.