With one die, signal and power trace distances can be shorter, with less inductance, capacitanceand propagation delays. To date,though, CMOS imagers have es-tablished only modest advantagesin this regard, largely because of early focus on consumer appli-cations that do not demand no-tably high speeds compared withthe CCD’s industrial, scientificand medical applications.•
Windowing
. One unique ca-pability of CMOS technology isthe ability to read out a portion of the image sensor. This allows el-evated frame or line rates for small regions of interest. This isan enabling capability for CMOSimagers in some applications,such as high-temporal-precisionobject tracking in a subregion of an image. CCDs generally havelimited abilities in windowing.•
Antiblooming
, the ability togracefully drain localized overex-posure without compromising therest of the image in the sensor.CMOS generally has natural blooming immunity. CCDs, on theother hand, require specific en-gineering to achieve this capabil-ity. Many CCDs that have beendeveloped for consumer applica-tions do, but those developed for scientific applications generally donot.•
Biasing and clocking
. CMOS im-agers have a clear edge in this re-gard. They generally operate with a single bias voltage and clock level.Nonstandard biases are generatedon-chip with charge pump circuitry isolated from the user unless there issome noise leakage. CCDs typically require a few higher-voltage biases, but clocking has been sim-plified in modern devices that op-erate with low-voltage clocks.
Reliability
Both image chip types are equally reliable in most consumer and in-dustrial applications. In ultraruggedenvironments, CMOS imagers havean advantage because all circuit functions can be placed on a sin-gle integrated circuit chip, mini-mizing leads and solder joints, which are leading causes of cir-cuit failures in extremely harshenvironments.CMOS image sensors alsocan be much more highly inte-grated than CCD devices. Timing generation, signal pro-cessing, analog-to-digital con- version, interface and other functions can all be put on theimager chip. This means that a CMOS-based camera can besignificantly smaller than a comparable CCD camera. The user needs to consider,however, the cost of this inte-gration. CMOS imagers aremanufactured in a wafer fab-rication process that must betailored for imaging perfor-mance. These process adapta-tions, compared with a non-imaging mixed-signal process,come with some penalties indevice scaling and power dis-sipation. Although the pixelportion of the CMOS imager al-most invariably has lower power dissipation than a CCD,the power dissipation of other circuits on the device can behigher than that of a CCDusing companion chips fromoptimized analog, digital andmixed signal processes. At a systemlevel, this calls into question the no-tion that CMOS-based cameras havelower power dissipation than CCD- based cameras. Often, CMOS is bet-ter, but it is not unequivocally thecase, especially at high speeds (aboveabout 25-MHz readout). The other significant considera-tions in system integration are adapt-ability, flexibility and speed of change. Most CMOS image sensorsare designed for a large, consumer or near-consumer application. They are highly integrated and tailored for one or a few applications. A systemdesigner should be careful not to in- vest fruitlessly in attempting to adapt a highly application-specific devicefor a use to which it is not suited.CCD image sensors, on the other hand, are more general purpose. Thepixel size and resolution are fixed inthe device, but the user can easily tailor other aspects such as readout
Figure 3.
Are they really stars? For an ideal detector, each pixel’s response to a photon would be identical, and the “starlight”would be confined to the area of the star.
CCD vs.CMOS
Choose Your Imager
CMOS imagers offer superior integration,power dissipation and system size at theexpense of image quality (particularly inlow light) and flexibility. They are the tech-nology of choice for high-volume, space-constrained applications where imagequality requirements are low. This makesthem a natural fit for security cameras, PC videoconferencing, wireless handheld de- vice videoconferencing, bar-code scan-ners, fax machines, consumer scanners,toys, biometrics and some automotive in- vehicle uses.CCDs offer superior image quality andflexibility at the expense of system size. They remain the most suitable technol-ogy for high-end imaging applications,such as digital photography, broadcast television, high-performance industrialimaging, and most scientific and medicalapplications. Furthermore, flexibility means users can achieve greater systemdifferentiation with CCDs than with CMOSimagers.Sustainable cost between the two tech-nologies is approximately equal. This isa major contradiction to the traditionalmarketing pitch of virtually all of the solely CMOS imager companies.
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