CICC 2001 Ed Sessions: Session 4

Digital Image Processing

Moderator: Dawn Fitzgerald, Chipwrights, Inc.
Assistant: Edoardo Charbon, Consultant

E4-1 - 8:00-9:50

CMOS Image Sensor Design
Robert Henderson, Jed Hurwitz, ST Microelectronics Imaging Division

CMOS image sensors have created a revolution in markets where cost and power consumption are important. Recent improvements have also meant that they compete more fairly in applications demanding higher image quality, but perhaps their real future lies in the flexibility that having the photoplane and the readout on one piece of silicon brings. Design-oriented solutions, rather more than process technology developments, are fueling this change.

Proper application of CMOS imaging still requires a good understanding of noise and system partitioning issues. This tutorial will follow the path through a CMOS imager from photons to bits starting at lens and packaging and ending at the DSP. The impact of CMOS process technology on sensor cost, quality and portability is considered. Various pixel types and sensor readout architectures will be examined. The main sources of noise and image non-ideality will be reviewed. Some practical aspects of sensor operation such as rolling shutter, lighting flicker and motion distortion will then be studied. Key topics in colour processing are presented including white balance, black level and color reconstruction. Finally, the merits of the two approaches to system partitioning are considered; camera-on-a-chip integration and the CMOS sensor as part of a multi-chipsolution.

E4-2 - 10:10-12:00

DSP Solutions for Digital Still Cameras
Minhua Zhou, Texas Instruments DSP R & D Center

The Digital Still Camera (DSC) market is a rapidly growing consumer electronic segment. To produce photo-realistic images, DSCs require significant amounts of image processing. In addition, standard image processing features like image capture and playback, multimedia features such as video/speech capture and audio playback are becoming popular in consumers DSCs. Because of the high rate of innovation in the image processing technology used in DSCs and of rapidly changing product features, programmable DSP solutions are ideally suited to be the DSC engine of choice.

In this tutorial, we will cover the following aspects:

• Worldwide DSC market Tread
• Overview of DSC System & Customer Concerns
• DSC standard features (Image pipeline, JPEG capture/playback, 3A controls)
• Multimedia features (MPEG video, ITU-T speech, MP3, QuickTime format)
• DSC Engine Chip requirements
• Example: MPEG4 Video/G.711 speech implementation on TI DSC21 Chipset

E4-3 - 1:00-2:50

SOC Design Issues for Imaging Processing
Robert Lowry, President Starburst Technologies
John Redford, CTO ChipWrights

This session will address SOC design issues that are of critical concerns to Image Processing Applications. Topics include deep submicron effects, power, performance, and design methodologies.

E4-4 - 3:10 - 5:00

Image Processing System Applications: From Barbie Cams to the Space Telescope
Robert Kremens, Rochester Institute of Technology and Pixelphysics, Inc.

The digital camera market today ranges from $50 toy 'Barbie Cams' to multi-billion dollar orbiting laboratories like the Hubble Space Telescope. All of these applications, however, have a similar goal - that of converting the raw charge collected by a sensor to a useful image. We will investigate the demands, similarities and differences of these diverse systems, and will discuss both the analog and digital electronic chain and system demands (processing power, power demands, size limits, radiation hardness, physical constraints, etc.)