Resolution improvement of a CMOS vision chip for edge detection by separating photo-sensing and edge detection circuits

Resolution of an image sensor is very significant parameter to improve. It is hard to improve the resolution of the CMOS vision chip for edge detection based on a biological retina using a resistive network because the vision chip contains additional circuits such as a resistive network and some processing circuits comparing with general image sensors such as CMOS image sensor (CIS). In this paper, we proved the problem of low resolution by separating photo-sensing and signal processing circuits. This type of vision chips occurs a problem of low operation speed because the signal processing circuits should be commonly used in a row of the photo-sensors. The low speed problem of operation was proved by using a reset decoder. A vision chip for edge detection with $128{\times}128$ pixel array has been designed and fabricated by using $0.35{\mu}m$ 2-poly 4-metal CMOS technology. The fabricated chip was integrated with optical lens as a camera system and investigated with real image. By using this chip, we could achieved sufficient edge images for real application.

수광 회로와 윤곽 검출 회로의 분리를 통한 윤곽 검출용 시각칩의 해상도 향상