A five-transistor active pixel sensor with a wide dynamic range and a high-speed pixel operation

Abstract

This work presents a novel active pixel sensor design intended for imaging applications that require a wide dynamic range and a fast pixel operation. Different from a conventional 4-transistor active pixel sensor (4-T APS), it adds a photodiode-body-biased MOSFET (PD-MOS) as a photo-induced current source which yields a wide dynamic range of over 140dB. Its exposure time can be then determined by transfer gate ON time instead of integration time of PD in the 4-TAPS, desirable for a high-speed pixel operation.