A CMOS Image Sensor Pixel Combining Deep Sub-Electron Noise With Wide Dynamic Range

This letter introduces a 5-transistors (5T) implementation of CMOS Image Sensors (CIS) pixels enabling the combination of deep sub-electronnoise performance with wide dynamic range (DR). The 5T pixel presents a new technique to reduce the sense node capacitance without any process refinements or voltage level increase and features adjustable conversion gain (CG) to enable-wide dynamic imaging. The implementation of the proposed 5T pixel in a standard 180nm CIS process demonstrates the combination of a measured high CG of 250 mu V/e(-) and low CG of 115 mu V/e(-) with a saturation level of about 6500 e(-) offering photo-electron counting capability without compromising the DR and readout speed.