Paper Info
Title
Relating digital imager defect rates to pixel size, sensor area and ISO
Abstract
Image sensors measurements show a continuous development of in-field permanent hot-pixel defects over time. We have accumulated experimental data on cameras with sensors ranging in size from large area (300 mm2) DSLRs (Digital Single-Lens Reflex cameras), medium sized (∼40 mm2) Point and Shoot, and small (20 mm2) cell phone cameras. Our results show that the rate of defects depends on the technology (APS vs. CCD), and on design parameters such as imager area, pixel size (from 1.5 to 7 μm), and sensitivity (from ISO100 to 6400). Previous measurements showed that increased image sensitivity (ISO) enhances the defect appearance. Comparing different sensor sizes with similar pixel sizes showed that defect rates scale linearly with sensor area, suggesting the metric we call defect density measured by number of sensor defects/year/mm2. In an attempt to model this defect density as a function of both pixel size and ISO, we discovered a very good fit of the empirical densities to a power law in both the pixel size and the ISO, with slightly different parameters for CCD and APS (CMOS) sensors. Including the ISO in the equation allows us to predict the expected defect development rate for a wide set of sensor parameters. The power laws that we obtained show that defect densities are lower for CMOS pixels when pixel sizes are large (near 7 μm), but become higher than for CCDs at about 2 microns even for modest ISOs (near 400).
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1109/DFT.2012.6378218
Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI and Nanotechnology Systems
Keywords
Field
DocType
expected defect development rate,power law,different sensor size,defect rates scale linearly,defect appearance,defect density,similar pixel size,sensor defect,pixel size,sensor area,digital imager defect rate,in-field permanent hot-pixel defect,fault tolerance,decision support systems,ccd,nanotechnology,iso,very large scale integration
Iso standards,Micrometre,Image sensor,Computer science,Electronic engineering,CMOS,Ranging,Pixel,Power law,Very-large-scale integration
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4673-3043-5
0
0.34
References 
Authors
3
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Glenn H. Chapman116734.10
rohit thomas200.68
Israel Koren31579175.07
Zahava Koren423936.02