Enhancing the Capabilities of High-Speed CMOS Image Sensors

For many years now, CMOS (Complementary, Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) based sensors have dominated the high-speed imaging market. Cameras are being released with ever-higher headline imaging rates. The fundamental limitation in the speed of operation of CMOS devices is the time it takes to read out the image data from the sensor. This restricts the full-frame capture rate to a few tens-of-thousands of frames per second. Faster frame rates can be achieved by reading out smaller areas of the image, but this severely limits the usefulness of these devices at very high frame rates.