ISSCC Virtual Museum: Imager

ISSCC 50th Anniversary lists the outstanding ideas over 50 years of solid-state circuit history.


Here shows every important step in image sensor technology.

• 1970 Charge Transfer Device ~ F.L.J. Sangster
  Bucket-Brigade Device, viewed as predecessor of CCD, is a charge transfer device.
  
• 1971 Self-Scanned Photodiode Array ~ G.P. Weckler
  CMOS sensor rely on such array scanning principle.
  
• 1971 Floating Diffusion Amplifier ~W.F. Kosonocky
  Floating Diffusion(FD) converts charge into voltage, which used in CCD and CMOS.
  
• 1973 Correlated Double Sampling ~M.H. White
  Correlated Double Sampling(CDS) can cancel out the reset noise.
  
• 1982 Integration into the Third Dimension ~Y. Ishihara
  Anti-blooming structure is designed in vertical direction underneath the photodiode
  
• 1988 CCD and CMOS on a Single Chip ~A. Theuwissen
  CCD imager and CMOS driving circuits make a first step towards a single camera solution.
  
• 1990 Active Pixel Sensor ~F. Andoh
  Each pixel has its amplifier, known as active pixel sensor (APS).
  
• 2001 Digital Pixel Sensor ~S. Kleinfelder
  Convert the analog signal in earliest stage into digital signal. Each pixel has its AD conveter.

http://sscs.org/History/isscc50/imagers/index.html

The most important solid-state image sensors are CCD and CMOS. There are many brilliant ideas released in ISSCC, which make CCD and CMOS more advanced. Knowing the history can make you know the story behind the today's architectures of CCD and CMOS and why they are now.

CMOS has  big improvements because of referring to CCD design, especially FD and CDS. It is APS that makes CMOS widely popular in consumer application.  As more ideas debut, image sensor will be better than today.