Depth resolution enhancement technique for CMOS time-of-flight 3-D image sensors
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Date
2012
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
IEEE
Abstract
Introducing Time-of-Flight 3-D image sensors to
actual engineering applications, such as pattern recognition,
is constrained not only by their limited depth and lateral
resolution, but also by how similar the precision of depth
measurement throughout the whole pixel-matrix is. In real
operating environment, an observed 3-D-scene hardly exhibits a
homogeneous reflectance factor. Moreover, the light-beam (laser
source) presents a nonuniform optical power distribution in
space. Thus, the amount of the incident light on the sensor
surface varies drastically from one pixel to another, and so
does the signal-to-noise ratio. To address this problem, this
paper investigates the impact of both scene and light-source non-
ideal characteristics on the sensor performance. An adaptive on-
pixel analog signal processing technique is also presented and
applied to the design of a 32 × 32 complementary metal oxide
semiconductor (CMOS) range camera, featuring an interesting
cost-efficient solution.