New-Tech Europe | January 2016

camera can now track up to four lanes of traffic instead of having to deploy four individual lane cameras. In the light of this technological progress, a resolution of 3.5 - 4K is standard today in traffic and video recording applications. For high- end industrial inspection, as in flat- panel inspection or aerial mapping, standard resolution is 20 MP. However this is not the end. The general trend points to still higher resolutions for global-shutter cameras. It might take another year to get up to 40 - 50 MP. This is where rolling-shutter sensors are still defending their turf: with pixel counts of up to 70 MP. ● High sensitivity: This should be coupled with low noise levels as the foremost consideration of industrial users. High sensitivity will deliver enough image data at short exposure times. Low noise and high sensi- tivity also allow operation at a low light intensity by applying the proper gain if needed. High sensitivity across the visible spectrum should be accompanied by increased sensitivity in the near infrared. ● Low cost: Minimum system cost is best achieved via image sensor size reduction, optimization and if high- volume production for yield optimization. ● High frame rate: This enables several shots of an object in a rapid- fire sequence to track and document its movements. This is supported by the technique of exposing one image while the previously taken im-age is being read out. ● High resolution: This equals a large field of view for delivering high image Demands on Image Capture Systems

Figure 3: Layout of the CSI2100 high-speed global-shutter

to 240 frames per second. Thus, sensors and cameras must be able to accommodate higher frame rates. CMOS cameras have improved to a degree where they outper-form traditional CCD-based imagers. A new off-the-shelf 12-Megapixel digital image sensor from CMOSIS, the CMV12000 Series, delivers 300 fps at full resolution (10 bits per pixel). Other sensors of the same product family show similar data rates with different resolutions.

Even higher frame rates are feasible in windowing or subsampling modes. The same fast-paced progress of CMOS sensors applies to pixel count, or resolution. It has gone from 1.3 MP (SXGA) up to 2, 4, 8, 12 and 20 Megapixels. Higher resolution enables cameras to capture more details that can be analyzed within one image with a wide field of view (Fig-ure 4). This is advantageous in traffic management applications, where one high-resolution

Figure 4: Capturing a large field of vision with great detail

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