Key Technology Research For The Image Acquisition And Display Of A Retina-like CMOS Image Sensor

Retina-like CMOS sensor is a new type of image sensor, its special pixel layout makesit a great advantage in the anti-blur and panoramic imaging, and its special structure makesit possible to have a large field of view with small amount of data at the same time. It haspotential applications in the field as robot vision and remote video communication. Withthe development of semiconductor technology, the size, resolution and field of view of thetraditional rectangular pixel layout sensor have been greatly improved, but it also brings thecontradiction between large amount of data and high speed transmission. The structure ofthe retina-like CMOS sensor offers the possibility to resolve this contradiction, so it is veryimportant to design the pixel driving and readout circuit of the retina-like sensor.The purpose of the paper is to realize the pixel driving and readout circuit of the firstChina’s retina-like sensor. The retina-like CMOS sensor camera system is designed and itscircuit schematic and PCB board are designed and made. The retina-like CMOS sensor’spixel layout is arranged in rings and each ring with different number of pixels, making thedesign of the drive timing more complex. This paper’s innovation is in using a lookup tablein pixel address latch, which effectively reduces the difficulties of pixels’ indexedaddressing readout and drive timing design. As the output of retina-like sensor isnon-standard video analog signal, the analog signal must be converted to digital signal afterpre-processing and pattern transformation. Digital signal is transmitted to display on PCafter data buffering and the image processing. In this paper, FPGA used as main controlchip to realize the drive timing design, the pixel readout of the retina-like CMOS sensor,the data cache control design, the digital image’s output with Camera Link, theasynchronous serial communication interface and so on. At last, the hardware andsoftware’s debugging and testing of the camera system of is done, and the imaging used theretina-like CMOS sensor is realized.