| There is a large market for imaging systems for mobile devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants, and toys. These applications require low-power, low cost, and small size. These needs can be satisfied with a CMOS image sensor. Unfortunately, the CMOS image sensor has historically suffered from lower noise performance than the charge-coupled device (CCD).; Reset noise is a dominant source of noise for the imager, particularly in low-light level conditions. It arises from a time dependent uncertainty of charges when the pixel is reset. This affects the pixel's ability to sense low signal levels. This thesis investigates reset noise in a CMOS image sensor pixel from a mesoscopic perspective and ways to reduce reset noise including soft reset. The reset noise and soft reset of the pixel in the CMOS image sensor was simulated. Through this simulation, soft reset was found to reduce the reset noise by 40%. |
