A new approach to an analog ultra-low power medium-resolution vision chip design is presented. The prototype chip performs low-level image processing algorithms in real time. Only a photo-diode, MOS switches and two capacitors are used to create an analog processing element (APE) that is able to realize any convolution algorithm based on a full 3 × 3 kernel. The proof-of-concept circuit is implemented in 0.35 μm CMOS technology, and contains a 64 × 64 SIMD matrix with embedded APEs. The matrix dissipates less than 0.3 mW (less than 0.1 W per APE) of power under 3.3 V supply, and its image processing speed is up to 100 frames/s.

In the paper, a CMOS pixel has been proposed for imaging arrays with massively parallel image acquisition and simultaneous compensation of dark signal nonuniformity (DSNU) as well as photoresponse nonuniformity (PRNU). In our solution the pixel contains all necessary functional blocks: a photosensor and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with built-in correlated double sampling (CDS) integrated together. It is implemented in standard 0.18 μm CMOS technology. The size of the pixel with 9-bit resolution is 21 μm × 21 μm. Measurements of the 128 × 128 pixel array confirm functionality of the proposed solution. CDS reduces dark FPN from 12 LSB (3%) to 0.8 LSB (0.2%) and light FPN from 14 LSB (3.7%) to 7 LSB (1.8%). Further reduction of the light FPN (to ~ 1 LSB) was achieved by compensating PRNU using massively parallel innovative digital multiplication which features good resolution (1/511), does not disturb CDS executed at the same time, and can be implemented within a small pixel area.

The paper presents an operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) with low transconductance (0.62–6.28 nS) and low power consumption (28–270 nW) for the low-frequency analog front-ends in biomedical sensor interfaces. The proposed OTA implements an innovative, highly linear voltage-to-current converter based on the channel-length-modulation effect, which can be rail-to-rail driven. At 1-V supply and 1-V_pp asymmetrical input driving, the linearity error in the current-voltage characteristics is 1.5%, while the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the output current is 0.8%. For a symmetrical 2-V_pp input drive, the linearity error is 0.3%, whereas THD reaches 0.2%. The linearity is robust for the mismatch and the process-voltage-and-temperature (PVT) variations. The temperature drift of transconductance is 10 pS/°C. The prototype circuit was fabricated in 180-nanometer CMOS technology.

This paper proposes a new solution of an ultra-low-energy analog comparator, dedicated to slope analog-to-digital converters (ADC), particularly suited for CMOS image sensors (CISs) featuring a large number of ADCs. For massively parallel imaging arrays, this number may be as high as tens-hundreds of thousands ADCs. As each ADC includes an analog comparator, the number of these comparators in CIS is always high. Detailed analysis shows that power dissipation of a comparator contributes significantly to a total power consumption of an ADC. Thus, minimization of the comparator energy consumption during the analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion of an image frame is crucial for design of CMOS image sensors. Compared to classical dynamic or continuous-time comparators operating in the slope ADC, under the same bias conditions, the proposed comparator shows a 2–3 orders of magnitude reduction of the power consumption. In addition, the proposed topology shows a simple and compact layout and does not require a power-down mechanism. The circuit has been simulated in detail for a 0.18-\(\upmu \)m CMOS technology under two different power supply voltages of 1.8 and 1 V. While implemented in a 12-bit slope ADC of a massively parallel CIS, operating at a speed 1000 fps, the energy required for A/D conversion is 0.5 pJ.

CMOS realisation of analogue processor for early vision processing: The architecture concept of a high-speed low-power analogue vision chip, which performs low-level real-time image algorithms is presented. The proof-of-concept prototype vision chip containing 32 × 32 photosensor array and 32 analogue processors is fabricated using a 0.35 μm CMOS technology. The prototype can be configured to register and process images with very high speed, reaching 2000 frames per second, or achieve very low power consumption, several μW. Finally, the experimental results are presented and discussed.

A high-speed, fully balanced complementary-symmetry metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) triode transconductor is presented. The proposed approach exploits a pseudo-differential-pair triode configuration with a simple adaptive circuit stabilising the drain-to-source voltages of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) transistors. Since no additional active circuits (apart from the resistors made of the cut-off MOS devices) and no feedback loop are used, linearisation improvement is obtained without compromising bandwidth and power consumption. The non-linearity because of the mobility degradation is also compensated. The transconductance of the proposed transconductor can be up to several times higher than for the classical topologies with no extra power consumption. As an example, the transconductor is used to design sixth-order elliptic band-pass filter in the very-high-frequency (VHF) range, simulated in a 0.35 µm CMOS process (AMS).