[科技新知] Panasonic's 3D CMOS image sensor

3D image/video is blooming in recent years because of the entertainment industry like movie and game. There are also lot kinds of device appear like 3D camera, 3D TV...etc. The player play the 3D image in early stage is by put two camera into one and post processing the two photos into one.

Gopro has the similar structure of their hero camera and we have to buy two camera with some accessories to make this.

There are devices has already embedded two lens and sensors for having 3D functions like Sony camcorder.

I saw a news on Tech-on today that Panasonic developed a 2.1-Mpixel CMOS image sensor for camera systems capable of taking 3D movie with a single lens and announced it at ISSCC 2013. See following links.

http://big5.nikkeibp.com.cn/news/semi/64837-20130222.html

For taking 3D video, it is necessary to separate light into light entering the left eye and light entering the right eye and to make sure that the two types of lights come to different pixels of the CMOS sensor. To realize this, Panasonic employed a structure that combines a lenticular lens and mirror elements (digital micro lenses: DMLs) made by forming patterns whose size is smaller than light wavelength with a lithography technology.

The lights separated by the lenticular lens are collected with the DMLs to increase their intensities. Then, they enter the pixels of the CMOS sensor. With this structure, the light entering the left eye and the light entering the right eye do not interfere with each other much. Therefore, the intensities of the lights become high enough. The received signals obtained in this way are processed via line memory to create 3D video.

Currently, Panasonic is planning to apply the CMOS sensor to industrial and mobile devices, expecting that products equipped with the sensor will debut in 2014.

This may realize the 3D camera system with lower cost because we just need one lens but there are still some information need to be check further. Like the sensitivity, resolution, optical format that lens need, back-end processor and the price of this sensor. I'm very excite for this sensor because it cam simplified the design of the 3D device system. We also can extend the advantages of the 3D system to some applications especially for image system.