A Single-Chip Image Sensor Node With Energy Harvesting From a CMOS Pixel Array

作者：Ko Jong Hwan^*; Amir Mohammad Faisal; Ahmed Khondker Zakir; Na Taesik; Mukhopadhyay Saibal

来源：IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS I-REGULAR PAPERS, 2017, 64(9): 2295-2307.

DOI：10.1109/TCSI.2017.2703869

• Energy harvesting
• CMOS image sensor
• self-powered system
• wireless image sensor
• moving object detection

This paper presents a single-chip image sensor node with energy harvesting from the pixel array. The design includes a 128 x 96 pixel array that can be reconfigured to form an on-chip photovoltaic cell to harvest energy. An on-chip power management unit harvests energy from the pixel array, and delivers multiple regulated output voltage domains to power the sensor, image processor, and memory. The image processor is a low-overhead moving object detection unit to reduce the volume of transmitted data. The proposed sensor node is implemented on a single die in 130-nm technology. The pixel array demonstrates the peak harvested power of 2.1 mu W. The power dissipation of sensor is reduced by utilizing lowpower circuit techniques, including block-level pipelining, power gating, and low-voltage memory. The system can be self-powered to process a frame at every 7 s. We discuss design approaches for improving the self-power performance. The noise characteristic of the reconfigurable sensor is analyzed, and the need for noiserobust moving object detection is evaluated for better image quality and improved self-power performance.

• 出版日期2017-9