Abstract
A survey of sensor concepts and realizations that are tailored for surveillance applications is presented. We describe the basic operating principles of CMOS imagers and summarize their most important properties. Three selected surveillance sensor solutions will be proposed, namely a passive motion detector with on-chip signal processing and classifacation for low-cost applicfations, an active system for robust and illumination-independent image acquisition suited for surveillance of dangerous zones, and an active light sectioning system for smart airbag solutions. Our survey concludes with a discussion of the status of CMOS surveillance sensors and suggests trends for future applications.