High dynamic range CMOS image sensors featuring multiple integration and auto-calibration

Industrial and automotive image acquisition systems require dedicated CMOS image sensors with increased optical dynamic range, high image quality, and a high local contrast. Whereas image sensors with high dynamic range can be realized using logarithmic pixel characterisitic their image quality and contrast are rather poor. In this contribution we present image sensors that exhibit high local contrast, high optical dynamic range, and high image quality using linear integrating pixels featuring fast multiple integration. The resulting image is composed of multiple images typically captured at frame rates between 100 and 200 fps. To perform this task in real-time and especially to make it suitable for on-chip implementation dedicated algorithms for image composition from several frames and auto calibration have been developed and will be presented in this contribution.