<title>Comparison of passive and active pixel schemes for CMOS visible imagers</title>

Abstract

An active pixel sensor (APS) integrated in standard CMOS process technology is shown to be superior to an alternative passive pixel sensor (PPS). Further, the CMOS APS provides video sensitivity and SNR comparable to CCDs. Though the CMOS PPS has lower performance, it offers >50% optical fill factor without microlenses and can be produced at lower cost for applications not requiring broadcast quality SNR (>35 dB) under low light conditions (<20 lx). APS and PPS SNRs of 50 dB and 44 dB are reported at 200 lx using green filtering with ~80 nm bandpass.