To realize a low-voltage CMOS imager with a small pixel size, we have proposed a new pixel structure composed of only three transistors without any circuit sharing technique. The pixel has a gate-common transistor that compares a photodiode voltage on the gate node with a ramp signal on the source node to perform a single-slope A/D conversion based on a pulse-width-modulation pixel-reading scheme. The large gain of the in-pixel comparator contribute to the small input-referred noise and surpress column-to-column fixed-pattern-noise (FPN). Pixel-to-pixel FPN is suppressed by a feedback reset. Our CMOS imager can lower the operating voltage with less degradation of the dynamic range than that of ordinary active pixel sensors. We have fabricated a 128×96-pixel prototype sensor with an on-chip ramp generator and bootstrap circuits in a 0.35-&mgr;m CMOS technology, and successfully demonstrated its operations with a 1.5-V single power-supply voltage.
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