A Novel Hybrid CMOS Pixel-Cluster for Local Light Angle, Polarization and Intensity Detection with Determination of Stokes Parameters

Abstract

Detecting local light incident angle is a desirable feature for CMOS image sensors for 3D image reconstruction purposes and depth sensing. Advances in the CMOS technologies in the last years have enabled integrated solutions to perform such a job. However, it is still not viable to implement such a feature in regular CMOS image sensors due to the great number of pixels in a cluster to perform incident angle detection. In this paper, a hybrid cluster with only four pixels, instead of eight pixels of previous solutions, that is able to detect both local light intensity, incident angle and Stokes parameters. The technique to detect local incident angle is widely exploited in the literature. Three novelties are explored in this work, the first is the new paradigm in polarization cluster-pixel design, the second is the extended ability of metal shielded pixels to detect both the local light angle and intensity and the third is to determine the Stokes parameters through this sensor. SPICE simulation results show that the existing Quadrature Pixel Cluster - QPC and Polarization Pixel Cluster - PPC models are in accordance with experimental results presented in the literature, and thus it was possible to demonstrate similar behavior in the new proposed pixel cluster.