Design of a 1-T Image Sensor by Simulation

A 1T silicon-based image sensor has been investigated in this paper. This device can fully accomplish the functions of the conventional 3T CMOS image sensor. In this paper, the basic performances including the dynamic range, read margin (signal-to-noise ratio) and information storage of the 1-T image sensor have been discussed. The applied voltages have been studied in detail, including the reset operation, read operation and exposure operation. The advantage of this device is the minimized cell size. The structure with a photo-diode integrated into the 1-T image sensor may give a higher density in the same chip area while the performance is not degraded. With more pixels in the same area, the fill factor will be raised to a large extent, and the resolution can be further improved.