New 3D-integrated burst image sensor architectures with in-situ A/D conversion

It is well known that 3D integration technology brings a lot to image sensors in term of fill-factor and in-situ processing. As 3D stacking allows massively parallel processing, it looks like an effective way to store the image close to the pixel in burst image sensor. This paper discusses two new 3D stacked architectures for burst high speed imaging with in-situ A/D conversion, one with analog memories, the other based on digital storage. We propose appraisals of frame-rate, memory depth and power consumption for both architectures. Thanks to this assessment, analog storage architecture appears as a good way to reach unmatched speed performances (>10Terapixel/s) while digital storage architecture seems an interesting solution to reach high memory depth (>200 frames). Moreover, this study identifies a very high power consumption of the digital and analog storage architectures during the image capture.