A novel bipolar imaging device with self-noise-reduction capability

A bipolar image sensor with charge amplification and noise-reduction capabilities in each unit cell is discussed. The dynamic range of linearity in the photoelectric conversion characteristics has been greatly extended by using capacitor-loaded emitter-follower circuitry and a readout operation in a deep forward-base-emitter-biasing condition. The fixed pattern noise and the random noise are reduced by introducing a hybrid reset operation that is a combination of the clamp reset and the transient reset.<
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