Space-variant nonorthogonal structure CMOS image sensor design

A CMOS log-polar image sensor has been designed and fabricated. As a result, a systematic approach has been proposed to design space-variant sensors and layouts. The pixels in this sensor are distributed in a polar fashion; the image plane consists of concentric rings containing the elementary sensing cells. Such a structure, where polygons use any space orientation, does not match very well with current design tools and CMOS fabrication processes. An approach to design nonorthogonal repetitive structures using standard fabrication processes and computer-aided design (CAD) tools is presented. The result of this work is an image sensor, with log-polar structure, suitable for image processing since the log-polar mapping has interesting mathematical and image data reduction properties.