Modelization and Characterization of a CMOS Camera as an Optical Real-Time Oscilloscope

Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) camera sensors are embedded in many consumer electronics products: thanks to the Rolling Shutter (RS) readout mode, they can detect a time-varying light intensity, which is the key to realize Optical Camera Communication (OCC). To this aim, we introduce here a model describing the camera as a Real-Time Oscilloscope (RTO) detecting optical signals; by means of this approach, we can now characterize the Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) camera by means of parameters that correspond to common oscilloscope specifications, such as the frequency response, the noise, the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), the total harmonic distortion (THD), etc.; all of these are introduced and measured in terms of the camera parameters. This approach provides for the first time a set of quantitative tools that should be used to maximize the OCC transmission performance by allowing the optimal selection of the camera settings.