Tetsuya Iizuka

A 2 million pixel FIT-CCD image sensor for HDTV camera systems

A 1-in optical format frame-interline-transfer charge-coupled-device (FIT-CCD) image sensor with 2 million pixels and an aspect ratio of 16(H):9(V) has been developed for HDTV cameras. The effective number of pixels is 1920(H)*1036(V). In order to decrease the smear level, achieve uniform charge handling capability for the vertical CCD, and eliminate defects that appear as vertical stripes in the image of the device, aluminum wire was put onto the vertical transfer gate to decrease the resistance in the transfer gate and a dual-channel two-phase CCD was utilized for the horizontal shift register operated by a 37.125-MHz clock. As a result, this image sensor has a dynamic range of 72 dB and a sensitivity of 75 nA/lx for light with a color temperature of 2856 K. Smear is reduced to -100 dB by using the FIT-CCD image sensor structure. The horizontal limit is 1000 TV lines. In addition, image lag is negligibly small and below the sensitivity of the measurement instrument. >