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AssigneeSony Corporation
InventorTetsuya Iizuka
Estimating the term…
Systems and methods allow driving a solid-state image pickup apparatus at high-speed operation by reducing a number of different samples in the horizontal and vertical directions. In an exemplary embodiment, three or more odd-numbered pixels are incorporated into a single block and signal charges from same color outputs are added within transfer registers such that an average center of the pixels coincides with a pixel at a center of the block. Three transfer electrodes are preferably provided for a column of a vertical transfer register in a part of the vertical transfer register on a side of the horizontal transfer register. The three transfer electrodes may be formed from one layer of three different gate electrode layers. The vertical registers may be arranged in a three column cycle. Preferably, an imaging device employing this structure has a switching mode of operation between a mode in which mixed charges that result from adding signal charges of predetermined pixels from one block are output and a normal mode for outputting all pixel information.
A method for driving a solid-state image pickup apparatus formed of a plurality of pixels each for photoelectric-converting incident light into signal charge and a transfer register for transferring the signal charge, characterized in that
In a solid-state image pickup apparatus which comprises a solid-state image pickup device including pixels in a two-dimensional arrangement and a horizontal register, a method for driving a solid-state image pickup apparatus being characterized in that:
In a solid-state image pickup apparatus which comprises a solid-state image pickup device including pixels in a two-dimensional arrangement having a horizontal register, a method for driving a solid-state image pickup device being characterized in that:
A method of driving an imaging device having an array of pixel elements comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.