US 8592880

Patent Overview — US 8,592,880 B2

Title: Solid-state imaging device
Patent number: US8592880B2
Application number: US13/626,612
Inventors: Makoto Inagaki; Yoshiyuki Matsunaga
Original assignee: Panasonic Corp (current assignee listed as Collabo Innovations Inc)
Priority date (as listed): 2003-03-07
Filing date: 2012-09-25
Publication date: 2013-11-26
Legal status (as listed): Expired – Fee Related
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8592880/en

Purpose
The patent relates to a MOS-type solid-state imaging device for equipment such as home video cameras, digital still cameras, and cameras incorporated in cellular phones.

Plain-language scope (from the supplied excerpt)
The text describes a sensor in which photosensitive cells (pixels) are arranged in a matrix. Each cell includes a photodiode, a transfer gate, a floating diffusion layer section, an amplifier transistor, a reset transistor, and an address transistor. A vertical shift register controls addressing and reset; the amplifier transistor and a load transistor form a source follower that outputs onto a vertical signal line.

The described readout sequence first produces a noise voltage on the vertical signal line (with the floating diffusion reset), then turns the transfer gate ON so signal charges from the photodiode move to the floating diffusion, producing a signal voltage. A noise suppression circuit — clamp capacitors, clamp transistors, sample/hold transistors, and sample/hold capacitors — finds the difference between the signal output and the noise output. The excerpt notes that noise mainly includes threshold-voltage variation at the amplifier transistor and kTC thermal noise at the reset transistor. Horizontal transistors are then sequentially selected by a horizontal shift register.

What the excerpt does not establish
The supplied text is explicitly an excerpt with omitted content. It provides only a background description of a conventional sensor (referring to FIG. 9) and does not include the claims, the written description of the invention's own embodiments, or the figures. Therefore this overview does not establish the actual claimed scope, the specific inventive features, priority/continuation relationships, or the accuracy of the listed dates, assignees, and legal status. No litigation, ownership-transfer, validity, or prior-art analysis is included, consistent with the source's disclaimer that dates and statuses are assumptions, not legal conclusions.