CMOS image sensors: State-of-the-art and future perspectives

Over the last decade, CMOS image sensor technology made huge progress. Not only the performance of the imagers was drastically improved, but also their commercial success boomed after the introduction of mobile phones with an on-board camera. Many scientists and marketing specialists predicted 15 years ago that CMOS image sensors were going to completely take over from CCD imagers, in the same way as CCD imagers did mid eighties when they took over the imaging business from tubes [1]. Although CMOS has a strong position in imaging today, it did not rule out the business of CCDs. On the other hand, the CMOS-push drastically increased the overall imaging market due to the fact that CMOS image sensors created new application areas and they boosted the performance of CCD imagers as well. This paper describes the state-of-the-art of CMOS image sensors as well as the future perspectives.