Agilent CMOS modules targeted for mobile phones, PDAs

Leveraging its position as a leading supplier of CMOS image sensors for optical mice and consumer-imaging applications, Agilent Technologies Inc. has launched a family of CMOS camera modules for mobile phones and wireless PDAs.

The products are notable for "exceptional low-light sensitivity" and "a hardware-based JPEG compression core that's tightly integrated into the camera modules" to reduce power dissipation on a handset, said Mike Waters, mobile-imaging business manager for Agilent's Sensor Solutions Division.

Two of the modules, the ADCM-1650 and ADCM-1670, offer CIF (352-by-288pixel) resolution, while the ADCM-2650 provides VGA (480-by-640pixel) resolution. Priced under $15 each in 10,000-unit quantities, the modules are sampling now and will become available in production volumes next month.

Agilent is predicting explosive demand for camera phones worldwide. Waters said shipments will jump from an estimated 15 million units in 2002 to close to 100 million this year, and singled out "the assurance of supply" of imaging modules as a key factor to their success. Suppliers "must be able to ship multiple-million units of complex optical modules per month," he said.

Agilent believes it can meet the challenge with two IC-manufacturing sources-its own fabrication facility in Fort Collins, Colo., and foundry Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in Singapore-plus its module assembly facility in Malaysia, Waters said.

But compared with competitors' camera modules, Agilent's offerings "are not particularly competitive in resolution, in size or in price," said Tony Henning, senior analyst for The Future Image Wire, a Web-based information service. Other industry players plan to release image sensors for cellphones shortly with megapixel and better resolution, he said. Some vendors already offer shorter camera modules with a smaller footprint, Henning said.

Yet Agilent has "technology and reliability" on its side, he said, and its CMOS sensors are "superior to others" in terms of low-light sensitivity.

Such sensitivity is particularly important to consumers. Surveys in Japan - where more than 15 million people use camera phones - show that users quickly become frustrated with their phones' poor performance in such low-light situations as clubs or restaurants, Henning said. "It's pretty hard to power a decent artificial-light source from the phone," he said.

The low-light imaging quality of the new camera modules has its roots in the low-leakage current technology used in Hewlett-Packard's calculators, said Agilent's Waters. And the hardware-based JPEG compression core integrated into the modules comes from an ASIC that Agilent developed for an HP printer.

The quality of Agilent's image sensors will get "substantially better" later this year when the company leverages the technology obtained through the recent acquisition of Pixel Devices International, Waters said. Capable of reducing noise by a factor of five, the Pixel Devices IP could allow the CMOS sensor to offer an image quality better than that of a charge coupled device, he said. Samples of sensors using the new circuit technique will be available by year end.

The ADCM-1650, a CIF-resolution module measuring 8-by-8.5-by-7.8mm, combines an Agilent CMOS image sensor, an imaging-processing pipeline and a high-quality lens. Designed to deliver images in JPEG or video format, the module features a CCIR 656-compatible 8-bit parallel interface and a JPEG or a YCbCr interface.

Hardware edge

For JPEG compression, a hardware-based solution "is far more power efficient than doing it in software on a handset," said Waters. Although some application co-processors and graphics controllers developed for mobile handsets can handle JPEG compression, Agilent's approach compresses the images to "reduce the amount of data you move around within the phone," Waters said.

The ADCM-1670 module, which also delivers CIF resolution, is slightly larger than the ADCM-1650, measuring 10.5-by-12.5-by-5.1mm. It features an internal frame buffer and a serial UART output.

The ADCM-2650 VGA module measures 10.5-by-12-by-8.2mm. Its CCIR656-compliant output allows a camera to share a bus with another camera on the same handset. That feature is convenient for the twin-camera applications showing up in some 3G cellphones wherein one camera faces the caller and the other is turned to capture his or her surroundings.

- Junko Yoshida

EE Times