Design of Efficient Flicker Detector for CMOS Image Sensor

CMOS Image sensor 를 위한 효과적인 플리커 검출기 설계

In this paper, an efficient detection algorithm for the flicker, which is caused by mismatching between light frequency and exposure time at CMOS image sensor (CIS), is proposed. The flicker detection can be implemented by specific hardware or complex signal processing logic. However it is difficult to implement on single chip image sensor, which has pixel, CDS, ADC, and ISP on a die, because of limited die area. Thus for the flicker detection, the simple algorithm and high accuracy should be achieved on single chip image sensor,. To satisfy these purposes, the proposed algorithm organizes only simple operation, which calculates the subtraction of horizontal luminance mean between continuous two frames. This algorithm was verified with MATLAB and Xilinx FPGA, and it is implemented with Magnachip 0.18 standard cell library. As a result, the accuracy is 95% in average on FPGA emulation and the consumed gate count is about 7,500 gates (@40MHz) for implementation using Magnachip 0.18 process.