Arbiterless Event-Based Imager Architecture with temporal and spatial redundancies suppression

Abstract

We present a new image sensor architecture that manages spatial and temporal redundancies with an arbiterless readout and a pixel Address-Event Representation (AER) reading system. This frameless image sensor only generates few events over time in order to target an efficient power consumption compared to the commercial CMOS image sensors. Indeed, this image sensor does not generate anymore frames but events only when a change appears in the scene. Moreover, the event throughput depends on the luminance variations of the recorded scene. This means that more activity in the scene will generate more events and vice versa. Collecting events over a period of time will define an image. It is noticeable that, at each instant, the generated events characterize the zone of interest (the active area) of the scene. Consequently, processing such images should require less computing, communication and energy.