Image sensor with flexible interconnect capabilities

摘要

Electronic devices may include image sensors having configurable image sensor pixel interconnections. Image sensors may include image sensor pixels coupled to analog circuitry via configurable interconnect circuitry. The analog circuitry may include many analog circuit blocks. The analog circuit blocks may control and read out signals from associated image sensor pixels. The configurable interconnect circuitry may be controlled to reroute the connections between the analog circuit blocks and specific groups of image sensor pixels. Digital circuitry may be coupled to the analog circuitry via configurable interconnect circuitry. The digital circuitry may include digital circuit blocks. There may be significantly more image pixels controlled by a small number of analog circuit blocks, which are in turn controlled by a smaller number of digital circuit blocks. The image sensor pixel array, the configurable interconnect circuitry, the analog circuitry, and the digital circuitry may be vertically stacked.

主权项

1. A method of operating an image sensor, comprising:
sensing light with an array of image sensor pixels arranged in rows and columns, wherein the array of image sensor pixels is organized into respective groups of image sensor pixels and wherein each of the respective groups of image sensor pixels includes image sensor pixels from at least two rows and at least two columns; and simultaneously accessing each image sensor pixel in a selected one of the respective groups of image sensor pixels, wherein the image sensor further includes a plurality of control circuits each of which is operable to access each image sensor pixel in the array, and wherein simultaneously accessing each image sensor pixel in the selected one of the respective groups comprises:
selectively routing control signals from a first control circuit in the plurality of control circuits to at least a first portion of image sensor pixels in selected group; andselectively routing pixel output signals from the first portion of image sensor pixels to the first control circuit.