Programmably addressable image sensor

摘要

An image sensor having an integrated address controller for use in an electronic camera. Providing both functions on a single integrated circuit reduces the number of external pins and external circuitry required to process an image. The integrated address controller also provides several addressing modes allowing for programmable format data transfer from the image sensor. This integrated controller not only allows addressing the sensor array in a raster scan, but it also allows other addressing modes including block addressing (useful for block based compression methods like JPEG, MPEG or H.261) and region addressing (by which one could implement pan and tilt functions). Thus, this sensor and address controller combination provides data in the format required for higher level functions, as opposed to forcing the user to convert raster scan to an appropriate format using complicated external circuitry.