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Dice Imager Chip Sensor is Fingertip Small

The DICE imager chip is currently under development. The entire imaging sensor, including pixel signal gain, analog to digital conversion and digital input imager control, is all contained within this imager chip. A major reduction in the power, size, weight and cost of imaging and spectroscopy instruments is possible with the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor Active Pixel Sensors (CMOS APS).

By consolidating functions and reading images more efficiently, the CMOS APS requires one-hundredth the power of current imaging systems. This makes it very attractive, given the current focus on small, low cost, low power spacecraft and instrumentation. This chip will be used to demonstrate a very small camera called the Digital Imaging Camera Experiment (DICE). Power dissipation in DICE is expected to be well less than 50mW for 30 Hz operation.

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Ongoing Technology Development:

http://csmt.jpl.nasa.gov/csmtpages/APS/status/aps_dice.html