The Sony IMX901-AQR is a diagonal 22.67 mm (Type 1.4) CMOS active pixel type image sensor with a square pixel array and 16.41 M effective pixels, developed for colour cameras in factory automation and intelligent transport systems. It is the colour variant of the IMX901 family and shares the pixel pitch, optical format, package and interface set of the monochrome IMX901-AMR, adding colour information where the inspection or recognition task depends on it. The sensor features a global shutter with variable charge-integration time and achieves high sensitivity and low dark current characteristics.
The IMX901-AQR is built on Sony’s Pregius S technology, a global shutter pixel architecture for active pixel-type CMOS image sensors. By stacking the signal processing on the back-illuminated image sensor, Pregius S realises a small chip size and high sensitivity while retaining the high picture quality of the Pregius global shutter pixel.
The defining characteristic of the IMX901 is its horizontal high pixel count. With an effective pixel array of 8016 (H) × 2048 (V) a single-camera system captures a wide area in the horizontal direction, while covering the same area with conventional 16:9 sensor models requires multiple cameras.
With a dynamic range of over 70 dB, fast-moving subjects are captured with vivid clarity across a wide range of scene brightness.
In all-pixel scan mode the IMX901-AQR reads the recommended recording area of 8008 (H) × 2040 (V), approx. 16.33 M pixels, at a maximum of 134.7 frame/s in 10-bit and 91.5 frame/s in 12-bit over SLVS-EC 4 Lane. Over SLVS 8 ch the same mode reaches 52.8 frame/s (10-bit) and 44.3 frame/s (12-bit); over CSI-2 4 Lane, 52.0 frame/s and 43.8 frame/s.
The IMX901-AQR image sensor provides three output options: SLVS (2 ch / 4 ch / 8 ch), SLVS-EC (1 Lane / 2 Lane / 4 Lane) and CSI-2 (1 Lane / 2 Lane / 4 Lane), with SLVS-EC handling up to 9.5 Gbps per lane for the high data volumes a 16 M pixel global shutter sensor generates at speed. A 10-bit / 12-bit A/D converter, built-in timing adjustment circuit, H/V driver and serial communication circuit are integrated on-chip, and a pulse output function (TOUT0) provides a monitor output for the integration period.
The IMX901-AQR is designed for factory automation and intelligent transport system cameras where a wide horizontal field of view, distortion-free capture of moving objects and high throughput are required at the same time. Its horizontal-only high pixel count is particularly relevant wherever objects pass a fixed inspection point on a line and the area to be covered is wide but shallow.
Typical application areas include:
| Pixel Size x [µm] | 2.74 |
| Supplier | SONY |
| Pixel Size y [µm] | 2.74 |
| Resolution [MP] | 16.4 |
| Frame Rate [fps] | 134 |
| Interface | SLVS-EC, SLVS, MIPI CSI-2 |
| Color / Mono | RGB |
| Shutter type | Global Shutter |
| Technology | Pregius S |
