Appeal No. 1998-1698
Application No. 08/411,033
BACKGROUND
The appellants’ invention relates to a circuit and technique for smear subtraction in
CCD image sensors. The invention increases the charge capacity of the image sensing
area during charge transfer to memory which allows the entire charge including the portion
due to smear to remain with the image charge so that it may be subtracted without
eliminating a portion of the image charge. An understanding of the invention can be
derived from a reading of exemplary claim 1, which is reproduced below.
1. An image sensing device comprising:
an image sensing area having a lateral overflow antiblooming drain
structure; and
a frame memory area coupled to the image sensing area for storing
charge from the image sensing area, wherein during charge integration, the
antiblooming drain is biased at a first level, and during charge transfer to
memory, the antiblooming drain is biased at a second level such that the
image sensing area will have a higher charge capacity than during the
charge integration.
The prior art references of record relied upon by the examiner in rejecting the
appealed claims are:
Hieda et al. (Hieda) 4,782,394 Nov. 1, 1988
Stevens (Stevens ‘183) 4,949,183 Aug. 14, 1990
Higashitsutsumi 5,089,894 Feb. 18, 1992
Stevens et al. (Stevens ‘774) 5,130,774 Jul. 14, 1992
2
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