A color television camera with a resolution high enough for practical use employing three interline-transfer CCD imagers is proposed.
In the imagers, buried channel shift registers and overflow drains are employed which suppress the blooming phenomenon and realize higher transfer efficiency than surface channel shift registers.
Transparent photosensing SnO₂ electrodes rather than the conventional poly-silicon electrodes are applied to the imagers to achieve higher blue sensitivity.
Instead of the frame integration mode, the field integration mode of the interline-transfer CCD is used to suppress undesirable equivalent signal lag caused by the temporal and spatial functions of the CCD.
In order to realize high resolution, a spacially offset imaging technique is introduced, and the corresponding mechanical and electrical compensation techniques for misregistration between the three CCD's are discussed.
The horizontal resolution of 280 TV lines and the SNR of close to 40 dB are achieved for a scene illumination of 700 lx at F : 2.0.

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A charge-coupled area image sensor of the frame transfer type has been fabricated using four-phase two-level polysilicon electrode structure.
The device has 512 vertically interlaced rows and 486 resolution cells per line.
Although the fabrication technique has not advanced yet to produce defect-free devices, high quality images with few white defects are produced by introducing new driving modes.
The measured resolution limits show more than 350 TV line pairs horizontally as well as vertically.

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A new color television camera employing a single interline-transfer CCD image sensor with a color filter array has been developed experimentally.
This CCD image sensor has 490 Vertical × 384 Horizontal picture elements.
This paper describes the color camera system configuration, color filter geometry, and the method of color signal separation, and it is concluded with the result of image pickup experiment that a single-chip CCD color camera has a bright future as a consumer product.

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A CCD image sensor having 512 elements vertically and 340 elements horizontally has been developed. In this device, the frame transfer mode of operation is employed.
The image area of the device, measuring 6.66 mm × 8.84 mm, corresponds to that of a 2/3 inch vidicon, and the electrodes are constructed of overlapping two-level polycrystalline silicon.
It is found by the measurement that the dark current of this sensor is less than 1μA typically, and that the sensitivity is about 0.34μA with its uniformity within 3 percent.
The theoretically expected resolutions of 340 TV lines vertically and 240 TV lines horizontally are confirmed by the image pickup test.
The method, originally proposed by the authors, to control the photoelectric conversion characteristics, that is, to change the knee point and the knee gradation, by applying a control waveform to the integration electrodes, is also experimented confirming the effectiveness of the method.

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A new solid-state color television camera has been experimentally developed using the charge-coupled device (CCD).
High picture quality almost acceptable for consumer use in regard to resolution and color fidelity is obtained by using two CCD's, each having 174, 080 (512 V × 340 H) picture elements, and a color stripe filter.
The effect of the dimension of the frame transfer CCD element and the color stripe filter structure is analyzed, to show the advantages of this color pickup system configuration in color crosstalk and vertical resolution.

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A single-chip color MOS imager from which three primary color signals can be simultaneously obtained is described.
The MOS imager features a double video line configuration for color signal pickup, two row selecting interlace to prevent image lag, and an npn device structure for anti-blooming operation.
On the basis of the characteristic analysis, a 484×384 element MOS imager is designed and fabricated.
The measured characteristics are as follows.- (1) Vertical resolution and horizontal resolution are 350 TV lines and 260 TV lines, respectively. (2) Blooming suppression rate is about 20 times saturation exposure. (3) Visible light sensitivity, especially in blue, is high with spurious red and infrared sensitivity being very low. (4) Signal to fixed noise ratio is 53 dB at the saturation signal current of -5μA.
This performance indicates that the newly devised MOS imager should find application in future single-chip color cameras featuring compactness and TV grade resolution.

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Computer simulated color images of a single-chip camera are subjectively evaluated with respect to both resolution and moire.
From the results of the evaluation, the color filter arrays with G-checkerboard pattern is selected and a composite 484 x 384 MOS imager with this color filter is fabricated.
The novel circuit design employed for the color imager prevents loss of resolution and reduces fixed pattern noise.
The measured performances of this single-chip color camera are ; (1) vertical resolution and horizontal resolution of 350 TV lines and 260 TV lines respectively, (2) signal to fixed pattern noise ratio of 47 dB in G channel with a condition of 14, 000 lx scene illumination and F : 2.8 iris number.
Although it is demonstrated that a resolution compatible with the home VTR is feasible, it is also stated that a significant gains must be made in optical sensitivity before this camera is put into practical use.

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By introducing self biased incomplete transfer action applied to each horizontal signal charges, and double sequential transfer technique to suppress spurious signal components of several forms, the performances of the traditional XY addressing area image sensor, such as vertical resolution, fixed pattern noise, and blooming, are improved.
A single-chip color camera has been constructed with this image sensor attached with a mosaic color filter adopting a line sequential color difference system.

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