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Omnivision Refreshes Product Lineup in Multiple Markets at CES 2022

Jan. 12, 2022

Seeking to refresh its image as well as its offerings, Omnivision came to CES with new products in all its key market segments: automotive, mobile, AR/VR/MR, computing, and security.

David Maliniak

Related To: Microwaves & RF

Check out our CES 2022 coverage.

Coming into CES 2022, Santa Clara-based Omnivision set itself an ambitious agenda: the unveiling of a new corporate identity and logo, as well as a raft of new products spanning its various key market segments. Since its inception in 1995, the fabless-semiconductor company has expanded from being a sensors-only manufacturer into one with analog products as well as touch and display products. It’s coming off a year of impressive growth and is looking to springboard off that success into growth in multiple arenas.

Here’s a look at some of the company’s latest offerings, as well as some collaboration news, grouped by market segment:

In the automotive area, the OX05B1S is claimed as the industry’s first 5-Mpixel RGB-IR global shutter sensor for in-cabin driver/occupant monitoring (see the promo image, top). The device sports a pixel size of just 2.2 µm and 940-nm near-infrared (NIR) sensitivity. The device’s NIR quantum efficiency (QE) of 36% enables it to detect and recognize objects that would elude lesser sensors in low-light conditions. Thanks to its wide field of view and high pixel count, the sensor does the work of two devices by capturing both driver and occupants, reducing size, cost, and BOM costs.

A related collaboration between Omnivision and Australia-based Seeing Machines will yield the automotive industry’s first dedicated driver/occupant monitoring system ASIC. The chip will include an image signal processor and is powered by Seeing Machines’s Occula neural processing unit. Based on Omnivision’s OAX4600 5-Mpixel ASIC (with OX05B1S sensor), the collab with Seeing Machines will result in a tiny device that consumes very little power and fits inside a rearview mirror.

Another new automotive product, the OX03D is an SoC for surround-view systems, rearview systems, and e-mirrors (Figure 1), provides OEMs with an upgrade path from 1 Mpixels to 3 Mpixel resolution. The device houses 2.1-µm pixels into a ¼-inch optical format. The SoC includes an image signal processor, is capable of 140-dB dynamic range, and includes the company’s next-generation tone-mapping algorithm and industry-leading LED flicker mitigation.

1. The OX03D is an SoC for surround-view systems, rearview systems, and e-mirrors, providing OEMs with an upgrade path to 3-Mpixel resolution.

Yet another automotive-market collaboration with Xilinx and Motovis resulted in a CES 2022 demonstration of an industry-first 8-Mpixel forward-looking camera system. The platform, centered on Omnivision’s OX08B40 CMOS image sensor that features LED flicker mitigation, uses Motovis’s deep-learning network IP to solve challenges of low-light conditions and a wider field of view. This facilitates lane recognition, vehicle and pedestrian detection, sign recognition, and elimination of blind spots. The demonstration, effectively a reference design, is powered by Xilinx’s automotive Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC.

For the mobile-handset market, in which Omnivision has seen impressive growth, the company unveiled its OVB0B, a 200-Mpixel image sensors for high-end smartphones (Figure 2). With pixel size of just 0.61 µm, the device’s 16-cell binning delivers high-quality video and previews in 12.5-Mpixel mode, especially in low light. It also provides 100% quad-phase detection technology for fast autofocus performance.

2. For high-end mobile handsets, the OVB0B is a 200-Mpixel image sensors with pixel size of just 0.61 µm.

Many smartphone users are looking for devices with higher display frame rates. Omnivision’s TD4377 touch and display-driver integration product satisfies that demand, with 1080-pixel full high-definition resolution and a display frame rate of up to 144 Hz, with the touch report rate doubling the display frame rate in LCD displays and touch screens. The TD4377, the first launch by the company’s new Touch and Display business unit, will be supported by a stable supply chain for OEMs.

In augmented-reality and virtual-reality (AR/VR) news at CES 2022, the company announced that it’s teaming with Sweden-based Tobii on advanced vision products for the so-called Metaverse. The two companies have developed an eye-tracking reference design based on Omnivision’s BSI global-shutter sensor family. The design homes in on the OC0TA, Omnivision’s smallest camera module for eye tracking applications. Placed inside wearables, the platform determines how fast the wearer’s eyelids and eyes are moving, reducing development time for AR/VR/MR consumer products.

Check out our CES 2022 coverage.

About the Author

David Maliniak | Executive Editor, Microwaves & RF

I am Executive Editor of Microwaves & RF, an all-digital publication that broadly covers all aspects of wireless communications. More particularly, we're keeping a close eye on technologies in the consumer-oriented 5G, 6G, IoT, M2M, and V2X markets, in which much of the wireless market's growth will occur in this decade and beyond. I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, developers, and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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About me:

In his long career in the B2B electronics-industry media, David Maliniak has held editorial roles as both generalist and specialist. As Components Editor and, later, as Editor in Chief of EE Product News, David gained breadth of experience in covering the industry at large. In serving as EDA/Test and Measurement Technology Editor at Electronic Design, he developed deep insight into those complex areas of technology. Most recently, David worked in technical marketing communications at Teledyne LeCroy, leaving to rejoin the EOEM B2B publishing world in January 2020. David earned a B.A. in journalism at New York University.