MEMS-based chip scale spatial-bandwidth product enhanced image sensor

Digital image sensors (DIS) are essential tools for capturing real-world information and are widely used in various fields from machine vision to biomedical imaging. Despite advances in pixel miniaturization and pixel density, current DIS still face challenges in meeting the increasing spatial bandwidth product (SBP) demands for emerging applications, such as multidimensional sensing of light fields and spectra. Constrained by the signal-to-noise ratio, further pixel size reduction is limited, highlighting the demand for a more generalized imaging paradigm for high SBP imaging. Here we present a microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-integrated chip-scale image sensor. By precisely modulating the position of the DIS using MEMS, the proposed sensor overcomes the limitation of pixel size on the sampling period and enable a SBP enhancement. A theoretical model based on Fourier optics is built for sensor characterization. The proposed sensor is implemented through micromachining processes, demonstrating an SBP enhancement of up to 33.7 times experimentally. Furthermore, our results show that the proposed sensor, when integrated into a camera system, improves the point-like target positioning accuracy and imaging resolution. Our work sheds light on a generalized framework to enhance the SBP of DIS through pixel manipulation, providing a foundation for advanced high-SBP sensing applications.