Development of 3D Image Sensor with Greatly Reduced Data... Receiving 'Love Call' at Semiconductor Olympics

UNIST Graduate Student Beomjun Kim from Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Wins 'ISSCC 2021 Silk Road Award'
Development of 3D LiDAR Sensor Design Recognizing Depth Information with Less Data

The research team that developed a 3D image sensor that drastically reduces data volume. From the left, Professor Kim Seong-jin, Park Seong-hyeok, and graduate student Kim Beom-jun.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Yong-woo] A technology that efficiently measures distance using less data has been developed. This research developed an image sensor capable of recognizing 3D spatial information with less data.

The research has gained attention for its excellence at the world's largest semiconductor conference, known as the "Semiconductor Olympics."

Beomjun Kim, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST, President Yong-Hoon Lee), was selected as the recipient of the 2021 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) "Silkroad Award" under the guidance of Professor Sungjin Kim.

The Silkroad Award is given to Asian students who present outstanding papers at ISSCC for the first time. Graduate student Beomjun Kim not only had his paper accepted at ISSCC for the first time this year but also received the honor of the award in recognition of his excellent achievements.

The research, with Beomjun Kim as the first author, proposes an improvement method for the "3D LiDAR image sensor." There are various types of sensors that acquire distance information of a specific space, among which the "LiDAR sensor" measures distances within an image by using the speed of light reflection.

A problem with LiDAR sensors was that a large amount of data processing was required to calculate after receiving light information. This research implemented a design that simplifies such data processing. It is a groundbreaking technology that reduces data size by about 1,000 times compared to existing sensors under the same conditions.

Beomjun Kim explained, "As the need for 3D spatial recognition for applications such as autonomous vehicles is gradually increasing, the requirement to use massive amounts of data is a significant obstacle," adding, "We proposed a method to improve this and achieved good results."

Since starting graduate school in 2016, Beomjun Kim has been conducting research related to image sensors in Professor Sungjin Kim's laboratory at UNIST's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

Kim said, "Recently, research on LiDAR sensors has been rapidly growing, with the number of related papers tripling over the past five years," and expressed his feelings, "I am pleased that the results of good research in a field with great potential have been recognized."

ISSCC 2021 is scheduled to be held online from February 13 to 22 next year. A total of 580 papers were submitted to this year's conference, of which 195 were accepted.

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