Patent ID: 11910114
Assignee: META PLATFORMS TECHNOLOGIES, LLC
Field: Audio-visual technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 0:
1. An apparatus comprising:
an array of pixel cells, each pixel cell of the array of pixel cells including one or more photodiodes configured to generate charge in response to light, and a charge storage device to convert the charge to output a voltage;
first analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), each first ADC being associated with a pixel cell or a block of pixel cells of the array of pixel cells;
second ADCs, each second ADC being associated with a column of pixel cells or a column of blocks of pixel cells of the array of pixel cells; and
a controller configured to:
in a first mode, enable at least a subset of the first ADCs to perform a quantization operation of the voltages output by at least a subset of the pixel cells or the blocks of pixel cells associated with the at least the subset of the first ADCs in parallel to generate a first image frame;
in a second mode, enable at least a subset of the second ADCs to perform quantization operations sequentially of the voltages output by pixel cells or blocks of pixel cells within at least a subset of the columns of pixel cells or the columns of blocks of pixel cells associated with the at least the subset of the second ADCs to generate a second image frame; and

wherein the controller is configured to switch between the first mode and the second mode based on one or more operation conditions, the one or more operation conditions comprising at least one of: a sparsity of an image frame to be generated, a frame period in which the image frame is to be generated, or a constraint for resources to be used in generating and transmitting the image frame.