Patent ID: 7053950

Claim:
A drive unit which transfers CCD charge, comprising: a timing signal generating device which supplies a first group of timing signals and a second group of timing signals; and a vertical drive device which generates read pulses and vertical transfer pulses according to the first group of timing signals and second group of timing signals, respectively, and supplies the read pulses and vertical transfer pulses to a solid-state image pickup element, wherein: electric charges accumulated in a light receiving section of the solid-state image pickup element are read out to a vertical transfer path in response to the read pulses and the electric charges read out to the vertical transfer path are transferred to a horizontal transfer path in response to the vertical transfer pulses; the timing signal generating device comprises a time-division multiplexing device which multiplexes the first group of timing signals and second group of timing signals corresponding to the change-over signal generated in accordance with the first timing signals on a time-division basis, and sends the multiplexed signals to a common signal line provided between the timing signal generating device and the vertical drive device; and the vertical drive device comprises a demultiplexing device which separates the first group of timing signals and second group of timing signals that have been subjected to time-division multiplexing and received through the common signal line.