Instruction manual

Glossary
PIKE Technical Manual V3.1.0
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FPN FPN = fixed pattern noise
Related with the dark current is its electrical behavior to be regionally dif-
ferent on the sensor. This introduces a structural spatial noise component,
called fixed pattern noise, although it’s not meant temporal, visible with
low illumination conditions.
FPN is typically more dominant with CMOS sensors than with CCD, where it
can be ignored mostly.
This noise nfpn [%] is usually quantified in % of the mean dark level.
Frame An individual picture image taken by a digital camera. Using an interlaced
camera, a frame consists of 2 interlaces fields.
Frame grabber A component of a computer system designed for digitizing analog video
signals.
Frame rate Frame rate is the measure of camera speed. The unit of this measurement
is frames per second (fps) and is the number of images a camera can cap-
ture in a second of time. Using area of interest (AOI) readout, the frame
rate can be increased.
Full binning If horizontal and vertical binning are combined, every 4 pixels are consol-
idated into a single pixel. At first, two horizontal pixels are put together
and then combined vertically.
This increases light sensitivity by a total of a factor of 4 and at the same
time signal-to-noise separation is improved by about 6 dB. Resolution is
reduced, depending on the model.
See also: horizontal binning and vertical binning
Gain Gain is the same as the contrast control on your TV. It is a multiplication
of the signal. In math terms, it controls the slope of the exposure/time
curve. The camera should normally be operated at the lowest gain possible,
because gain not only multiplies the signal, but also multiplies the noise.
Gain comes in very handy when you require a short exposure (say, because
the object is moving and you do not want any blur), but do not have ade-
quate lighting. In this situation the gain can be increased so that the
image signal is strong.