Renesas Electronics intros optical image stabilizer driver IC

SANTA CLARA, USA: Renesas Electronics Corp. announced the development of the RAA305170GBM, an optical image stabilizer (OIS) control driver IC for use in camera-equipped mobile phones and tablet PCs. The RAA305170GBM is the first OIS driver IC available with three systems of sensor/driver circuits for smartphones, raising the performance of functions such as Image Stabilization AF.

With the RAA305170GBM, product developers can bring high performance on par with that of standalone digital cameras to the smartphones or tablet PC camera modules. This level of performance allows smartphones and PCs to meet general consumer demand for camera functionality that enables them to capture high-quality video and still photos without ever missing a good shot, while uploading these videos and still photos to the web immediately without any need for image processing.

In recent years the demand for smartphones has grown rapidly within the mobile phone market, with matching increases both in the number of mobile Internet users and in the variety of applications and content. In addition, as the proportion of video among the images posted on the Internet has grown, consumers have come to demand higher pixel counts and more advanced functionality in their smartphone and tablet PC cameras. This has led to a growing demand in smartphone products market for image stabilization functionality.

Smartphones and tablet cameras need optical image stabilization function because they are susceptible to blurry images caused by shaking. Although low-cost electronic image stabilizers are widely used in smartphone cameras, the stabilization functionality tends to become less adequate as the camera resolution increases. Digital cameras can prevent blurry images caused by shaking through complementary functions such as diaphragm and high-speed shutter. Smartphone cameras, on the other hand, have limited space and they require alternate measure.

The image stabilization technology addresses these quality concerns by aligning the lens with the shaking of the camera, leveraging the technology developed by Renesas, used in compact digital cameras. The technological innovations accumulated in this way are incorporated into this new OIS driver IC, which is capable of three voice coil monitor (VCM) drivers, as the first product with this capacity for the smartphone and tablet market