Fraunhofer Institute Proposes Ultra-Thin Multi-Apterture Wafer Level Camera

Fraunhofer Institute offers Multi aperture camera optics on wafer level (ultra-thin camera) services, including optical design, prototyping and characterization of microoptical imaging systems for custom-specific applications. Fraunhofer achieved 1.4mm-thick camera module with F3.7 lens having 700 x 550 pixel resolution. The idea of the camera was presented in SPIE Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS and MOEMS:

"Multi-aperture optics for wafer-level cameras"
Andreas Bruckner, Robert Leitel, Alexander Oberdorster, Peter Dannberg, Frank Wippermann, Andreas Brauer

Overview of the different types of miniaturized camera modules. A schematic sideview of the optical system is shown on top of each field and a view on the image sensor on the bottom.

Visualization of a braided sampling of the object space by multiple optical channels. The different colors illustrate the correlation between patches on the object plane, optical channels, and partial images in the image plane.

Schematic cross section of the electronic cluster eye prototype illustrating the layer structure of the optical module, which is directly attached to an image sensor. Drawing is not to scale.

Size comparison between the fully assembled electronic cluster eye with VGA resolution on the packaged image sensor and a commercial plastic VGA lens.