CMOS vs CCD in HD network camera, which one is better?

IP camera has three core components : the lens , image sensor , and compression processing chip. Wherein the image sensor is a part of the core image acquisition and processing.

Typically, one IP camera consists of three core components, which they are lens, image sensor and CPU to compress the video and offer web access, wherein the image sensor is the eyes of IP camera for image formation and processing.

CMOS and CCD are two different kinds of image sensor, which widely used among electronic devices. The different between these two types has been debated for a long time. We are going to discuss the difference from aspects including sensitivity, noise, cost and power consumption.

1.  With same pixel size, CCD sensor's sensitivity is higher than CMOS sensor.
2. CCD sensor is more expensive than CMOS image sensor.
3. The same size of CCD sensor's resolution is usually better than CMOS sensor.
4. Compared with CMOS sensor, CCD sensor offers low noise images
5. CCD sensor requires extra signal processing module, it consumes much higher energy.

In past years, CCTV security cameras are widely used for video surveillance monitoring, and the most widely used image sensor is CCD. Now we are moving into High Definition era, the situation is changing. For cost effective High Definition video surveillance applications, even CMOS image sensor's performance is not as good as  CCD in terms of the overall image quality. From the current trend, CMOS technology has greater chance become the winner. 

On the one hand, with the development of technology, CMOS sensitivity is significantly improving, it is learned on the market research firm dedicated to CMOS has developed close CCD sensitivity performance with 720p and 1080p dedicated CMOS image sensors. 

On the other hand, although the same size of the CCD sensor resolution is better than CMOS sensor, on the same size image sensor, CMOS can have much more imaging units than CCD, which means it can overcome the difficulty of manufacturing for large size image sensors.

In addition, CMOS response speed faster than CCD, and therefore more suitable for high-definition video features a large amount of data .

Although CCD and CMOS have their advantages for different application scenarios, with CMOS imaging technology continues to improve, along with declining of cost, CMOS becomes the dominate image sensor among high definition IP cameras.

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