USB3 Vision

The image processing standard USB3 Vision was introduced at the VISION 2012 in Stuttgart and published in February 2013. Like GigE Vision, USB3 Vision defines

• a transport layer, which controls the detection of a device ("Device Detection"),

• the configuration ("Register Access"),

• the data streaming ("Streaming Data"), and

• the handling of events ("Event Handling")

and establishes the interface to GenICam.

USB3 Vision is defined "on-the-wire" like all important standards. Everybody is familiar with the advantages of "on-the-wire" standards: USB sticks, USB mice or USB hard disks – just plug and play them.

About USB 3

The consumer interface USB 3 was introduced in 2010 and is very popular not only for the USB 2.0 backwards compatibility. In the meantime, every new PC hardware is shipped with USB 3. There are several other advantages: the USB 3 interface supports a gross bandwidth of 5000 MBit/s, however, the draft of version 3.1 announced a bandwidth of 10000 MBit/s. A max. cable length of 3.5 m (using consumer cables) is supported (8 m is possible with good cables). The interface is suitable for applications

• with high resolutions,

• high frame rates, and

• short distances between the camera and the processing unit.

Optical cables extend the distance to 100 m. However, this is not expensive, because USB 3 as a consumer interface provides a wide range of cost-effective accessories.