  The single-mirror small-size telescope (SST-1M) is one of the three proposed
designs for the small-size telescopes (SSTs) of the Cherenkov Telescope Array
(CTA) project. The SST-1M will be equipped with a 4 m-diameter segmented mirror
dish and an innovative fully digital camera based on silicon photo-multipliers
(SiPMs). Since the SST sub-array will consist of up to 70 telescopes, the
challenge is not only to build a telescope with excellent performance, but also
to design it so that its components can be commissioned, assembled and tested
by industry. In this paper we review the basic steps that led to the design
concepts for the SST-1M camera and the ongoing realization of the first
prototype, with focus on the innovative solutions adopted for the photodetector
plane and the readout and trigger parts of the camera. In addition, we report
on results of laboratory measurements on real scale elements that validate the
camera design and show that it is capable of matching the CTA requirements of
operating up to high-moon-light background conditions.
