• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.810-817
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• 2014

An on-chip current sensor with fast response time for the peak-current-mode buck regulator is proposed. The initial operating points of the peak current sensor are determined in advance by the valley current level, which is sensed by a valley current sensor. As a result, the proposed current sensor achieves a fast response time of less than 20 ns, and a sensing accuracy of over 90%. Applying the proposed current sensor, the peak-current-mode buck regulator for the mobile application is realized with an operating frequency of 2 MHz, an output voltage of 0.8 V, a maximum load current of 500 mA, and a peak efficiency of over 83%.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.375-380
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• 2017

A differential current-to-time interval converter is presented for current mode sensors. It consists of a ramp voltage generator, a current mode sensor, a reference current source, two current-tunable Schmitt triggers, a one-shot multivibrator, and two logic gates. The design principle is to apply a ramp voltage to each input of the two current-tunable Schmitt triggers whose threshold voltages are proportional to the drain current values of the current mode sensors. A proposed circuit converts a current change in the ISFET biosensor into its equivalent pulse width change. A prototype circuit built using TSMC 0.18 nm CMOS process exhibit a conversion sensitivity amounting to $726.9{\mu}s/pH$ over pH variation range of 2-12 and a linearity error less than ${\pm}0.05%$.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.714-722
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• 2018

This paper presents a wide-range speed control scheme of brushless DC (BLDC) motors based on a hall sensor with separated low- and normal-speed controllers. However, the use of the hall sensor signal is insufficient to detect motor speed in the low-speed region because of low sensor resolution and time delay. In the proposed method, a micro-stepping current control method according to the torque angle variation is presented. In this mode, the motor current frequency and rotating angle are determined by the reference speed without the actual speed fed by the hall sensor. The detected torque angle is used to adjust the current value in a limited band to control the current value in accordance with the load. The torque angle is detected exactly at the changing point of the hall sensor signal. The rotor can follow the rotating flux with the variable torque angle. In a normal speed range, the conventional vector control scheme is used to control the motor current with a PI speed controller using the hall sensor. The torque characteristics are analyzed on the basis of the back EMF and current shape. To adopt the vector control scheme, the continuous rotor position is estimated by the measured speed and hall sensor position. At the mode changing point between low and normal speed range, the proper initial current command and reference rotor position are calculated. The calculated current command can reduce the torque ripple during transient mode. The proposed method is simple but effective in extending the speed control range of a conventional BLDC motor with hall sensor without the need for a high-resolution encoder. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by various experiments on a practical BLDC motor.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics C
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• v.34C no.8
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• pp.49-63
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• 1997

This paper presents a current sensor that detects defects in CMOS integrated circuits using the current testing technique. The current sensor is built in a CMOS integrated circuit to test an abnormal current. The proposed circuit has a very small impact on the performance of the circuit under test during the normal mode. In the testing mode, the proposed circuit detects the abnormal current caused by permanent manufacturing defects and determines whether the circuit under test is defect-free or not. The proposed current sensor is simple and requires no external voltage and current sources. Hence, the circuit has less area and performance degradation, and is more efficient than any previous works. The validity and effectiveness are verified through the HSPICE simulation on circuits with defects.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.451-456
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• 2014

A compact model of a depletion-mode silicon-nanowire (Si-NW) pH sensor is proposed. This drain current model is obtained from the Pao-Sah integral and the continuous charge-based model, which is derived by applying the parabolic potential approximation to the Poisson's equation in the cylindrical coordinate system. The threshold-voltage shift in the drain-current model is obtained by solving the nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann equation for the electrolyte. The simulation results obtained from the proposed drain-current model for the Si-NW field-effect transistor (SiNWFET) agree well with those of the three-dimensional (3D) device simulation, and those from the Si-NW pH sensor model also agree with the experimental data.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.41 no.10
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• pp.57-62
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• 2004

We report the fiber-optic current sensors composed of a side-polished single-mode fiber with the thermo-optic Polymer layer and the metal wire as a heater. The index change of polymer layers caused by the resistant heat of the metal wires induces the optical attenuation through the evanescent field of the side-polished single-mode fiber. Two types of the sensors are proposed and their characteristics as a current sensor are investigated.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.160-164
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• 2018

In this paper, a wide dynamic range complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor with the adjustable sensitivity by using cascode metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) and inverter is proposed. The characteristics of the CMOS image sensor were analyzed through experimental results. The proposed active pixel sensor consists of eight transistors operated under various light intensity conditions. The cascode MOSFET is operated as the constant current source. The current generated from the cascode MOSFET varies with the light intensity. The proposed CMOS image sensor has wide dynamic range under the high illumination owing to logarithmic response to the light intensity. In the proposed active pixel sensor, a CMOS inverter is added. The role of the CMOS inverter is to determine either the conventional mode or the wide dynamic range mode. The cascode MOSFET let the current flow the current if the CMOS inverter is turned on. The number of pixels is $140(H){\times}180(V)$ and the CMOS image sensor architecture is composed of a pixel array, multiplexer (MUX), shift registers, and biasing circuits. The sensor was fabricated using $0.35{\mu}m$ 2-poly 4-metal CMOS standard process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2004.07b
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• pp.1254-1257
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• 2004

This paper presents a built-in current sensor(BICS) that can detect defects in CMOS integrated circuits through current testing technique - Iddq test. Current test has recently been known to a complementary testing method because traditional voltage test cannot cover all kinds of bridging defects. So BICS is widely used for current testing. but there are some critical issues - a performance degradation, low speed test, area overhead, etc. The proposed BICS has a two operating mode- normal mode and test mode. Those methods minimize the performance degradation in normal mode. We also used a current-mode differential amplifier that has a input as a current, so we can realize higher speed current testing. Furthermore, only using 10 MOSFETS and 3 inverters, area overhead can be reduced by 6.9%. The circuit is verified by HSPICE simulation with 0.25 urn CMOS process parameter.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2012

Using a current-mode multiple reset, a current-to-voltage(I-V) converter with a wide dynamic range was produced. The converter consists of a trans-impedance amplifier(TIA), an analog-to-digital converter(ADC), and an N-bit counter. The digital output of the I-V converter is composed of higher N bits and lower bits, obtained from the N-bit counter and the ADC, respectively. For an input current that has departed from the linear region of the TIA, the counter increases its digital output, this determines a reset current which is subtracted from the input current of the I-V converter. This current-mode reset is repeated until the input current of the TIA lies in the linear region. This I-V converter is realized using 0.35 ${\mu}m$ LSI technology. It is shown that the proposed I-V converter can increase the maximum input current by a factor of $2^N$ and widen the dynamic range by $6^N$. Additionally, the I-V converter is successfully applied to a photometric sensor.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.104-110
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• 2011

A CMOS Image Sensor (CIS) mounted on mobile appliances requires low power consumption due to limitations of the battery life cycle. In order to reduce the power consumption of CIS, we propose novel power reduction techniques such as a data flip-flop circuit with leakage current elimination and a low power single slope analog-to-digital (A/D) converter with a sleep-mode comparator. Based on 0.13 ${\mu}m$ CMOS process, the chip satisfies QVGA resolution (320 ${\times}$ 240 pixels) that the cell pitch is 2.25 um and the structure is a 4-Tr active pixel sensor. From the experimental results, the performance of the CIS has a 10-b resolution, the operating speed of the CIS is 16 frame/s, and the power dissipation is 25 mW at a 3.3 V(analog)/1.8 V(digital) power supply. When we compare the proposed CIS with conventional ones, the power consumption was reduced by approximately 22% in the sleep mode, and 20% in the active mode.