• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.331-337
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• 2017

A readout circuit for a tactile sensor pad based on force sensing resistors was proposed, which was composed of an analog signal conditioning circuit and a digital circuit with a microcontroller. The conventional signal conditioning circuit has a dc offset voltage in the output signal, which results from the reference voltage applied to the FSR devices. The offset voltage reduces the dynamic range of the circuit and makes it difficult to operate the circuit under a low voltage power supply. In the proposed signal conditioning circuit, the dc offset voltage was removed completely. The microcontroller with A/D converter and D/A converter was used to enlarge the measurement range of pressure. For this, the microcontroller adjusts the FSR reference voltage according to the resistance magnitude of FSR under pressure. The operation of the proposed readout circuit which was connected to a tactile sensor pad with $5{\times}10$ FSR array was verified experimentally. The experimental results show the proposed readout circuit has the wider measurement range of pressure than the conventional circuit. The proposed circuit is suitable for low voltage and low power applications.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.73-81
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• 2014

Silicon PIN diode radiation sensors and CMOS readout circuits were designed and fabricated in this study. The PIN diodes were fabricated using a 380-${\mu}m$-thick 4-inch n+ Si (111) wafer containing a $2-k{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ n- thin epitaxial layer. CMOS readout circuits employed the driving and signal processes in a radiation sensor were mixed with digital logic and analog input circuits. The primary functions of readout circuits are amplification of sensor signals and the generation of the alarm signals when radiation events occur. The radiation sensors and CMOS readout circuits were fabricated in the Institute of Semiconductor Fusion Technology (ISFT) semiconductor fabrication facilities located in Kyungpook National University. The performance of the readout circuit combined with the Si PIN diode sensor was demonstrated.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2001.06b
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• pp.57-60
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• 2001

A readout circuit for Dual band IR detector was proposed and designed. Designed circuit provide to detector a stable diode bias and high injection efficiency using Buffered Direct Injection (BDI) input circuit. Then, amplifier in the unit cell is operated when cell is selected in order to minimize the power consumption. We could confirm through the simulation that designed circuit integrate and output simultaneously the signal generating from the dual band IR detector.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.380-386
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• 2016

This paper presents a compact and low-power on-chip touch sensor and readout circuit using shunt proximity touch sensor and its design scheme. In the proposed touch sensor readout circuit, the touch panel condition depending on the proximity of the finger is directly converted into the corresponding voltage level without additional signal conditioning procedures. Furthermore, the additional circuitry including the comparator and the flip-flop does not consume any static current, which leads to a low-power design scheme. A new prototype touch sensor readout integrated circuit was fabricated using complementally metal oxide silicon (CMOS) $0.18{\mu}m$ technology with core area of $0.032mm^2$ and total current of $125{\mu}A$. Our measurement result shows that an actual 10.4 inches capacitive type touch screen panel (TSP) can detect the finger size from 0 to 1.52 mm, sharply.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.115-119
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• 2022

A readout circuit for a mercury-cadmium-telluride (MCT)-amplified mid-wave infrared (IR) photodetector was realized and applied to noncontact chemical agent detectors based on a quantum cascade laser (QCL). The QCL emitted 250 times for each wavelength in 0.2-㎛ steps from 8 to 12 ㎛ with a frequency of 100 kHz and duty ratio of 10%. Because of the nonconstant QCL emission power during on-duty, averaging the photodetector signals is essential. Averaging can be performed in digital back-end processing through a high-speed analog-to-digital converter (ADC) or in analog front-end processing through an integrator circuit. In addition, it should be considered that the 250 IR data points should be completely transferred to a PC during each wavelength tuning period of the QCL. To average and minimize the IR data, we designed a readout circuit using the analog front-end processing method. The proposed readout circuit consisted of a switched-capacitor integrator, voltage level shifter, relatively low-speed analog-to-digital converter, and micro-control unit. We confirmed that the MCT photodetector signal according to the QCL source can be accurately read and transferred to the PC without omissions.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.31-38
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• 2009

To improve the image quality and lower the power consumption of the mobile applications, it is the one of the best candidate to control the backlight unit of the LCD module with ambient light. Ambient light sensor and readout circuit were integrated in LCD panel for the mobile applications, and we designed them with LTPS TFT. We proposed noble start-up correction in order to correct the variation of the photo sensors in each panel. We used time-to-digital method for converting photo current to digital data. To effectively merge time-to-digital method with start-up correction, we proposed noble dual slope correction method. The entire readout circuit was designed and estimated with LTPS TFT process. The readout circuit has very simple and stable structure and timing, so it is suitable for LTPS TFT process. The readout circuit can correct the variation of the photo sensors without an additional equipment, and it outputs the 4-levels digital data per decade for input luminance that has a dynamic range of 60dB. The readout rate is 100 times/sec, and the linearity error for digital conversion is less than 18%.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.6 no.2 s.19
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• pp.49-52
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• 2007

Characteristics of an active pixel switch readout circuit were studied by SPICE simulation. A simple readout circuit consists of an operation amplifier, a diode, and a down-counter was suggested, and its successful operation was verified by showing that the differences in the detected signal intensity are accordingly converted to modulation of the voltage pulses generated by the comparator. A scheme to use these pulses to generate the original image was also put forward.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.191-197
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• 2005

When fabricating a vision chip, we should consider the noise problem, such as the fixed pattern noise(FPN) due to the process variation. In this paper, we propose an edge-detection circuit based on biological retina using the offset-free column readout circuit to reduce the FPN occurring in the photo-detector. The offset-free column readout circuit consists of one source follower, one capacitor and five transmission gates. As a result, it is simpler and smaller than a general correlated double sampling(CDS) circuit. A vision chip for edge detection has been designed and fabricated using $0.35\;{\mu}m$ 2-poly 4-metal CMOS technology, and its output characteristics have been investigated.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.243-245
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• 2009

A novel ultra-low-power readout circuit for a pH-sensitive ion-sensitive field-effect transistor (ISFET) is proposed. It uses an ISFET/reference FET (REFET) differential pair operating in weak-inversion and a simple current-mode metal-oxide semiconductor FET (MOSFET) translinear circuit. Simulation results verify that the circuit operates with excellent common-mode rejection ability and good linearity for a single pH range from 4 to 10, while only 4 nA is drawn from a single 1 V supply voltage.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.349-355
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• 2015

A fully-differential touch-screen sensing architecture is presented to improve noise immunity and also support most multi-touch events minimizing the number of amplifiers and their silicon area. A correlated double sampling function is incorporated to reduce DC offset and low-frequency noises, and a stabilizer circuit is also embedded to minimize inherent transient fluctuations. A prototype of the proposed readout circuit was fabricated in a $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process and its differential operation in response to various touch events was experimentally verified. With a 3.3 V supply, the current dissipation was 3.4 mA at normal operation and $140{\mu}A$ in standby mode.