• 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.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.1532-1537
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• 2024

Time-of-flight (TOF) PET detectors with fast-rise-time scintillators and fast-single photon time resolution silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) have been developed to improve the coincidence timing resolution (CTR) to sub-100 ps. The CTR can be further improved with an optimal bandwidth and minimized electronic noise in the readout circuit and this helps reduce the distortion of the fast signals generated from the TOF-PET detector. The purpose of this study was to develop an ultra-high frequency and fully-differential (UF-FD) readout circuit that minimizes distortion in the fast signals produced using TOF-PET detectors, and suppresses the impact of the electronic noise generated from the detector and front-end readout circuits. The proposed UF-FD readout circuit is composed of two differential amplifiers (time) and a current feedback operational amplifier (energy). The ultra-high frequency differential (7 GHz) amplifiers can reduce the common ground noise in the fully-differential mode and minimize the distortion in the fast signal. The CTR and energy resolution were measured to evaluate the performance of the UF-FD readout circuit. These results were compared with those obtained from a high-frequency and single ended readout circuit. The experiment results indicated that the UF-FD readout circuit proposed in this study could substantially improve the best achievable CTR of TOF-PET detectors.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.223-228
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• 2021

This work presents a low-power CMOS image sensor (CIS) with a multi-column-parallel (MCP) readout structure while focusing on improving its performance compared to previous works. A delta readout scheme that utilizes the image characteristics is optimized for the MCP readout structure. By simply alternating the MCP readout direction for each row selection, additional memory for the row-to-row delta readout is not required, resulting in a reduced area of occupation compared to the previous work. In addition, the bias current of a pre-amplifier in a successive approximate register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) changes according to the operating period to improve the power efficiency. The prototype CIS chip was fabricated using a 0.18-㎛ CMOS process. A 160 × 120 pixel array with 4.4 ㎛ pitch was implemented with a 10-bit SAR ADC. The prototype CIS demonstrated a frame rate of 120 fps with a total power consumption of 1.92 mW.

• 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.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 the Korean Magnetics Society
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.65-70
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• 2004

Read out signal and temperature distribution of magnetic amplifying magnetooptical disk were studied. Temperature distribution of recording layer and adjacent layers were calculated when the disk was at rest. Mark size, length and location were simulated from a chain of recording beam pulses. In addition, signal amplitude depending on the shape of the marks, readout signals from the recording layer and amplified marks of the readout layer, were simulated. Simplified thermal conduction model was used to calculate the temperature distribution of recording and adjacent layers as a function of time as well as to calculate the mark size, length and location. Readout signal was calculated by the convolution of the disk reflectivity and the Gaussian beam intensity. Readout signal from the mark in the readout layer amplified to the size of the laser beam fumed out to be twice as large as the signal from the crescent shaped mark in the recording layer.

• 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%.

• 한국초전도학회:학술대회논문집
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• v.13
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• pp.3-3
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• 2003

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.57-66
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• 2002

We designed two-dimensional position sensitive MCP(mixt.ochannel plate) detector for FIMS, which is composed of MCP, delay line anode, and delay line readout elec-tronics. And also, we fabricated and tested for the operation stability and resolution of the delay line readout electronic system. An anode simulator and a stimulator were used instead of the real MCP and anode during the test to see the electronic contribution to the resolution. The readout electronics was operated stably and showed time resolution of about 560 ps for the spectral direction and about 100 ps for the image direction respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.34S no.11
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• pp.25-33
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• 1997

The end-to-end rate-based control mechanism is used for the flow control of the ABR service to allow much more flexibility in ATM switching system. To accommodate the ABR service effciently many algorithms such as EFCI, EPRCA, ERICA, and CAPC2 have been proposed for the switch algorithm. ABR cells and related RM cells are received at the ATM switch fabric transparently without any processing. And then cells received from the traffic source are queued in the ABR buffer of switching system. The ABR buffer usually has some thresholds for easy congestion control signal transmission. Whatever we use, therefore, these can be many ABR traffic control algorithms to implement the ABR transfer capability. The genertion of congestion indicate signal for ABR control algorithms is determined by ABR buffer satus. And ABR buffer status is determined by ABR cells transfer ratio in ATM switch fabrics. In this paper, we presented the functional structures for control of the ABR traffic capability, proposed the readout scheduling, cell slot allocation of output link and the buffer allocation model for effective ABR traffic guranteeing with considering CBR/VBR traffics in ATM switch. Since the proposed readout scheduling scheme can provide more avaliable space to ABR buffer than existing readout scheduling scheme, generation rate of a SEND signal, that is, BCN signal in destination node can be increased for ABR call connection. Therefore, the proposed scheme, in this paper, can be appropriate as algorithm for effective ABR traffic service on output link of ATM switching node.