• 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.

• 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.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.

• 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 Semiconductor Engineering
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.81-87
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• 2020

An instrumentation amplifier (IA) and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) are essential circuit blocks for accurate and robust sensor readout systems. This paper introduces recent advances in radiation-hardening by design (RHBD) techniques applied for the sensor readout integrated circuits (IC), e.g., the three-op-amp IA and the successive-approximation register (SAR) ADC, operating against total ionizing dose (TID) and singe event effect (SEE) in harsh radiation environments. The radiation-hardened IA utilized TID monitoring and adaptive reference control to compensate for transistor parameter variations due to radiation effects. The radiation-hardened SAR ADC adopts delay-based double-feedback flip-flops to prevent soft errors which flips the data bits. Radiation-hardened IA and ADC were verified through compact model simulation, and fabricated CMOS chips were measured in radiation facilities to confirm their radiation tolerance.

• 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%.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.793-799
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• 2016

A multi-purpose sensor interface that provides dual-mode operation of fingerprint sensing and physiological signal detection is presented. The dual-mode sensing capability is achieved by utilizing inter-pixel shielding patterns as capacitive amplifier's input electrodes. A prototype readout circuit including a fingerprint panel for feasibility verification was fabricated in a $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process. A single-channel readout circuit was implemented and multiplexed to scan two-dimensional fingerprint pixels, where adaptive calibration capability against pixel-capacitance variations was also implemented. Feasibility of the proposed multi-purpose interface was experimentally verified keeping low-power consumption less than 1.9 mW under a 3.3 V supply.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2019

This paper presents an air flow sensor (AFS) based on a polymer thin film. This AFS primarily consists of a polymer membrane attached to a metal-patterned glass substrate and a temperature-sensing element composed of NiCr. These two components were integrated on a single glass substrate. The AFS measures changes in capacitance caused by deformation of the polymer membrane based on the air flow and simultaneously detects the temperature of the surrounding environment. A readout integrated circuit (ROIC) was also fabricated for signal processing, and an ROIC chip, 1.8 mm by 1.9 mm in size, was packaged with an AFS in the form of a system-in-package module. The total size of the AFS is 1 by 1 cm, and the diameter and thickness of the circular-shaped polymer membrane are 4 mm and $15{\mu}m$, respectively. The rate of change of the capacitance is approximately 11.2% for air flows ranging between 0 and 40 m/s.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.53 no.11
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• pp.48-55
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• 2016

Ambient-light sensor system, which changes the brightness of a display as ambient light change, was studied to reduce the power consumption of the mobile applications such as note PC, tablet PC and smart phone. The ambient-light sensor system should be integrated on a display panel to improve the complexity and cost of mobile applications, so the ambient-light sensor and readout circuit was integrated on a display panel using low-temperature poly-silicon thin film transistors (LTPS-TFT). We proposed the new compensation method to correct the panel-to-panel variation of the ambient-light sensors, without additional equipment. We designed and investigated the new readout circuit with the proposed compensation method and the analog-to-digital converter for the final digital output of ambient light. The readout circuit has very simple structure and control timing to be integrated with LTPS-TFT, and the input luminance ranges from 10 to 10,000 lux. The readout rate is 100 Hz, and maximum differential non-uniformity with 20 levels of the final output below 0.5 LSB.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.221-224
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• 2012

We propose a Readout Integrated Circuit (ROIC), which applies a fixed current bias sensing method to the input stage in order to simplify the circuit structure and the infrared sensor characteristic control. For the sample-and-hold stage to display and control a signal detected by the infrared sensor using a two-dimensional (2D) focal plane array, a differential delta sampling (DDS) circuit is proposed, which effectively removes the FPN. In addition, the output characteristic is improved to have wider bandwidth and higher gain by applying a two-stage variable gain amplifier (VGA). The output characteristic of the proposed device was 23.91 mV/$^{\circ}C$, and the linearity error rate was less than 0.22%. After checking the performance of the ROIC using HSPICE simulation, the chip was manufactured and measured using the SMIC 0.35 um standard CMOS process to confirm that the simulation results from the actual design are in good agreement with the measurement results.