Bishop Innovation Limited

Friedrich Heitger

Peter Masa

Pascal Heim

Alessandro Mortara

An electronic circuit for a capacitive flash analog to digital converter for converting the ratio of first and second analog signals into a digital code representation using an array of parallel capacitive comparator branches. Each branch computing one bit of the digital code simultaneously according to its array index. The first analog signal is applied as a voltage difference between first signal nodes comprising a first positive signal node and a first negative signal node. The second analog signal is, applied as a voltage difference between second signal nodes comprising a second positive signal node and a second negative signal node.

Capacitive flash analog to digital converter

An electronic circuit for measuring the position of a spatially periodic intensity pattern of incident radiation includes an array of detectors ( ); two or more correlator units ( ) each having arrays of capacitors ( ) connected to a buffer ( ); and a phase angle computing unit ( ). The pitch of the array of detectors ( ) is smaller than the pitch of the incident intensity pattern so that the latter is oversampled, yielding high accuracy. The detector outputs ( ) are weighted by respective fixed capacitance values ( ) which vary periodically along arrays of capacitors ( ), and a weighted sum of outputs for each correlator unit ( ) is output at its respective buffer ( ). The capacitance values ( ) of respective correlator units ( ) are mutually offset by a predetermined phase shift. The analog computation using capacitor arrays ( ) is fast and energy efficient, and can be implemented as a VLSI circuit.

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Bern, Switzerland

Friedrich Heitger