Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.

Semiconductor Components Industries, LLC

Sanyo Semiconductor Co., Ltd.

Hisayoshi Uchiyama

Katsu Horikoshi

Takashi Noma

Hiroshi Yamada

Hiroyuki Shinogi

Shinzo Ishibe

Masashi Arai

Yoshinori Seki

Hiroshi Kojima

Futoshi Wakai

Rui Kurihara

An optical-pickup apparatus includes: a first laser light source including a first laser diode to emit a laser beam having a first wavelength, and a back-monitor photodetector to receive the laser beam emitted in a backward direction, not being an optical-disc direction, and output a first monitor signal; a second laser-light source including a second laser diode to emit a laser beam having a second wavelength; a light-receiving circuit including a front-monitor photodetector to receive the laser beam emitted in a forward direction, being the optical-disc direction, and output a second monitor signal, and a switch circuit to be inputted with the first and second monitor signals, and output the first or second monitor signal according to a switch signal; and first and second drive circuits to drive the first and second laser diodes according to the first and second monitor signals outputted from the light-receiving circuit, respectively.

Optical pickup apparatus, integrated circuit, and method for controlling laser output of optical pickup apparatus

The invention provides a semiconductor device which has a capacitor element therein to achieve size reduction of the device, the capacitor element having larger capacitance than conventional. A semiconductor integrated circuit and pad electrodes are formed on the front surface of a semiconductor substrate. A second insulation film is formed on the side and back surfaces of the semiconductor substrate, and a capacitor electrode is formed between the back surface of the semiconductor substrate and the second insulation film, contacting the back surface of the semiconductor substrate. The second insulation film is covered by wiring layers electrically connected to the pad electrodes, and the wiring layers and the capacitor electrode overlap with the second insulation film being interposed therebetween. Thus, the capacitor electrode, the second insulation film and the wiring layers form capacitors.

Semiconductor device

In the current-controlled oscillator performing an oscillation frequency control by using a differential amplifier circuit, resistors are inserted to each current path of a differential pair of the differential amplifier circuit, and thereby an inclination of output currents Ia, Ib of a differential pair is small in the linear line region. Further, by setting a reference voltage applied to a base of a transistor of one side of the differential pair lowly, the linear region is shifted to low voltage side, and thereby a saturation region of the low voltage side is not occurred. Moreover, when a comparison result of a phase of an output signal of the current-controlled oscillation circuit and a reference signal is converted to an oscillation frequency control voltage V, by limiting an upper limit voltage of the Vby an output of a regulator in stead of a positive voltage power source Vof common circuit, the Vdoes not move to a saturation region upper than the linear region. According to the current-controlled oscillator, it is possible to prevent deterioration of a phase noise characteristic or deadlock caused by an inclination or a width of the linear region of the output characteristic of the differential amplifier circuit.

Oscillator

To ensure establishment of synchronization and data demodulation among a number of transmitter/receivers using a spread spectrum method. Specifically, in a normal communication state, a second transmitter/receiver sends transmission data including a pilot carrier and a communication carrier. Receiving the transmission data, a first transmitter/receiver establishes synchronization between a spread code contained in the received spread spectrum signal and its own generated spread code, based on dummy data received during a pilot carrier period, and maintains the established synchronization. Thereafter, the first transmitter/receiver digitally demodulates data in the communication carrier. The resultant data is subjected to decoding and analog conversion to be converted into an audio signal. A control data is derived from the digitally demodulated data, and used to control the operation of the first transmitter/receiver. With this arrangement, synchronization is established between a received spread spectrum code and generated spread spectrum code, and then a communication carrier period starts. This makes it possible to ensure establishment of synchronization and data demodulation despite a longer time necessary for a receiver/transmitter employing a spread spectrum method to establish synchronization for spread spectrum codes.

Bi-directional transmitter/receiver system and bi-directional transmitter/receiver

Growing community of inventors

Gunma-ken, Japan

Hisayoshi Uchiyama