Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Denso Corporation

Nxp B.v.

Maxim Integrated Products, Inc.

Mirise Technologies Corporation

Stichting Voor De Technische Wetenschappen

Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.v.

Asml Netherlands B.v.

Ams International Ag

Maxim Integrated Prodcuts, Inc.

Quan, Rui

Makinwa, Kofi Afolabi Anthony

Kofi Afolabi Anthony Makinwa

Johan Hendrik Huijsing

Qinwen Fan

Robert Hendrikus Margaretha Van Veldhoven

Zhong Tang

Johannes Petrus Martinus Bernardus Vermeulen

Jun Wu

Johannes O Voorman

Thibault Simon Mathieu Laurent

Ruud Hendrikus Martinus Johannes Bloks

Stoyan Nihtianov

Fabio Sebastiano

Johannes Wilhelmus Maria Bergmans

Michiel Pertijs

Patricius Jacobus Neefs

Johan Frederik Witte

Daihong Fu

Kamran Souri

Johannes Paul Marie De La Rosette

Zeyu Cai

Burak Gonen

Lixia Zhou

Caspar Petrus Laurentius Van Vroonhoven

Rui Quan

A reference current source includes first and second semiconductor elements, a conversion resistor, an amplifier, and a current mirror circuit. The first semiconductor element includes a single diode or a single transistor, and the second semiconductor element includes diodes or transistors connected in parallel. The conversion resistor converts forward voltages of the first and second semiconductor elements or a differential voltage between the first and second semiconductor elements into a converted current. The amplifier has first and second input terminals. The first semiconductor element is connected between the first input terminal and a ground, and the second semiconductor element and the conversion resistor is connected between the second input terminal and the ground. The current mirror circuit outputs a reference current corresponding to the converted current. The conversion resistor has a temperature coefficient being on a level with a temperature coefficient of the differential voltage.

Reference current source

A delta-sigma modulation type A/D converter includes: a capacitively coupled amplifier having a sampling capacitor, a feedback capacitor, and an amplifier; a correlated double sampling type first integrator as a first-stage integrator, which is connected to the capacitively coupled amplifier without a switch; a second integrator arranged after the first integrator; a quantizer arranged after the second integrator and quantizing an output of the second integrator; and an D/A converter that D/A-converts an output of the quantizer and feeds back to any one of the capacitively coupled amplifier, the first integrator, and the second integrator.

Delta-sigma modulation type A/D converter

A measurement substrate for measuring a condition pertaining in an apparatus for processing production substrates during operation thereof, the measurement substrate including: a body having dimensions compatible with the apparatus; a plurality of sensor modules embedded in the body, each sensor module having: a sensor configured generate an analog measurement signal, an analog to digital converter to generate digital measurement information from the analog measurement signal, and a module controller configured to output the digital measurement information; and a central control module configured to receive the digital measurement information from each of the module controllers and to communicate the digital measurement information to an external device.

Measurement substrate and a measurement method

A method of differential signal transfer from a differential input Vinp and Vinn having a common mode input voltage that can be higher than the power supply voltage by providing an input chopper having first through fourth chopper transistors, each having a source, a drain and a gate, the input chopper having Vinp and Vinn as a differential input, providing an output chopper, capacitively coupling a differential output Voutp and Voutn of the input chopper to a differential input of the output chopper, capacitively coupling a clock to the input chopper and coupling the clock to the output chopper, the clock having a first phase and a second phase opposite from the first phase, the first phase being coupled to the gates of the first and second transistors and the second phase being coupled to the gates of the third and fourth transistors, and providing protection of the gates of the first through fourth transistors from excessive voltages. Various embodiments are disclosed.

Fully capacitive coupled input choppers

One example discloses a ratiometric device, including: a current source having a first current, a second current different from the first current, and a current-select program; a sensor device responsive to a gas and having a sensor-cold temperature T(cold,sens) in response to the first current and a sensor-hot temperature T(hot,sens) in response to the second current; a reference device having a reference-cold temperature T(cold,ref) in response to the first current and a reference-hot temperature T(hot,ref) in response to the second current; and wherein the ratiometric device includes a temperature difference ratio output based on T(cold,sens), T(hot,sens), T(cold,ref) and T(hot,ref).

Ratiometric device

An efficient analog to digital converter is disclosed. The efficient analog to digital converter includes a coarse analog to digital converter coupled to an input analog signal. The coarse analog to digital converter is configured to provide an approximate digital representation of the input analog signal. The efficient analog to digital converter also includes a fine analog to digital converter coupled to the input analog signal. The output of the coarse analog to digital converter is coupled to the fine analog to digital converter. The fine analog to digital converter is configured to set input range of the fine analog to digital converter as a function of the output of the coarse analog to digital converter.

Efficient analog to digital converter

Fast-settling capacitive-coupled amplifiers are disclosed. The amplifiers use two Capacitive Coupled paths embedded in a Multipath Hybrid Nested Miller Compensation topology. One path is a direct high frequency path and the other path is a slower stabilization path. This combination results in a flat frequency response to and through the chopper frequency, and a fast settling response. Various exemplary embodiments are disclosed, including operational amplifier and instrumentation amplifier configurations.

Fast-settling capacitive-coupled amplifiers

A method of differential signal transfer from a differential input Vinp and Vinn having a common mode input voltage that can be higher than the power supply voltage by providing an input chopper having Vinp and Vinn as a differential input, providing an output chopper, capacitively coupling a differential output Voutp and Voutn of the input chopper to a differential input of the output chopper, capacitively coupling a clock to the input chopper and coupling the clock to the output chopper, the clock having a first phase and a second phase opposite from the first phase, the first phase being coupled to the gates of the first and second transistors and the second phase being coupled to the gates of the third and fourth transistors, and providing protection of the gates of the first through fourth transistors from excessive voltages. Various embodiments are disclosed.

An ADC is disclosed which has, as a first stage, a successive approximation converter, or other compensated, direct comparison converter, followed by a sigma delta modulation converter as a second stage. The sigma delta converter may beneficially be a first order modulator. The resulting ADC combines accuracy with low power consumption per conversion, and thus is particularly suited for use in temperature sensors for applications such as RFID transponders. Such a temperature sensor and an RFID transponder are also disclosed. There is also disclosed a method of analog-to-digital conversion, comprising a first successive approximation register or other compensated, direct comparison conversion stage followed by a sigma delta modulation stage, which, further, may be combined with providing a proportional-to-absolute-temperature (PTAT) signal, for low-power, accurate temperature sensing.

ADC, a temperature sensor, a non-contact transponder, and a method of converting analog signals to digital signals

A phase detection circuit determines phase difference between a periodic signal and a reference signal of substantially equal frequency. The circuit includes: a source input receiving the periodic signal; a feedback signal generator providing a feedback signal (PFB) with substantially the same frequency as the reference signal; a phase difference circuit coupled to the source input node and a second signal input node coupled to the feedback signal generator, determining an error signal from phase difference between the periodic signal and PFB; an integrator circuit integrating the error signal into an integration signal; and a digitizing circuit digitizing the integration signal. The feedback signal generator is coupled to the digitizing circuit, providing PFB based on the digitized integration signal, and selecting the phase of PFB from a number of fixed phases. The phase detection circuit generates a time-average of the phase of PFB selected from the plurality of fixed phases.

Synchronous phase detection circuit

An oscillator device for generating an oscillator signal, includes a heater arrangement, a first switching element, a temperature sensor, signal process means, and voltage controlled oscillator; an output of the temperature sensor being connected to an input of the signal processing means, and an output of the signal processing means being connected to an input of the voltage controlled oscillator. The first switching element is arranged for receiving the oscillator signal from the voltage controlled oscillator and for providing a heater drive signal to either a first heater element or a second heater element of the heater arrangement based on the oscillator signal. The signal processing means comprise a synchronous demodulator.

Oscillator based on thermal diffusion

A new embedded-servo format is proposed for use in disk drives, preferably hard disk drives. It is based on biphase modulation (more generally, p-phase modulation, where p>1) and offers significant advantages, in terms of SNR and timing content, over existing formats. It is shown that for biphase, at the low linear densities typically employed for servo information, near maximum-likelihood performance may be attained by a simple bit-detector consisting of a full-response linear equalizer and a binary slicer. When compared with an optimal detector for the commonly used technique of dibit signalling, a SNR gain of some 4 dB is achieved. The same equalizer may be used as the basis for near-maximum-likelihood Position Error Signal (PES) amplitude estimation and timing recovery. Investigations carried out on a practical servo demodulator based on a 5th order analog filter show that, at typical linear densities, this ideal performance is closely approached. The equalizer has a band-pass character and yields excellent suppression of the effects of thermal asperities and magneto resistive (MR) head asymmetry.

Growing community of inventors

Delft, Netherlands

Kofi Afolabi Anthony Makinwa