The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 03, 2026
Filed:
Mar. 28, 2023
Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US);
Wegene H. Tadele, San Francisco, CA (US);
Tao Shui, Cupertino, CA (US);
Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US);
Abstract
This relates to using light emitting diodes (LEDs) and/or photodiodes (PDs) on a device intended to come in contact with a user for temperature sensing. In some examples, the LEDs and PDs can be used for both biometric sensing and user temperature sensing. By biasing the LEDs and PDs with different bias currents and obtaining different diode base-emitter voltages (V) having known negative temperature coefficients, changes in V(ΔV) can be computed and used to estimate user temperature. In particular, a measurement circuit including a current source or sink, an amplifier, and an analog to digital converter (ADC) can be connected to each LED and PD. Different bias currents can be applied to the LEDs and/or PDs (the PDs being forward-biased instead of their normal reverse-biased mode for biometric sensing) to obtain different Vmeasurements, and those differences can be used in equations to estimate the temperature of the user.