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:
Jul. 11, 2006
Filed:
Sep. 19, 2002
Tobias Delbrück, Zürich, CH;
Shih-chii Liu, Zürich, CH;
Samual Zahnd, Zürich, CH;
Patrick Lichtsteiner, Lucerne, CH;
Tobias Delbrück, Zürich, CH;
Shih-Chii Liu, Zürich, CH;
Samual Zahnd, Zürich, CH;
Patrick Lichtsteiner, Lucerne, CH;
Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich, Zurich, CH;
Universitat Zurich, Zurich, CH;
Abstract
A photosensitive device with a photodiode and an amplifier is disclosed. The diode is in series with a feedback transistor which forces the voltage derived from the photocurrent to be a logarithmic function of the light intensity. A current mirror is provided which controls the bias current to the amplifier to be proportional to the photocurrent. This arrangement ensures that the amplifier, just as the voltage derived from the photocurrent, becomes faster with increasing light intensity and therefore prevents an unnecessarily high power consumption at low light intensities.