Circuit and method of sensing small voltage changes on highly ca

Miscellaneous active electrical nonlinear devices – circuits – and – Specific signal discriminating without subsequent control – By amplitude

Patent

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

327 54, G01R 1900

Patent

active

056592590

ABSTRACT:
Small voltage changes on a highly capacitive signal are sensed rapidly by placing a shielding impedance between the signal to be sensed and the input to a regenerative sense circuit. A regenerative sense circuit has a sense amplifier which controls a switching means that is connected to the input to the sense amplifier. When the output of the sense amplifier reaches a threshold value, it turns the switching means on. This switching means increases the rate of change on the input to the sense amplifier which causes the switching means to turn on even more. The input and output of the sense amplifier are able to switch more rapidly because the shielding impedance allows the switching means to change the state of the input to the sense amplifier without having to completely change the voltage level on the highly capacitive input signal. A small voltage difference between two signals is sensed by two cross-coupled, actively loaded, NMOS inverters. A regenerative effect is achieved by switching means which increase the voltage difference between the bias voltages of the NMOS inverters. The switching means are turned on when the voltage difference between the outputs of the NMOS inverters reach a threshold value. Impedances are added between the bias voltages of the NMOS inverters and the input signals so that the switching means may achieve the regenerative effect without having to completely change the voltage on the large capacitance of the signals to be sensed.

REFERENCES:
patent: 3840755 (1974-10-01), Benner et al.
patent: 4052623 (1977-10-01), Loberg
patent: 5136181 (1992-08-01), Yukawa
patent: 5155396 (1992-10-01), Maloberti et al.
patent: 5177375 (1993-01-01), Ogawa et al.
patent: 5546045 (1996-08-01), Sauer
patent: 5572471 (1996-11-01), Proebsting
Masanori Izumikawa, et al, A 400 MHz, 300mW, 8kb,, CMOS SRAM MACRO With a Current Sensing Scheme, Feb./1994 IEEE 1994 Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, pp. 595-597.
Toshinari Takayanagi, et al, 2.6 Gbvte/sec Bandwidth Cache/TLB Macro For High-Performance RISC Processor, Apr. 2, 1991, IEEE 1991 Custom Integrated Circuites Conference, pp. 10.2.1.-10.2.4.
Kazuhiro Sawada, et al, A 5ns 369kbit Port-Configurable Embedded SRAM With 0.5 um CMOS Gate Array, Apr. 4,1991, IEICE Transactions vol. E 74, pp. 929-937.
Edison H. Chiu, et al, A 50-MHz 10-ns Submicron BiCMOS 2-way Set Associative Cache Tag Memory, Apr. 2, 1991, IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, pp. 10.1.1-10.1.4.

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for the USA inventors and patents. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Circuit and method of sensing small voltage changes on highly ca does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.

If you have personal experience with Circuit and method of sensing small voltage changes on highly ca, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Circuit and method of sensing small voltage changes on highly ca will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-1107526

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.