AD conversion circuit and solid-state image pickup device

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9106860-B2
Application number	US-201313952947-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 29, 2013
Priority date	Aug 3, 2012
Publication date	Aug 11, 2015
Grant date	Aug 11, 2015

Abstract

An AD conversion circuit may include: a reference signal generation unit; a comparison unit; a clock generation unit; a latch unit; a counting unit; and an encoding unit including a detection circuit and an encoding circuit, the detection circuit performing a first detection operation of detecting logic states of n lower phase signals in a signal group that a plurality of lower phase signals latched in the latch unit are arranged in the same order as those of the signal group when the plurality of lower phase signals output from the clock generation unit are arranged to be the signal group the detection circuit outputting a state detection signal when the logic state of the n lower phase signals is detected to be a predetermined logic state in the first detection operation, the encoding circuit performing encoding based on the state detection signal output from the detection circuit.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An AD conversion circuit comprising:
a reference signal generation unit configured to generate a reference signal increasing or decreasing over time;
a comparison unit configured to compare an analog signal that is a target of an AD conversion with the reference signal, the comparison unit being configured to terminate a comparison process at a timing at which the reference signal meets a predetermined condition for the analog signal;
a clock generation…

Assignees

• Olympus Corp

Inventors

• Hagihara Yoshio

Classifications

• H04N25/78 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04N5/378 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic