CHARGE-COUPLED-DEVICE QUANTIZING CIRCUIT

摘要

A CHARGE-COUPLED-DEVICE QUANTIZING CIRCUIT A device for quantizing analog signals employing chargecoupled-device technology including a p-type substrate such as silicon having a dielectric insulating layer thereon which may be silicon dioxide. A plurality of gates or electrodes are embedded in the insulating layer and are arranged in linear relationship to alternately form potential wells in the substrate and to function as transfer gates between the wells. An analog signal represented by a quantity of charge carriers is injected into substrate and is transferred through the substrate to sequentially fill the potential wells until the original quantity of charge carriers is exhausted. The potential wells can be equal in size so that each filled well contains equal amounts of charge carriers. When the original quantity of charge carriers is exhausted the charge carriers in each of the filled wells are discretely shifted out of the quantizer to a threshold detector and the separate charge carrier packets from each potential well are counted to provide a measure of the amplitude of the original analog signal in digital form. The circuit has the flexibility that the depth of the potential wells, and therefore the quantizing step size can be controlled by the relative bias potentials applied to the gates.