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US 6,639,963 B2Granted
Up/down gray code counter and solid-state image sensor provided with such a counter
AssigneeSharp Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorMutsumi Hamaguchi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A conventional up/down Gray code counter has both a logic circuit section for up counting and a logic circuit section for down counting, and thus has a large circuit scale. To overcome this inconvenience, an up/down Gray code counter of the invention has a one-way Gray code counter that can count only in one, up or down, direction and a highest bit selecting circuit that receives the highest bit of the data output from the one-way Gray code counter and that then outputs the bit selectively either intact or after inverting it.
Claims16
An up/down Gray code counter comprising:
- a one-way Gray code counter that can count only in one, up or down, direction;
- and
- a highest bit selecting circuit,
- wherein the highest bit selecting circuit receives a highest bit of data output from the one-way Gray code counter and then outputs, as a highest-bit output of the up/down Gray code counter, the bit selectively either intact or after inverting the bit.
1 more element
A solid-state image sensor comprising:
- a plurality of photoelectric conversion elements;
- and
- a scanning circuit including an up/down Gray code counter for sequentially reading signals from the photoelectric conversion elements,
- wherein the up/down Gray code counter comprises a one-way Gray code counter that can count only in one, up or down, direction and a highest bit selecting circuit that receives a highest bit of data output from the one-way Gray code counter and that then outputs the bit selectively either intact or after inverting the bit.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.