Patent ID: 11867572
Assignee: STMICROELECTRON NTERNATIONAL N.V.
Field: Basic communication processes (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 15:
16. A sensing circuit, comprising:
voltage generation circuitry comprising:
first and second bipolar junction transistors having coupled collectors and bases, and biased at different current densities; and
a third bipolar junction transistor having its collector coupled to its base, the third bipolar junction transistor biased by a calibrated current and having a base-emitter voltage that is a voltage complementary to absolute temperature;

an integrator;
a switched capacitor circuit configured to selectively sample voltages produced by the voltage generation circuitry and provide the sampled voltages to inputs of the integrator;
a quantization circuit configured to quantize outputs of the integrator to produce a bitstream;
wherein the switched capacitor circuit cooperates with the integrator under control of the bitstream to:
when a most recent bit of the bitstream is a first logic value, cause sampling and integration of a difference between a base-emitter voltage of the first bipolar junction transistor and a base-emitter voltage of the second bipolar junction transistor a first number of times; and
when the most recent bit of the bitstream is a second logic value, cause sampling and integration of a base-emitter voltage of the third bipolar junction transistor a second given number of times; and
output circuitry configured to produce an output signal by performing an operation on the bitstream.