Patent ID: 6850176

Claim:
Device for converting an analogue signal representing charges resulting from the photo-detection of electromagnetic radiation impinging on an array of photo-detectors, into a digital signal, comprising: a number of photo-detectors connected in rows and columns through buses, the photo-detectors in one column sharing the same column bus which is connected to an output stage through a row bus and; between each photo-detector and the column bus, further comprising: an integrator to integrate the charges arriving from the photo-detector; means for resetting the integrator; a comparator to compare the voltage V p from the integrator with an internally predefined threshold voltage V s ; a processing device; a clock, the clock controlling the processing device and the processing device receiving a binary value present at the output of the comparator at each signal from the clock and storing it; and digital/digital converter controlled by the clock to convert a sequence of binary values stored in the processing device into a numerical value encoded on a number of bits smaller than the number of logical values stored in the processing device.