Patents Represented by Attorney, Agent or Law Firm Peter J. Thomas
  • Patent number: 6636053
    Abstract: An electrically floating capacitor plate defines a sensing capacitor with a fingerprint sensing surface thereabove. A reference voltage pulse is selectively applied to a pixel input node that is capacitively coupled to the floating plate, which in turn is capacitively coupled to the input node of a charge integrator. During a sensing operation, the charge integrator generates a pixel output signal that is a function of the variable capacitance of the sensing capacitor, which corresponds to a ridge or valley fingerprint characteristic that appears directly above the floating plate.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 2, 2001
    Date of Patent: October 21, 2003
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics, Inc.
    Inventor: Giovanni Gozzini