Abstract: An integrated battery package, that contains semiconductor chips, for example to control and regulate battery charging and to monitor the package operation, uses a single lead frame to interconnect several internal chips, to internally connect said control chips to the battery and to connect the whole package assembly externally. The invention eliminates the need for any additional connecting mechanism. The invention uses established production processes. A molding process, similar to plastic chip encapsulation, encloses the battery controlling chips and forms at the same time the body of the battery package. An additional cover, sealed to said body, closes the battery package.

Abstract: Circuits and methods to charge batteries of a portable device simultaneously with supplying power to the device for its operation, using a power source with limited maximum current, as e.g. an USB port, have been achieved. The system invented relies upon digital control only. No direct sensing of the current required for the operation of the portable device is required. The control takes care that the sum of the charging current and of the current to run the portable device does not exceed the maximum allowable current of the power source. The current required to run the portable device has precedence over the charging current.

Abstract: Novel power-management chips (PMCS) and a related method to increase the flexibility of power-management chips and to disburden a main controller of mobile electronic devices, such as e.g. a mobile phone, have been achieved. Key of the invention is to implement a microprocessor system on a power-management chip. This microprocessor, having a flash-memory and a RAM has either no or minimum interaction with a main controller of the mobile electronic device since the microprocessor on the PMC is controlling all power supply requirements of the mobile electronic device. The novel PMC is more flexible; since it is free programmable and customers can adapt their PMC more efficiently to the specific purposes of their application.

Abstract: Circuits and methods to operate an arrangement of one or more charge pumps with two or more power supplies where each supply is able to vary over a range of voltages, and where any one supply can be of a higher or lower voltage than any of the others have been achieved. In a preferred embodiment the output of the arrangement of charge pumps is used to drive an electronic display. The strongest power supply available is selected and the arrangement of one or more charge pumps is reconfigured according to the value of the actual strongest supply voltage. In case of a change of a source of supply voltage the operation of the charge pumps during the short time required for reconfiguration. While the charge pump is running it can be suspended, reconfigured and released or restarted in the case of a change of supply source, or simply reconfigured on-the-fly without suspending in the case of a selected supply voltage change.

Abstract: A method and implementation is described by which I/O input and output circuitry of a CMOS chip are measured without the need to probe the chip. Output driver transistors are used to provide marginal voltages to test input circuits, and the output driver transistors are segmented into portions where a first portion is used to provide a representative “on” current, which is coupled to a test bus that is further connected to a current comparator circuit contained within the chip. Both leakage and “on” current of the driver transistors is measured using segmented driver transistors. The output of the current comparator circuit is connected to a test scan register or to a test output from which test results are obtained digitally. The testing techniques are also applicable for other semiconductor devices.

Abstract: A voltage controlled variable capacitor, formed of a larger number of fixed capacitor segments and a corresponding number of switching elements, uses translinear amplifiers to control each switching element. Each translinear amplifier linearly switches from the fully off to the fully on state; a minimum number of switching stages (ideally only one) is in the mode-of-change at any one time with a minimum overlap. The arrangement achieves a nearly linear change of capacitance at linear tuning voltage change, while resulting in high Q-factor due to the low RDSon and high RDSoff of the fully switched stages. The invention eliminates temperature and voltage dependencies of other solutions like varactor diodes.

Abstract: Methods and systems to achieve linear and exponential control over a current to drive color LEDs have been achieved. Current digital-to-analog converters (IDAC) comprising each an exponential current digital-to analog converter and a linear IDAC, being cascaded to each other are used for a linear and an exponential control of a current driving a set of color LEDs, preferably RGB LEDs. The linear part of the IDAC, which is converting the mantissa of a floating-point number is used to control the color composition of the color LEDs. The exponential part of the IDAC, which is converting the exponent of the floating-point number is used to control the brightness of the color LEDs. While fading from one color to a next color a linear color change is required. The exponential part of the IDAC is used to dim the LEDs from bright to dark and vice versa. In order to get the visual perception of a linear dimming an exponential current change is required.

Abstract: Systems and methods to linearly scale the colors of display data in a display driver circuit before it is written in a display RAM have been achieved. Said systems and methods invented are applicable to any display type such as e.g. CSTN, DSTN, TFT, OLED, etc. Each primary color value, e.g. red, green and blue is individually adjusted with its own setting, which allows maximum flexibility in display adjustment. Set adjustment is performed to adjust the colors displayed to the specific color characteristics of any display screen type. A system processor sets the red, green and blue color adjust register settings for a particular display type. The display data is downloaded from a system processor into a display RAM via a display adjust circuit, Said display adjust circuit modifies the display data according to the color adjust register setting settings before it is written into the RAM.

Abstract: A new system including circuit and methods are given to realize a dynamic matching of current sources, which are arranged as arrays of sets of current sources with added piecewise switchable trim bit transistors. The matching is achieved during an programmed calibration and trimming step by switching ON/OFF certain trim bit transistors until a required accuracy compared to a master reference is reached. The accuracy of the current source trimming is purely a function of the LSB size, and the trim range a function of the number of trim bits. Applying these new principles the drawbacks with regard to chip space and cost of prior art solutions can be overcome. Making use of modern chip manufacturing technologies allows for a very flexible and adaptive production of large arrays of current sources, as e.g. used in driver ICs for OLED displays.

Abstract: Circuits and methods to achieve a voltage-to-current converter having low noise and a high linearity are disclosed. In a preferred embodiment the converter has been used as a Gm integrator. The core of the invention is an operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) having additional DC current sources allowing a common mode voltage shift. The feedback currents and output currents are decoupled by means of current mirrors. The feedback currents are higher than the output currents thus allowing lower integration resistor size. A common mode decoupling of input and output has been achieved by current mirrors.

Abstract: A circuit and method are given, to realize a loudness control for mobile phone earpieces and speakers with the help of a proximity sensor, which is realized as an infrared photo-electric guard circuit, where only very few external parts are needed. As a novelty here, the necessary photo sensors are integrated onto a single chip. To form the photodiodes within a single IC together with the other circuit elements are much less expensive. Using the advantages of that solution the circuit of the invention is manufactured with standard CMOS technology and only very few discrete external components. This solution reduces also power consumption and manufacturing cost.

Abstract: An apparatus, a circuit and a method are given, to realize very effective noise suppression for speech signals. Using thereby novel calculation methods allow for a real-time operation without any remarkable delay. Also a significant reduction of the overall processing power demands in conjunction with reduced memory requirements is achieved. Using the intrinsic advantages of that solution the circuit of the invention is manufactured with standard CMOS technology and/or standard Digital Signal Processors at low cost.

Abstract: Circuits and methods to provide an LDO output stage implemented with low-voltage devices and still allowing higher voltage levels have been achieved. The output stage has been built using two low voltage MOS devices in series. During the time the regulator is in active mode the second MOS device acts as a small resistor in series to the pass device. During power down this second device actively protects the MOS pass device and itself from high voltage stress levels. This is achieved by a robust regulating mechanism that compensates leakage currents. These leakage currents normally determine the different potentials of the output stage during power down. Although the second transistor presents a resistive obstacle during active mode the total chip area required is smaller compared to a single pass device tolerating e.g. 5 Volts.

Abstract: A method is described by which digital data can be sent between mobile phones concurrent with speech during a same phone call. The digital data can be from a digital camera that is integrated with the mobile, or cellular, phone. The discontinuous transmission system of the mobile phone system is modified to include a transmission handler that is used to control the packetizing of the digital data to be transmitted within the voids in the transmitted speech determined by a voice activated detector. A reception handler is added to the discontinuous transmission system to allow the extraction of the digital data from the transmitted mobile phone system signal.

Abstract: Circuits and methods to provide an LDO output stage implemented with low-voltage devices and still allowing higher voltage levels have been achieved. The output stage has been built using two low voltage MOS devices in series. During the time the regulator is in active mode the second MOS device acts as a small resistor in series to the pass device. During power down this second device actively protects the MOS pass device and itself from high voltage stress levels. This is achieved by a robust regulating mechanism that compensates leakage currents. These leakage currents normally determine the different potentials of the output stage during power down. Although the second transistor presents a resistive obstacle during active mode the total chip area required is smaller compared to a single pass device tolerating e.g. 5 Volts.

Abstract: Circuits and methods to provide an LDO output stage implemented with low-voltage devices and still allowing higher voltage levels have been achieved. The output stage has been built using two low voltage MOS devices in series. During the time the regulator is in active mode the second MOS device acts as a small resistor in series to the pass device. During power down this second device actively protects the MOS pass device and itself from high voltage stress levels. This is achieved by a robust regulating mechanism that compensates leakage currents. These leakage currents normally determine the different potentials of the output stage during power down. Although the second transistor presents a resistive obstacle during active mode the total chip area required is smaller compared to a single pass device tolerating e.g. 5 Volts.

Abstract: Circuits and methods to provide an LDO output stage implemented with low-voltage devices and still allowing higher voltage levels have been achieved. The output stage has been built using two low voltage MOS devices in series. During the time the regulator is in active mode the second MOS device acts as a small resistor in series to the pass device. During power down this second device actively protects the MOS pass device and itself from high voltage stress levels. This is achieved by a robust regulating mechanism that compensates leakage currents. These leakage currents normally determine the different potentials of the output stage during power down. Although the second transistor presents a resistive obstacle during active mode the total chip area required is smaller compared to a single pass device tolerating e.g. 5 Volts.

Abstract: Circuits and methods to adjust the brightness of LCD displays have been achieved. The invention applies for LCD systems having a single or multiple display screens. The technique applied makes use of the property of LCDs where each pixel responds to the applied RMS voltage across it, and changing the timing of the COMMON signal reduces the applied voltage. This technique is applicable to both black and white and color displays as well as both standard scan and multi-addressing schemes.

Abstract: A system, a circuit and a method are given, to realize a display control and driver interface with graphic display memory, whereby the use of dynamic RAM rather than static RAM for this graphic display memory is new. This has the advantage, that for a given size of display memory (number of bits) the DRAM silicon area is significantly less than that of the SRAM. Said system and circuit are designed in order to be implemented with a very economic number of components, capable to be realized with modern monolithic integrated circuit technologies and implementing the given method. This display controller and driver chip can then be used for all LCD display devices including STN (Super Twisted Nematic), CSTN (Colour STN), TFT (Thin Film Transistor) LCD's and for OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) displays.

Abstract: A circuit, which is enabling the superpositioning of different audio signals such as voice, music or ringer signals in a audio output device is achieved. The individual superpositioning can be activated and performed by a combination of resistors and switches without the need of an additional mixing amplifier as in prior art. One common output stage is used for all the signals activated and superpositioned. The adjustment of the amplitude of the output signal, which can be used for the volume adjustment of a loudspeaker, is provided by a precise amplitude setting via the gain control stages of an inverting voltage amplifier through a current-voltage conversion. Said current-voltage conversion is performed by a string of resistors activated by a string of correspondent switches. This circuit reduces the power consumption, the chip area required and the offset and improves the power supply rejection rate (PSSR).