Design of Analog Front-End of Touch-Screen Controller with Enhanced Noise Immunity and Configurable SNR and Frame Rate

Abstract

A design of analog front-end (AFE) for touch-screen controller (TSC) with highly enhanced noise immunity and configurable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and frame rate is proposed. First, the AFE for the mobile TSC is presented, which provides a configurable SNR and frame rate. The AFE configures its SNR and frame rate by adjusting the sampling cycles of the employed ADC. The test chip is fabricated in a 0.18-μm CMOS process and occupies a 2.2-mm2 active area. The test chip achieves 60-dB SNR and 200-Hz frame rate with 12 × 8 TSP. The SNR can be adjusted from 40 to 67 dB, while the frame rate is then inversely scaled from 50 Hz to 6.4 kHz. The test chip consumes 6.26 mW from a 3.3-V supply. The AFE for the tablet TSC is also presented, which provides highly enhanced noise immunity and configurable SNR and frame rate. The proposed AFE provides TX channels of 36 and RX channels of 64 in order to support a large-size TSP. A multi-driving TX structure with frequency-hopping signal generator is employed to improve the SNR and noise immunity. For a suppression of severe noise interference injected through the TSP, the RX sensing block adopts pre-filtering differential sensing method and high-order noise filtering structure. The AFE supports configurable SNR and frame rate with on-chip frame-rate controller. The test chip is fabri-cated in a 0.18-μm CMOS process. The active area of the test chip is 36 mm2. A 12.2-inch TSP with TX channels of 36 and RX channels of 64 is used in the measurement. The test chip achieves 54-dB SNR and 120-Hz frame rate with a finger touch. The frame rate can be adjusted from 85 to 385 Hz. The test chip achieves up to 20-Vpp noise immunity. The test chip consumes 94.5 mW with a 3.3-V supply.