US Patent Issued to STMicroelectronics (Crolles 2) on March 17 for "Indirect time-of-flight (iTOF) sensor" (French Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,578,440, issued on March 17, was assigned to STMicroelectronics (Crolles 2) SAS (Crolles, France).

"Indirect time-of-flight (iTOF) sensor" was invented by Matteo Maria Vignetti (Aix les Baines, France) and Pierre Malinge (Bernin, France).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An indirect time-of-flight (iTOF) includes a pixel with a photoconversion area, a readout circuit and at least two circuit sets. Each circuit set includes: a capacitive element connected to a first node of the circuit set; a controllable charge transfer device connected between a first electrode of the photoconversion area and the first node; and a first transistor having a...