Counter circuit

• Main Authors: OHMAE, MASANORI, TSUJI, MASAKAZU, HATANO, TOSHINOBU, HACHIYAMA, HIROKI, YOSHIDA, MASAKATSU, IWASAWA, TAKAHIRO
• Format: Patent
• Language: English; French; German
• Published: 27.09.1995
• Edition: 6
• Subjects: BASIC ELECTRONIC CIRCUITRY; ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE; ELECTRICITY; PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION; PULSE TECHNIQUE

An image pickup apparatus includes a lens, and a solid-state image sensor for converting light which passes through the lens into an electric signal. A signal processing circuit serves to process the electric signal outputted from the solid-state image sensor. A Gray code counter serves to count pulses of a first clock signal and to generate Gray codes in response to the first clock signal. A device functions to feed a second clock signal and a synchronizing signal to the solid-state image sensor and the signal processing circuit in response to the Gray codes generated by the Gray code counter respectively. A counter circuit includes n-bit counting stages where n denotes a predetermined natural number, and a plurality of logic decoders for feeding logic outputs to input terminals of the respective counting stages, the logic outputs being equivalent to a product of a first logic output of a (k-1)-th-bit counting stage and second logic outputs of a (k-2)-th-bit counting stage and lower-bit counting stages where k denotes a natural number between 3 and n.