Capacitive Touch Sensing Technology Overview | Synaptics

INTUITIVE
CAPABILITIES

Touch Sensing

Consumers naturally demand more from their touchscreen devices, but they also want the devices' advanced capabilities to be intuitive. Synaptics capacitive-touch sensing technology addresses both sides of that user-experience equation by enabling features such as vertical-dimension navigation; precision input from pens, fingernails and gloves; side-of-the-device interactions; wet-screen tolerance; customized gestures; and single-touch device wake-up.

What's Involved in
A Simple Touch

 

Step 1: Creating an Electric Field

Synaptics capacitive touch sensors create an electric field above of the glass surface of a touchscreen. Materials science, antenna theory, and electromagnetism combine to ensure that the electric field is optimal for the sensing task.

Step 2: Detecting Objects by Sensing Small Changes in the Electric Field

Sensing circuitry within the touchscreen detects minute changes in the electric field and represents this as a change in the touchscreen electrode’s capacitance values. Capacitive changes are represented as an image map of the touchscreen sensing region.

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The highly sophisticated Synaptics sensing circuit within the touchscreen detects minute changes in the electric field and represents this as a change in the touchscreen electrode’s capacitance values. The capacitive changes are represented as an image map of the touchscreen sensing region.

Step 3: Analyzing the Data and Extracting Features

The image map is analyzed and filtered to extract the signal from the noise. Then, algorithms examine the result image to extract objects of interest, such as a finger(s) on or near the surface.

Step 4: Determining the Gesture

The Synaptics sensor detects motion, factors in past events, mitigates and rejects unintentional disturbances, and determines the intended gesture -- in this case, a hover to preview.

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This sequence of steps ensures the users' experiences with devices are one of smoothness, responsiveness and simplicity.

So Advanced It's Simple

To continue advancing the state-of-the-art in touch sensing technology, Synaptics engineers and scientists constantly leverage their collective core competencies in:

  • Mixed-signal circuit design
  • Materials science
  • Antenna theory
  • Pattern recognition
  • Image processing
  • Statistical signal processing
  • Computer architectures
  • Communications theory

The result? A continually improving end-user experience.