A Context-Aware Readout System for Sparse Touch Sensing Array Using Ultra-low-power Always-on Event Detection

Abstract

Increasing demand for larger touch screen panels (TSPs) places more energy burden to mobile systems with conventional sensing methods. To mitigate this problem, taking advantage of the touch event sparsity, this paper proposes a novel TSP readout system that can obtain huge energy saving by turning off the readout circuits when none of the sensors are activated. To this end, a novel ultra-low-power always-on event and region of interest detection based on lightweight compressed sensing is proposed. Exploiting the proposed event detector, the context-aware TSP readout system, which can improve the energy efficiency by up to 42x, is presented.