Patent 7583210 was granted and assigned to Fujitsu on September, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An analog-to-digital converter conventionally performing a detection of a differential offset is replaced by a comparator 20. A reference voltage is input to a terminal on one side of the comparator 20 and each of a pair of differentials of a differential voltage signal is input to the other terminal one by one. Then, a setup of voltages of both of the pair of differentials to closer values to the reference voltage makes both voltages of the pair of differentials eventually the same, thereby making it possible to correct a differential offset.