529

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 26, NO. 3, MAYIJUNE 1990

The Electroquasistatics of the Capacitive Touch

Panel
Abstract- The capacitive touch panel is a high-resolution position
sensor intended for computer displays. A practical panel must be safe
and inexpensive and must sense position accurately in spite of electrical noise, dirt, or direct electrostatic discharge. The implementation
discussed here uses a quasi-static electric field, applied to a semiconducting coating on the panel surface. A touch draws current from the
surface. This current can be used to compute position. If the computation is performed properly, the computed position is independent of
touch current and panel coating resistivity. The electroquasistatic basis
for position measurement with a capacitive touch panel, and a system
to implement it, will be described.

INTRODUCTION

OUCH PANELS provide a particularly interesting form

of interactive computer input device. A display-mounted
touch panel allows tight integration of input with output. Input
is direct, unambiguous, and natural in the sense that a human
operator is used to pointing and gesturing with a finger. This
type of natural interface is well-suited to modern interactive
computer graphics techniques.
To be practical in a wide range of applications, a touch panel
must be rugged, fast, precise, impervious to common chemicals, and easy to integrate into a standard computer monitor.
A number of candidate technologies have been tried for use in
touch panels, but no ideal method has appeared [11, [2]. Available touch panels such as the flexible membrane switch and
the LED sensing array meet some but not all of the requirements. The membrane switch has a thin flexible conductive
film mounted over a rigid conductive surface. Pressure from
a touch causes electrical connection. While touch position is
very precise and relatively easy to compute, the membrane
is delicate and sensitive to the environment. The LED touch
panel creates a grid of infrared light beams for position sensing. When a beam is interrupted, the position of the intervening object is immediately known. Such a panel has low
resolution because of the significant beamwidths and device
sizes and is difficult to use with a curved display surface.
The LED panel also senses a touch without actual physical
contact, since the beams must be in front of the display-a
disadvantage in some applications.
Paper IUSD 88-85, approved by the Electrostatic Processes Committee of
the IEEE Industry Applications Society for presentation at the 1988 Industry
Applications Society Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA, October 2-7.
P. T. Krein was with Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR. He is now with the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois,
1406 West Green Street, Urbana, 1L 61801-2991.
R. D. Meadows is with Tektronix, Inc., M/S 02-231, P.O. Box 500,
Beaverton, OR 97077.
IEEE Log Number 9034298.

One relatively recent alternative is the capacitive touch panel

[3], [4]. In this device, a conductive coating is applied to the
display surface (or to a rigid overlay). The coating is supplied
with some electrical signal. A human finger will introduce
leakage capacitance and disturb the applied signal, causing a
touch to be detected and allowing position to be computed. A
suitable coating is the semiconductor indium-tin oxide (ITO).
This material can provide two-dimensional resistivities as low
as 50 Wsquare while allowing more than 85% of visible light
to be transmitted through. It is well-known as a transparent
conductor. A typical sample of ITO-coated glass is about as
chemically inert and rugged as the underlying glass itself. The
added cost of coating a cathode ray display tube (CRT) face
is similar to the cost of the underlying glass.
FIELDEQUATIONS
AND COMPUTATIONS
Several methods have been implemented for measuring
touch position on a capacitive panel [3], [4]. The method
described here [4] has proved to be fast and insensitive to
electrical interference, varying touch conditions, and process
variations. This method imposes electric fields on the touch
panel, with geometries suitable for accurate determination of
touch position.

Field Equations
Consider the two-dimensional coated panels shown in Fig.
1. Sinusoidal voltage sources can be applied to the conductive
bars, as shown. If the frequency is low, quasi-static conditions
apply. In the plane of the coating, there is no free charge.
Ignoring the effect of capacitive leakage to structures away
from the coating, conservation of charge requires

V . J =O.

(1)

Faradays law can be approximated as

and current density J can be expressed from Ohms law as

J = aE.

(3)

Equation ( 2 ) allows electric field E to be written in terms of

a scalar potential 4. Equation (1) can now be rewritten as
Poissons equation,

0093-9994/90/0500-0529$01.OO

v . ( a V 4 ) = 0.
O

1990 IEEE

(4)

530

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 26, NO. 3, MAYIJUNE 1990

TABLE I
MEASURED TOUCH IMPEDANCES, TYPICAL OPERATOR, RESISTORCAPACITOR CIRCUIT MODEL
Resistance
(Q)

Capacitance
(PF)

1400
1400

16
160

IO00

470

Condition
Surgical glove (series RC model)
Typical chair, no nearby metal surfaces
(series RC model)
Other hand on grounded metal surface
(parallel RC model)
Fig. 1. Touch panel horizontal measurement sequence. (a) Uniform horizontal field. (b) Uniform potential.

If

is constant, this becomes Laplace's equation,

024 = 0.

(5)

Equations (4)and ( 5 ) are the well-known conductance analog

of capacitance [ 5 ] . The boundary conditions on a touch panel
are unusual: current cannot flow across edge boundaries, so
that at panel edges, E has only a tangential component. This
implies that only a horizontal field component exists on the
touch panel surface of Fig. I(a). A voltmeter will measure
voltage x V at any ( x , y ) location on the panel.

Computation of Position
A human operator touching a surface will provide a leakage
path to ground of some impedance Z 1 . While conditions of
a touch are not predictable, several circumstances have been
measured experimentally to obtain typical values. These are
shown in Table I. The impedance is capacitive, as opposed to
inductive, under all conditions.
If a touch is applied to the panel, as in Fig. l(a), it will
draw a touch current I t x , with leading phase angle, from the
sinusoidal voltage sources. This current is simply the sum
of the currents injected by the supplies at the left and right
sides, and so is readily measured. Since 2, is unknown, a
second measurement will be required to allow calculation of
the horizontal touch position. Such a measurement is shown
in Fig.
Only the "Itage
have changed' Under
is constant Over time and very large
the assumption that
compared to the panel resistivity, and referring to Fig. 1,
Touch does not perturb the voltage
conditions on the panel due to the very
high impedance of the touch path to ground.

I,, =x v / z ,

(6)

I [ , = v/z,.

(7)

I1

Fig. 2

Panel operation for vertical position sensing

U
Fig. 3.

Panel with point contact electrode.

1) Switch off all top and bottom contacts. Connect all left
side contacts to -V and all right side contacts to +V. A
uniform horizontal field is created. Measure touch current
It, = Ileft + Iright .
2) Connect all left side contacts to +V and all right side
contacts to +V. Measure touch current I t , = Ileft Iright.
Compute x = Zt,/Itz.
3) Switch off the left and right sides. Connect all top side
contacts to +V and all bottom contacts to -V. A uniform
= Itop
+
vertical field is created. Measure touch current ItY

The quantity Z t x / I I , is simply x , the horizontal position. A

duplicate process in the vertical direction would provide a
value for y . The arrangement appears in Fig. 2.
This explanation, while straightforward, ignores the ques- I b o t .
4) Connect top contacts to +V and bottom contacts to +V.
tion of how to establish electrical contact to the panel. Clearly,
Measure touch current I , , . Compute y = Z l y / I l z .
a bar contact forces potential to take on a single value along
it. The vertical bars of Fig. l(a) and (b) would thus destroy This progression leads to a time-multiplexed technique for
the field symmetry needed for vertical measurement in Fig. driving the panel.
2. Somehow, the bars must vanish when the field is parallel
to them. In this device, bar contacts are simulated by utilizing Touch Impedance Insensitivity-One-Dimensional Static
a line of point contacts, as shown in Fig. 3. Each point con- Model
tact is switched independently. In operation, the measurement
The assumption of large Z , is not valid for all possible
scheme is as follows.
touch conditions, particularly the grounded operator condi-

53 1

KREIN AND MEADOWS: ELECTROQUASISTATICS OF CAPACITIVE TOUCH PANEL

[---I--

i
+v+*v

117.

x=-I

RI

Fig. 4. One-dimensional position sensor. (a) Horizontal voltage gradient.

(b) No voltage gradient.

tion in Table I. Insensitivity to panel conductivity is also a

desirable property, since the I T 0 coating process is not easily
controlled. A more detailed look at position computation is
needed.
To analyze other possibilities, consider a simple dc onedimensional position sensor, shown in Fig. 4. The wiper of
the potentiometer is at an unknown position x . Resistance to
the left of the wiper is $ ( 1 + x ) R when x is defined as shown.
Resistance to the right is simply ( 1 - x ) R . The wiper voltage
is I,,R,, which means touch current I,, in Fig. 4(a) is
- V - ItxRI
V - ItxRI
I,, = (1 + x ) R / 2 -k (1 - x ) R / 2

t 8)

Similarly, the touch current I t , in Fig. 4(b) is

Ib=o
k Ax

Fig. 5 . Current balance at model grid point.

for current balances at each point. Convergence is assumed to

have taken place when the largest current imbalance is significantly less than the smallest allowed leakage current level. To
check the proposed measurement scheme, the model was run
for several values of panel resistivity, touch impedance, and
touch location. In each case, a horizontal field was first applied, and touch current computed. Then the so-called z field
was applied (same potential at all left and right contacts) and
the touch current recomputed. In all cases, the ratio I t x / I , z
differed from the expected x location by less than 0.5%. This
residual error results from leakage capacitance and from incomplete convergence.
ACCURACY
ISSUES

The ratio of these two can be computed and is simply the

horizontal wiper position x , independent of both potentiometer
resistance R and wiper resistance R I . This is an encouraging
result, but it is not obvious that it also applies in the two
dimensional case.

A human finger is not a precise position probe. It is large,

with a contact area of several square millimeters. Experiments
in which a user attempts to touch a specific (marked) point
repeatedly showed that position is consistent only to within
about 3 mm. Given a typical video monitor width of 25 cm,
measurement accuracy of 1% of full width is roughly consistent with the limit of human touch performance. The position
measurement system must preserve 1% accuracy but need not
exceed that level.

Touch Impedance Insensitivity- Two-Dimensional Model

Eflects of Discrete Point Electrode Arrangement

A numerical model of an actual touch panel operating with

ac excitation and point contact electrodes was developed,
based on a finite difference algorithm. At any grid point, there
is the possibility of a discrete impedance path to ground. To
account for this, a current balance was performed at each point
in place of the usual Laplacian. The incoming surface current
densities are of the form aE, where E is the potential gradient
toward the given point from any direction. The surface currents are given by oE times the grid spacing. Interior points
have four current contributions from panel fields: injected currents from above, below, left, and right. At untouched points,
these four must add to zero (or to any leakage current). At
the touched point, they must add to V / Z t , the touch current.
The current balance at an interior grid point ( x , y ) is shown
in Fig. 5. Edge points are easily accounted for, since current
cannot cross the panel edge except at electrode contact points.
A real touch panel is often mounted close to the anode
electrode of a CRT. The CRT anode is capacitively coupled to
the touch panel. In the numerical model, discrete impedances
were connected from each grid point to ground to account for
the leakage current to the CRT anode.
The computer program uses an iterative solution method

It is desirable to minimize the number of contact electrodes

while still simulating the ideal bar geometry. The computer
model was used to study field distortion for a given number
of contacts. The sample result in Fig. 6 shows an equipotential
map on a panel with five point electrodes per side. For touch
panel interpretation, a more useful map is a coordinate contour
map: the ratio Z t x / I f , is computed at each point, and all points
with equal ratios determine a given contour. Results from the
model show that the two maps are in fact the same.
A touch position grid is formed by superimposing vertical and horizontal contour maps. Ideally, this grid should be
rectangular- any movement of actual touch position will be
reflected as a consistent linear change in computed touch position. The map of Fig. 6 is obviously not linear. It can be
mapped into a linear grid if the transformation is both consistent and known. More simply, issues that make the map
nonlinear can be corrected a priori. The numerical results
provided the following insights.
1) Equipotential lines are straight to within about 1% at
locations more than half the electrode spacing from the panel
edge.
2) Fields near the point electrodes are logarithmic, as

Irz

- V - ZIzRt

(1 + x ) R / 2

V - ItzRl
$-

(1 - x ) R / 2

(9)

532

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 26, NO. 3. MAYIJUNE 1990

. .,I). .
_ _ I _ ..

-..t ..

. . I . ..
. J . . . .

. .I .

.L....

I .

_I
.
. I . . . . .I .
. I . . . . _I .
. I . . . . .l .
. I . . . ._I.
. I . . . 1. .
. I . . . . I .
. I . . . I..

. L . . . .

I .

1.
I.
.L....
. I . . . . J .

. I . . . . I .
. I . . . . 1.

.I.....

. I _ ..

I .

..I .

. L . . . .
. L . . . .

1 .
I .
I.
I .

. . . .

I . . . . .

....
c.

_ .

.\..

g>;:

, . I _ ..

. . . .

. L _ . ""
. . l . .
. .L . . . " .

' .

','

. . .1 '

I .

I..

..f.

. . I - '

. ..

. 1I

: < : : / . :I:; :: : 1 : :I
..

J . .
. . J . .
..J . .

..L

. . I
. . I

Fig. 6. Touch panel equipotentials, five electrodes per side. Contour interval: 0.05. Conductor voltages: 1, 0.

would be expected. The effect of this is a crowding of potential lines near the electrodes, indicating a significant local
potential drop. This crowding of potential indicates that higher
electrode voltages will be needed to create a given field near
the panel center, compared to the voltages needed with bar
contacts.
Thus the electrode spacing determines the position accuracy
of the panel near its edges, and the electric field strength near
the panel center. Clearly, more is better in this case; higher
fields mean higher current and thus better noise immunity,
while close electrode spacings enhance accuracy.
Most video monitors do not display information very close
to their edges. A touch panel overlay would normally be larger
than the display itself for ease in mounting. Thus touch information is of little utility within perhaps 2 cm of the panel edge.
Electrodes spaced 4 or 5 cm apart will provide 1% position
accuracy throughout the actual display surface. On a typical
monitor, this means that five to six electrodes are needed per
side.

Other Limits to Accuracy

If the fields are uniform and linear, the equations given
before imply that position can be computed with high accuracy
under any conditions of touch or panel impedance. To achieve
such accuracy in a complete touch panel system, currents must
be sensed over three orders of magnitude and divided with
high fidelity. Current increase with frequency, but frequencies
must be kept low enough not to violate the electroquasistatic
form of the equations. For this system, frequencies around
100 kHz were chosen, resulting in touch currents from several
microamperes up to a few milliamperes. Such currents and
frequencies are within the capabilities of modern operational
amplifiers, and thus straightforward analog design techniques
could be implemented.

The choice of 100 kHz also helps to avoid stray capacitive current flow from the CRT faceplate. The bulk of leakage
energy from the CRT occurs at harmonics of the beam flyback frequency, with some additional energy at a wide range
of video frequencies. Many computer monitors use a flyback
pulse frequency near 15.75 kHz, which is approximately a
standard television rate. The touch panel sensing circuitry
must present a low impedance to CRT frequencies.
The touch current is sensed as the sum of injected currents
into the two panel sides with a precision current-to-voltage
converter [6]. While currents can be sensed with good accuracy, a precise division process is difficult to implement in an
analog circuit. Instead, the sensed current is passed through
an automatic gain control (AGC) amplifier and converted to
digital form. Digital division avoids any further loss of accuracy.
The objective of the touch panel system is to detect
impedance changes at the panel surface of as little as 10 pF,
based on Table I data. Such a small change is not much larger
than leakage current changes that result from thermal effects,
the physical mounting of the panel, the placement of the display monitor relative to metal objects, dirt and debris on the
panel surface, or similar subtle causes. These effects cannot
be predicted for an end-use environment, so the system must
adapt to conditions. The process of distinguishing among effects and adapting to those that do not involve a touch contact is
difficult and ambiguous. As a result, higher touch impedances
tend to bring lower accuracy. Thick gloves are almost impossible to distinguish from leakage effects and thus cannot be
used with present capacitive touch panel techniques.
A TOUCHPANELSYSTEM
System Block Diagram
The electroquasistatic capacitive touch panel system has
been implemented in a production system, with a block diagram shown in Fig. 7. A host computer interacts with an
electronic touch panel control circuit, requesting and receiving information about touch position. The touch panel control
circuit includes a microprocessor for digital computation, data
communication, and control of the analog sensing circuitry.
Major components include a controllable sine-wave oscillator for driving the panel, a transformer to isolate panel drive
currents, a switch bank to connect oscillator signals to the
panel contacts, current detection and processing circuitry, and
the touch panel itself. The oscillator allows the operating frequency to be adjusted to avoid video signals from the display
unit. Such signals are capacitively coupled to the panel and
must not be mistaken for touch currents. A capacitive balance
network is connected to the transformer. It is set so that with
no touch, no current appears at the current detector. This
balance circuit plays the key role in adjusting for stray leakage impedances. The switch bank is critical to panel operation: it must be fast, have low on-state impedance, have high
off-state impedance, and not be damaged by spark discharges
from a fingertip. Analog switch integrated circuits meeting
the impedance requirements (Siliconix DG405) were used.
The switch bank is protected by a set of diode clamps, which
shunt the high currents seen during a discharge. The current

KREIN AND MEADOWS: ELECTROQUASISTATICS OF CAPACITIVE TOUCH PANEL

Computer

Processing

Communications
Position Ooto
Frequency

Oscdlator

Controller

Circuit

Fig. 7.

System block diagram.

detection circuitry consists of a current-to-voltage converter,

an analog demodulator which senses current amplitude synchronously with the operating frequency, an AGC circuit, and
an analog-to-digital converter.

The Sensing Process

In operation, the system must adjust for environment
changes, determine whether a touch is present, compute position when necessary, and communicate with the host computer. A simplified operating sequence is as follows.

1) Monitor the panel in all four field configurations. If currents are below a threshold, assume no touch and adjust the
balance circuit for zero detected current. This process continues until current exceeds a threshold.
2 ) When sufficient current is detected, place the panel in
the horizontal z state, and set the AGC gain as necessary.
3) Measure I , , (horizontal).
4) Place the panel in the x state, and measure I l XCompute
.
x = I r x /Itz.
5) Place the panel in the z state (vertical), and measure I t z
(vertical).
6 ) Place the panel in they state, and measure I r y . Compute
Y =I t y l I t z .
7) Place the panel in the horizontal z state, and recheck I t ,
to validate the earlier result.
8) Filter and format the data. Send x,y , and z data to the
host as requested. (The meaning of z data is described later.)
9) Continue the measurement process in steps 2-8 until the
current goes below the touch threshold.
10) Return to the monitoring process of step 1.
This entire process allows position to be recomputed in less
than 20 ms for a typical touch impedance. The AGC gain and
speed depend on touch current amplitude, so that high touch
impedances give slower operation.

The Z Dimension
Capacitive touch panels share with the acoustic touch panel
[ 2 ] the possibility of a third measurement dimension. The
magnitude of I t , reflects the level of touch impedance. This
measured current is formatted and reported to the host computer in the form of a z component, which has a high value
for low current and vice versa. Since x and y data always indicate touch position, the added information is quite useful. For
example, a large value of z indicates that there is no active

533

touch, while a small value indicates an error condition such

as excessive current.
For a given touch condition, increasing the contact pressure will increase the contact surface area and series capacitance. Thus the z component reflects touch pressure as well
as impedance level; the heavier the pressure, the smaller the
value of z . This third dimension can expand the possibilities of
touch input. One possibility is the use of different z thresholds
on different display menu pads: a delete pad might require
a firmer touch than a save pad.

System Accuracy
The two-dimensional model described predicts that measured position should not be affected by panel resistivity or by
touch impedance. The model assumes a uniform panel coating. A real panel is not uniform; its electric fields will be
distorted by resistivity variations as well as by the electrode
geometry. Limitations caused by leakage current levels and
noise effects also will be evident in the real system.
The system implementation described here has shown performance in keeping with the simplified theory. It is possible
to maintain a position accuracy on the order of 1 7 even
~
in the
face of other effects in a real system, unless the operator is
wearing thick gloves. The system here has proved to be workable on at least those panels with resistivities between 100 and
300 n/U, and those in which resistivity has local and global
variations below 10%.
Speed Issu es
A detection speed of 20 ms is faster than human reaction
time. In most situations, the operator perceives instant response of touch position to any finger movement. This is very
important in interactive graphics applications. The speed is
not high by computer standards. Indeed, one advantage is that
the host computer is not overwhelmed by a fast stream of
incoming data.
Speed is a function of touch impedance time constant, as
well as of the actual circuit measurement process. The slowest
such time constants seen in our tests are less than 2 ps and thus
do not limit speed. Analog switches can easily handle switch
rates of several kilohertz and thus make the time-multiplex
panel connection scheme feasible. The process involves thousands of switch operations each minute- far more than would
be reasonable with electromechanical relays.

Safety Issues
The capacitive touch panel connects a human operator to
an electrical source and so must be considered for possible
hazards. Two issues are the possibility of operator connection
to some hazardous source and the actual touch current itself.
Connection to dangerous sources inside a display unit can be
avoided by proper design and arrangement of components,
and by effective grounding of the panel control circuit board.
The circuit is protected so that it is never more than 20 V
off ground, thus indirect panel hazards are the same as those
associated with outer cases of any appliance or instrument.
The touch current is another matter. This current is simply the leakage through a person touching a low-voltage ac

534

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 26, NO. 3. MAYIJUNE 1990

source. The highest source voltage is 9 V rms in this implementation. The source is connected to an operator through
panel and circuit resistances, which total at least 100 0. The
resulting touch currents are no more than a few milliamperes
under any conditions. Such voltages and currents are below
those seen on many grounded appliance and instrument cabinets. In fact, the current levels are low enough to meet the
stringent requirements for patient-connected medical gear in
Underwriters Laboratories standard UL 544 [7]. To avoid any
added hazard, the panel source is programmed to shut off temporarily if the current exceeds some maximum limit.

R. Adler and P. J . Desmares, An economical touch panel using SAW

absorption, IEEE Trans. Ultrason., Ferroelec., Freq. Cont., vol.
UFFC-24, pp. 195-201, Mar. 1987.
H. H. Ng and B. R. Hatvany, Display device having unpatterned
touch detection, U.S. Patent 4 476 463, Oct. 1984.
P. T. Krein, R. D. Meadows, B. Murdock, and D. Teichmer, Touch
panel system, U.S. Patent 4 698 460, Oct. 1987.
C. T. A. Johnk, Engineering Electromagnetic Fields and Waves.
New York: Wiley, 1975, p. 245.
Electrometer Measurements. Cleveland, OH: Keithley Instruments,
1977, p. 30.
UL 544 Standard f o r Medical and Dental Equipment, Underwriters
Laboratories, Inc., 1982, pp. 30-31,

FUTURE
EFFORTS
The electroquasistatic field sensing technique has been successful and is relatively straightforward. Future work will include efforts to reduce the number of electrodes through geometric mapping or other means. The field maps are predictable and permit this kind of mathematical manipulation,
but the calculations involved must not slow system response.
Other efforts will seek to improve performance in noisy environments by increasing the distinction between touch signals
and !eakage current drift effects. Although the present 20-ms
measurement time is faster than a human can react, it is possible, in applications such as keypad simulation, to have a touch
contact time briefer than that. In the future, touch panel systems which can measure the touch location within 5 ms will
be desirable. Touch panel control circuitry can, in principle,
be implemented on custom integrated circuits, which will lead
to very low system costs.
CONCLUSION
The capacitive touch panel interacts with a human finger in
a manner described by electroquasistatic field equations. This
insight has allowed design of a fast, precise, rugged touch
input device for video displays. This concept has been implemented in a touch panel system now in production.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The assistance of Roger McCoy, who gathered much of
the experimental data referred to in this paper, is gratefully
acknowledged.
REFERENCES
[I]

J . A. Pickering, Touch-sensitive screens: the technologies and their

applications, Int. J . Man-Machine Studies, vol. 25, pp. 249-269,
Sept. 1986.

Philip T. Krein (S77-M82) received the B S

degree in electrical engineering and the A.B degree in economics and business from Lafayette College, Easton, PA, and the M S and Ph.D degrees in electrical engineering from the University
of Illinois-Urbana, in 1978, 1980, and 1982, respectively. He was the first Henry Ford I1 Scholar
at the University of Illinois
He was a visiting faculty member at the University of Illinois between 1982 and 1984. In 1984 he
joined Tektronix, Inc , in Beaverton, OR, where he
worked as a Development Engineer on display peripherals including color ink
jet printers and touch panels He was responsible for electrostatic technology
applications, analog circuit design, and product specification and testing. In
1987 he returned to the University of Illinois as an Assistant Professor of
Electrical and Computer Engineering. His primary interests are in power
electronic systems and in applications of electrostatics. He holds six U S
and European patents and has published several papers in his interest areas
Dr Krein is a Registered Professional Engineer in the States of Illinois
and Oregon He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi, and other honorary societies, and a member of the Electrostatics Society of America and
the Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers He received an NSF
Research Initiation Award in 1988 for work on switching converter analysis.

R. David Meadows received a degree in computer

science from Southern Methodist University, University Park, TX.
He is a Senior Hardware-Software Engineer at
Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR. He holds four
U.S. patents and has four patents pending in the
touch panel field, concerned with capacitive, optical, and pressure-based sensing systems. He is currently project manager of test instrument for the
laser communication market. His main interest at
present is the investigation of low-cost instrumentation.