US08171416B2
A system and method for confirming messages being sent within an instant messaging environment. An instant messaging system is disclosed, comprising a confirmation enablement system that allows a user to selectively enable a requires confirmation option for a contact associated with the user; and a send message interface that displays a confirmation requirement for messages being sent to the contact if the requires confirmation option is enabled, wherein the confirmation requirement must be confirmed by the user before the message can be sent.
US08171412B2
A visual presentation system and method for synchronizing presentation data being viewed in a display with speech input. A system is disclosed that includes: a speech recognition system for recognizing speech input; an association system for determining a context of the speech input and matching the context with a relevant portion of the presentation data; and a visual coordination system for coordinating the display of a data item from the presentation data based on a match made by the association system.
US08171410B2
This invention involves a system and method to construct a visual representation of multidimensional data that works especially well for video. The system comprises an application on a mobile device having a screen, an assignment module assigning the media segments to the screen, a rendering module rendering the assigned media segments on the screen, a playback module playing the assigned media segments, a catalog module representing media metadata about the mobile content, a summarization module stewarding the media metadata, and a remote server storing the mobile content and the media metadata. The application retrieves the mobile content from the remote server and accesses the assignment, the rendering, the playback, the catalog, and the summarization modules. The system also comprises a method to log and analyze the browsing interactions of one or more users, and present a view of the media that reflects what is interesting to the user.
US08171408B2
An approach is provided for dynamic loading and rendering of avatar's initial login environment. The approach consists of a method and a system for dynamically rendering locations from a preference list of locations most likely to be visited by an avatar. In one embodiment the method consists of creating a preference list of locations most likely to be visited by the avatar, rendering a dynamically built continuous environment populated from such preference list of locations most likely to be visited by the avatar, and caching and thereafter rendering at least one of the locations from the preference list of locations most likely to be visited by said avatar.
US08171406B1
A system processes a set of instructions, each of which indicates an action to perform on a user interface. The system does not have prior information concerning the layout of the user interface, nor does the system interact with the user interface through an automation API. For each instruction in the set, the system automatically performs the indicated action on the user interface. To do so, the system identifies the selected control on an active window, and determines whether it is the control to activate in order to perform the indicated action. If so, the system generates an input signal configured to activate the selected control, and sends the input signal to the user interface. If not, the system selects a new control and determines whether it is the desired one. The system cycles through the controls to find the desired one to activate.
US08171400B2
An image transmission apparatus includes a display device, a display image data generator, a storage device, a storage controller, a transmitter, and a display controller. The image transmission apparatus is connectable to a plurality of image projection apparatuses. The display image data generator is configured to generate display image data, the storage device is configured to store the display image data, and the transmitter is configured to transmit the display image data for display on each image transmission apparatus connected to the image transmission apparatus according to an overall layout display for the combination of potentially connected image transmission apparatuses. The display controller is configured to display an image on the display device using the display image data and to display a plurality of layout display images corresponding to the display image data transmitted to the image projection apparatuses in a layout display region on the display device.
US08171399B2
A user interface for repositioning Web page components that includes an HTML table. Each cell of the table can represents a Web page component that is able to be repositioned. Each cell can include an identifier and a user selectable position control. The identifier can identify the Web page component. The user selectable position control can accept user input designating a position of the component within the Web page. An activation control can accept input entered within the user selectable position control when selected. Activation of the activation control can result in the Web page being reconfigured so that the position of the Web page components corresponds to positions specified by the position controls. In one embodiment, the user interface can be an accessibility option for users having difficulty with a drag and drop interface.
US08171389B2
The present invention discloses a method for processing document data, wherein the document data comprises at least one page in order and the page comprising at least one layer in order, the method comprises: managing and controlling the at least one layer respectively. The technical scheme of the present invention enables process a document on layers in the docbase management system and provides more flexible document processing.
US08171383B2
Method and system for data-rate control by randomized bit-puncturing in communication systems. An encoder encodes at least one information bit thereby generating a group of encoded bits or an encoded frame. The encoder may be any type of encoder including a turbo encoder, an LDPC (Low Density Parity Check) encoder, a RS (Reed-Solomon) encoder, or other type of encoder. Any sub-portion of an encoded frame generated by such an encoder can be viewed as being a group of encoded bits. If the encoded frame is sub-divided into multiple groups of bits, each group can under processing in accordance with the means presented herein to effectuate rate matching. Based on a number of bits to be punctured from the group or frame generated by the encoder, a set of pointers and random-generated displacements is used to generate addresses for bits in the group or frame to be transmitted or punctured.
US08171377B2
A system to improve memory reliability in computer systems that may include memory chips, and may rely on a error control encoder to send codeword symbols for storage in each of the memory chips. At least two symbols from a codeword are assigned to each memory chip and therefore failure of any of the memory chips could affect two symbols or more. The system may also include a table to record failures and partial failures of the codeword symbols for each of the memory chips so the error control encoder can correct subsequent partial failures based upon the previous partial failures. The error control coder is capable of correcting and/or detecting more errors if only a fraction of a chip is noted in the table as having a failure as opposed to a full chip noted as having a failure.
US08171372B2
A method of feedback in a wireless transmit receive unit includes providing a precoding matrix index (PMI), error checking the (PMI) to produce an error check (EC) bit, coding the PMI and the EC bit and transmitting the coded PMI and EC bit.
US08171369B2
A DTV transmitting system includes a frame encoder, a randomizer, a block processor, a group formatter, a deinterleaver, and a packet formatter. The frame encoder builds an enhanced data frame and encodes the frame two times for first and second error correction, respectively. It further permutes a plurality of encoded data frames. The randomizer randomizes the permuted enhanced data, and the block processor codes the randomized data at a rate of 1/N1. The group formatter forms a group of enhanced data having one or more data regions and inserts the data coded at the rate of 1/N1 into at least one of the data regions. The deinterleaver deinterleaves the group of enhanced data, and the packet formatter formats the deinterleaved data into enhanced data packets.
US08171361B2
Today many instances of IEEE 1149.1 Tap domains are included in integrated circuits (ICs). While all TAP domains may be serially connected on a scan path that is accessible external to the IC, it is generally preferred to have selectivity on which Tap domain or Tap domains are accessed. Therefore Tap domain selection circuitry may be included in ICs and placed in the scan path along with the Tap domains. Ideally, the Tap domain selection circuitry should only be present in the scan path when it is necessary to modify which Tap domains are selected in the scan path. The present disclosure describes a novel method and apparatus which allows the Tap domain selection circuitry to be removed from the scan path after it has been used to select Tap domains and to be replaced back into the scan path when it is necessary to select different Tap domains.
US08171357B2
Embodiments of the disclosed technology comprise software-based techniques that can be used to improve scan chain test pattern generation and scan chain failure diagnosis resolution. For example, certain embodiments can be used to generate high quality chain diagnosis test patterns that are able to isolate a scan chain defect to a single scan cell. Such embodiments can be used to generate a “complete” test set—that is, a set of chain diagnosis test patterns that is able to isolate any scan chain defect in a faulty scan chain to a single scan cell.
US08171348B2
Long running computer implemented processes are dynamically adapted to improve data consistency. A range of process steps in a long running computer implemented process is specified. Additionally, each of the computer-implemented process partners that are associated with the execution of the long running process are identified within the range of specified process steps. Monitoring information is also collected with regard to at least one identified process partner. An automatic determination is made as to whether each monitored process partner is available before initiating execution of the specified range of process steps in an instance of the long running computer implemented process and a flow of the long running computer implemented process is transformed based at least in part upon the determination as to whether each monitored process partner is available.
US08171335B2
A clock timing calibration circuit includes a clock timing adjusting unit and a calibration control unit. The clock timing adjusting unit is for receiving an incoming reference clock signal and selectively adjusting the received reference clock signal to generate a first clock signal according to a calibration control signal. The incoming reference clock has a predetermined phase and a predetermined frequency, The calibration control unit is for checking if the phase difference between the first clock signal and a second clock signal satisfies a predetermined criterion, and for adjusting the calibration control signal when the phase difference between the first clock signal and the second clock signal does not satisfy the predetermined criterion. The predetermined criterion is to check if the phase difference falls within a specific range associated with a clock period of one of the first clock signal and the second clock signal.
US08171327B2
In a packet processing device capable of reducing power consumption when time intervals between input packets is increased and an input traffic capacity is reduced, packet processors, N in number (N is an integer of one or more), sequentially perform processing in response to an input packet to output a processed packet and processor packet detectors detect whether or not a packet exists in the packet processors. Responsive to a result of the processor packet detectors, a power supply switch unit controls power supply to the packet processors. Thus, each of the packet processors is intermittently put into an active state by intermittent power supply.
US08171326B2
In one embodiment, a processor comprises a data cache configured to store a plurality of cache blocks and a control unit coupled to the data cache. The control unit is configured to flush the plurality of cache blocks from the data cache responsive to an indication that the processor is to transition to a low power state in which one or more clocks for the processor are inhibited.
US08171322B2
An electronic device may operate in standby and active modes. A headset may be coupled to the electronic device. The electronic device may have audio codec circuitry. The audio codec circuitry may use general purpose input-output circuitry in handling button and headset activity during active mode. Processing circuitry may be used to reconfigure the audio codec in real time. When the electronic device is in the standby mode and activity is detected, the codec may be configured to provide an interrupt signal to a power management unit that wakes the device. When the electronic device is in active mode and no user inputs are received within a given period of time, the central processor in the electronic device may place the device in standby mode.
US08171313B2
Provided is a communication device capable of efficiently performing a power supply control when reducing power consumption by reducing the time during which the power is supplied. In the device, a CPU power saving control unit (301) switches between a normal mode in which the power is supplied to a CPU (302) and a low power consumption mode in which the power supply is stopped at predetermined timing. A session management table (321) stores transmission intervals before and after conversion. An information conversion section (322) converts the transmission intervals of session maintenance messages according to a predetermined rule so that the transmission intervals of the session maintenance messages of respective protocols are mutually synchronized between the protocols. A control unit (323) controls the CPU power saving control unit (301) so as to transmit an appropriate session maintenance message at the transmission timing of a session maintenance message and also controls it so as to switch between the normal mode and the low power consumption mode at the predetermined timing.
US08171310B2
A software entity on a host device attempting to access protected content in a secure memory device must be authenticated using a challenge/response authentication mechanism before the secure file system can be accessed. A file system filter determines whether requested content is protected. If the content is protected, the file system filter provides a challenge to the software entity and generates a file system filter response using the same challenge. The software entity must then send a software entity response using the challenge to the file system filter. If the file system filter determines that the software entity response matches the file system filter response, the software entity is allowed to access the protected content through a secure file system installed on the host device for the memory device.
US08171295B2
To provide an information processing apparatus, a server apparatus, a method of an information processing apparatus, a method of a server apparatus, and an apparatus executable program.An information processing apparatus uses signed integrity values unique to software configuration and asserting integrity of initial codes of a networked server. The server apparatus generates keys used for certifying the server apparatus (S810, S820, S830). One of the keys are certified by a third party to generate a digital signature (S840). The digital signature is attached to the integrity values and the signed integrity values are transmitted to the information processing apparatus for allowing the information processing apparatus to have secure services through the network (S850, S860).
US08171292B2
Embodiments of the systems, devices, and methods described herein generally facilitate the secure transmittal of security parameters. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a representation of first data comprising a password is generated at the first computing device as an image or audio signal. The image or audio signal is transmitted from the first computing device to the second computing device. The password is determined from the image or audio signal at the second computing device. A key exchange is performed between the first computing device and the second computing device wherein a key is derived at each of the first and second computing devices. In at least one embodiment, one or more security parameters (e.g. one or more public keys) are exchanged between the first and second computing devices, and techniques for securing the exchange of security parameters or authenticating exchanged security parameters are generally disclosed herein.
US08171291B2
The invention relates to a method for checking the integrity of a message transmitted between a sender in a transmitting end and a recipient in a receiving end, in which method an authentication value is calculated for the first message and a random string is generated. According to a method in the transmitting end an authentication value is generated from a message to be sent and the random string. A check code is formed from the authentication value and the random sting. The first message is transferred from a sender to a recipient through a first channel, and the check code is transferred through a second secure channel. In the receiving end a message is received through a first channel and the check code is received through a second secure channel. In the receiving end an authentication check formed at least based of the received message. The integrity of the received message is checked by comparing the predetermined check values in the receiving end.
US08171289B2
A method and apparatus to provide a cryptographic protocol for secure authentication, privacy, and anonymity. The protocol, in one embodiment, is designed to be implemented in a small number of logic gates, executed quickly on simple devices, and provide military grade security.
US08171285B2
A cryptographically signed filesystem provides a central database resident on a server that contains database objects. The server creates startup software to be installed in a client system's read only memory. The startup software contains a hash value for a second stage loader. The server also creates software for a bootstrap loader object which typically contains the operating system for a client system and also the bootstrap loader's hash value and a digital signature that is unique to the server. The startup software and objects created by the server are initially installed on a client device at the time of manufacture. The server can update a client's bootstrap loader and root filesystem at any time through the transmission of slices.
US08171281B2
An information processing apparatus has a multi-valued NAND nonvolatile memory including a plurality of word lines and a plurality of memory cells connected to the respective word lines. Each memory cell has a plurality of threshold voltages, and is divided into a first and a second storage area. A program code is stored in the first storage area, and user data is stored in the second storage area. The apparatus also includes a volatile memory to which the program code is transferred from the multi-valued NAND nonvolatile memory. The apparatus further includes a CPU connected to the volatile memory and configured to operate based on the program code transferred to the volatile memory.
US08171280B2
Two or more distinct operating systems (OSs) are loaded simultaneously and run on an x86 computer system. Each OS is booted serially and in such a way that the OS resides in a separate memory footprint than the other OSs by partitioning the memory map. The partition of the memory map includes a low memory region, dedicated memory partitions for storing each OS, and dedicated regions for storing shadows of the low memory region and the ACPI for each OS. Switching between the two or more resident OSs is performed by sleeping the current OS and then resuming the desired OS using the shadow previously stored for the desired OS. None of the resident OSs require any modification in order to run in this fashion.
US08171277B2
Techniques for booting a computing device with a flash memory without knowledge of parametric information of the flash memory are described herein. In one embodiment of the invention, the computing device receives input requesting the computing device to begin operation and executes a set of one or more instructions stored in a non-volatile memory. The execution of the set of instructions configures a first read routine for accessing the flash memory based on a common denominator format of candidate flash memories, and the first read routine is not configured based on information located in a flash memory identification table. The computing device reads a bootstrapping code image based on the first read routine into a volatile memory and executes that first bootstrapping code image. Other methods and apparatuses are also described.
US08171275B2
There is disclosed a device, system, and method for a ROM BIOS based trusted encrypted operating system for use in a gaming environment. The gaming device includes a ROM storing a BIOS, a secure loader, an encrypted operating system, and a decryption key for decrypting the encrypted operating system. The decryption key is partitioned and scattered about the secure loader. The method includes initializing the BIOS, locating the decryption key, decrypting the encrypted operating system with the encryption key, verifying a plurality of check codes, and transferring control to the operating system. The check codes are verified responsive to decrypting the encrypted operating system. The check codes are dispersed about the operating system and are unrelated to the operating system. Control is transferred to the operating system responsive to verifying the check codes.
US08171248B2
A method for controlling a storage system having first and second switches and a storage device connected to the switches via a network in response to a request from a host, the storage device having first and second areas, each of the first and second switch accessing to the first and second area, the method includes, receiving a request for copying data stored in the first area to the second area from the host, transmitting initiation notification of the copying to the second switch, executing the copying by the first switch, maintaining progress status of the copying, controlling the second switch to refer to the progress upon receiving a request for access to the first or second area by the host before completion of the copying, and determining whether to permit access to the first or second area by the second switch.
US08171238B1
Systems and methods for identification of data stored in memory are provided. A data packet is received and a first packet byte within the data packet is compared to a first memory byte within a memory. A mismatch is determined between the first packet byte and the first memory byte. A memory location is jumped to that contains a second memory byte that is non-consecutive with the first memory byte. A packet location is jumped to that contains a second packet byte that is non-consecutive with the first packet byte. The second packet byte is compared to the second memory byte. A retrieval instruction is generated based at least in part on a result of the comparison between the second packet byte and the second memory byte. Various embodiments may be included in a network memory architecture to allow for faster data matching and instruction generation in a central appliance.
US08171230B2
A PCI Express (PCIe) computer system utilizes address translation services to translate virtual addresses from I/O device adaptors to physical addresses of system memory. A combined memory controller and host bridge uses a translation agent to convert the I/O addresses via translation control entries (TCEs) in a TCE table (also known as an address translation and protection table). Some of the I/O device adaptors have address translation caches for local storage of TCEs. The TCE definition includes a new non-cacheable control bit which is set active in the TCE table when the TCE is in the process of being invalidated. The memory controller prevents further caching of the TCE while the non-cacheable control bit is active. A further implementation utilizes a change-in-progress control bit of the TCE to indicate that the TCE is in the process of being changed to allow simultaneous invalidation of the previously TCE information.
US08171220B2
Embodiments that that distribute replacement policy bits and operate the bits in cache memories, such as non-uniform cache access (NUCA) caches, are contemplated. An embodiment may comprise a computing device, such as a computer having multiple processors or multiple cores, which has cache memory elements coupled with the multiple processors or cores. The cache memory device may track usage of cache lines by using a number of bits. For example, a controller of the cache memory may manipulate bits as part of a pseudo least recently used (LRU) system. Some of the bits may be in a centralized area of the cache. Other bits of the pseudo LRU system may be distributed across the cache. Distributing the bits across the cache may enable the system to conserve additional power by turning off the distributed bits.
US08171217B2
A storage apparatus comprises a disk device and a disk adapter for controlling the disk device. The disk adapter controls the disk device and forms a data volume and a pool volume, creates a data block for parity data, compresses write data and the created parity data, and stores a number of compressed data blocks equal to or less than a predetermined number and stores compressed parity data that are within a predetermined size in storage areas in an actual volume, and stores the remaining compressed data blocks of a number greater than the predetermined number and compressed parity data that exceed the predetermined size in storage areas in the pool volume corresponding to a virtual volume.
US08171209B2
In a write protection method for at least one random access memory device, the inherent problems of such memory devices with regard to data integrity and security with respect to hacker attacks, such that they can also be used for secure archiving in particular of a large volume of data, are avoided by virtue of the fact that commands directed to the at least one memory device are received by a write protection device connected upstream of the at least one memory device before said commands are forwarded to the at least one memory device, wherein commands received in the write protection device are compared with a positive list of permitted commands previously stored in the write protection device, wherein in one case, where the comparison determines that a permitted command is present, said command is forwarded to the at least one memory device, and in the other case, where the comparison determines that no permitted command is present, said command is not forwarded to the at least one memory device.
US08171202B2
A method is performed by two or more devices of a group of devices in a distributed data replication system. The method includes receiving, at the two or more devices, a group of chunks having a same unique temporary identifier, where the group of chunks comprises an object to be uploaded; creating an entry for the object in a replicated index, where the entry is keyed by the unique temporary identifier, and where the replicated index is replicated at each of the two or more devices; and determining, by an initiating device of the two or more devices, that a union of the group of chunks contains all data of the object. The method also includes calculating a content-based identifier to the object; creating another entry for the object in the replicated index, where the other entry is keyed by the content-based identifier; and updating the replicated index to point from the unique temporary identifier to the content-based identifier.
US08171201B1
Virtual machine optimization and/or storage reclamation solutions are disclosed that manage virtual machine sprawl and/or growing enterprise storage costs. For instance, certain solutions receive recommendations based on one or more rules, policies and/or user preferences that identify storage and/or alignment criteria for virtual machine disk (VMDK) partition(s). In certain examples, a resize tool that operates within a host operating system of a host server dynamically resizes and/or aligns one or more VMDK partitions of a powered-down virtual machine. For instance, the resize tool can be injected to the host server from a remote management server and can resize and/or align the VMDK partitions without requiring contents of the VMDK to be copied to another VMDK. By reallocating storage and/or aligning the VMDK partitions, embodiments of the invention can increase virtual machine performance and improve storage management.
US08171194B2
An interface and protocol allow a media player to communicate with external accessories over a transport link. The protocol includes a core protocol functionality and a number of accessory lingoes. Examples of accessory lingoes include a microphone lingo, a simple remote lingo, a display remote lingo, an RF transmitter lingo, and an extended interface lingo.
US08171193B2
A master communication circuit communicatively connected to a slave communication circuit, comprises a timer circuit that can detect a first time; a first output circuit that outputs a first output signal of one logical level for starting a detecting operation of the first time in the timer circuit, when a value transmitted to the slave communication circuit is one logical level, and for starting a detecting operation of a second time longer than the first time in the slave communication circuit; and a second output circuit that outputs a second output signal of the other logical level when the timer circuit detects the first time, wherein if a value of one logical level is transmitted to the slave communication circuit, the value of one logical level is transmitted to the slave communication circuit by not detecting the second time with the slave communication circuit, detecting the first time with the timer circuit, and outputting the second output signal with the second output circuit, and wherein if a value of the other logical level is transmitted to the slave communication circuit, the value of the other logical level is transmitted to the slave communication circuit by not detecting the first time with the timer circuit and detecting the second time with the slave communication circuit.
US08171191B2
A bus interconnect device is provided comprising a parallel plate waveguide for coupling together a plurality of devices. This provides an efficient and flexible approach for providing interconnect functionality within a data processing apparatus.
US08171180B2
An information processing apparatus is disclosed that is connected to a device and generates data processable by the device based on device information about the device. The information processing apparatus includes a processing content setting unit that specifies, based on the device information, processing content to be executed by the device; a command retrieving unit that, if the processing content specified by the processing content setting unit contains unknown information, retrieves a command corresponding to the unknown information from the device information; and a data generating unit that generates, based on the command retrieved by the command retrieving unit and the processing content, data processable by the device.
US08171177B2
A centralized resource manager manages the routing of audio or visual information within a device, including a handheld device such as a smartphone. The resource manager evaluates data-driven policies to determine how to route audio or visual information to or from various input or output components connected to the device, including headphones, built-in speakers, microphones, bluetooth headsets, cameras, and so on. Among the data considered in the policies are connection status data, indicating if a device is connected, routing status data, indicating if a device is permitted to route information to or from a component, and grouping data, indicating logical relationships between various components. Components may be considered inherently routable, automatically routable, or optionally routable. Numerous other uses exist for such data, including providing simpler and more logical management interfaces.
US08171173B2
A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a set top box having a controller to select a portion of content servers among a plurality of content servers for delivery of media content to the set top box, where the selection is based on server metrics associated with the plurality of content servers and received by the set top box. Other embodiments are disclosed.
US08171172B2
A method and apparatus for synchronizing data between a mobile communication device and a remote application operating on an external computer. A first application is operable to communicate and synchronize with a remote application operating on an external computer. A second application is operable to communicate and synchronize with the remote application. The mobile communication device receives a user's identification of a preferred application selected from one of the first and second applications, and uses the preferred application to synchronize the mobile communication device with the remote application.
US08171170B2
Systems and methods in accordance with various embodiments relate to a storage switch including task processing synchronization. In embodiments of the present invention, the packet processing units may generate and store Task Index and Generation Count information that prevents the processing of expired commands or responses. Additionally or alternatively, embodiments of the present invention may further employ timeout sequences to prevent previous instances of a stale task resource from disrupting the current use of the task resource.
US08171167B2
A method of receiving and forwarding a multimedia message is provided. The multimedia message is adapted with a first adaptation profile into a first adapted message to be received in a first device. The multimedia message and the first adapted message are stored in a media cache. The message may then be forwarded from the first device to a second device that has a second adaptation profile by retrieving the first adapted message from the media cache and sending it to the second device if the first and second adaptation profiles match, otherwise the multimedia message is retrieved from the media cache and adapted with the second adaptation profile into a second adapted message that is then sent to the second device. In addition, the second adapted message is stored in the media cache.
US08171161B2
Systems and methods of the present invention provide for returning website content after being requested by a client. A dynamic component and a rewritten URL may be requested and a static component may be requested, which may be updated. The combination of static and dynamic website content may be returned to the client.
US08171156B2
Disclosed is a method for optimizing internet traffic flow through a web network including the steps of collecting content data corresponding to the content elements, determining a revenue value for each content element, calculating an overall content value for each content element based on the corresponding revenue value and revenue generated from subsequent traffic flow of a user during a visit to the web network, and modifying the web network based on the overall content value and the content data, so as to maximize the value of the web network. Also disclosed is a system for determining overall content values for a plurality of content elements including an analytic server for receiving content data corresponding to the content elements, and a processor for determining a revenue value for each content element, and to calculate an overall content value for each content element based on the corresponding revenue value and revenue generated from subsequent traffic flow of a user during a visit to the web network.
US08171151B2
A system and method for a media processor separates the functions of topology creation and maintenance from the functions of processing data through a topology. The system includes a control layer including a topology generating element to generate a topology describing a set of input multimedia streams, one or more sources for the input multimedia streams, a sequence of operations to perform on the multimedia data, and a set of output multimedia streams, and a media processor to govern the passing of the multimedia data as described in the topology and govern the performance of the sequence of multimedia operations on the multimedia data to create the set of output multimedia streams. The core layer includes the input media streams, the sources for the input multimedia streams, one or more transforms to operate on the multimedia data, stream sinks, and media sinks to provide the set of output multimedia streams.
US08171148B2
Systems and methods are described for establishing a connection between a client and a server that are each communicating via a network. The methods and techniques may be used, for example, to establish a media streaming connection between a media player and a placeshifting device when a firewall or other impediment to direct network connections exists. A relay server receives connection requests from the client and from the server via the network. In response to receiving the requests, a first connection is established between the relay server and the client and a second connection between the relay server and the server. Data received by the relay server on each of the first and second connections is relayed to the other of the first and second connections to thereby establish the connection between the client and the server via the relay server.
US08171145B2
A method for two way communication and control of a game may include executing, by a host device in communication with a computer network, a game application within a web browser. A communication channel is established over the computer network and between the game application and a controller application running on an endpoint device. Data is sent over the communication channel for controlling and playing the game application within the game application. A system for two way communication and control of a game is also provided.
US08171144B2
In connection management by a conventional server apparatus using IDs, a client apparatus cannot know an attribute of a connection corresponding to an ID. A server apparatus (10) is an AV server apparatus that distributes content to a client apparatus requesting content data. A communication unit (11) receives a logical connection establishment request or a physical connection establishment request from the client apparatus. A content data distribution unit (14) establishes a physical connection for distributing the content data to the client apparatus, when the physical connection establishment request is received. A connection information management unit (15) establishes a logical connection, when the logical connection establishment request is received or as a result of the establishment of the physical connection. The connection information management unit (15) further generates an ID (connection ID) that corresponds to the logical connection and belongs to a value range associated with a logical connection category (type).
US08171143B2
A network device initially has no configuration data and is permitted only to query a known network address. From this address a server verifies the connection and authorizes another server to download to the network device the necessary configuration to carry out its purpose. This configuration may not be amended and is not retained on power loss. Any updates are carried out by a complete reload of configuration data.
US08171121B2
A dynamic reconfiguration to include on-line addition, deletion, and replacement of individual modules of to support dynamic partitioning of a system, interconnect (link) reconfiguration, memory RAS to allow migration and mirroring without OS intervention, dynamic memory reinterleaving, CPU and socket migration, and support for global shared memory across partitions is described. To facilitate the on-line addition or deletion, the firmware is able to quiesce and de-quiesce the domain of interest so that many system resources, such as routing tables and address decoders, can be updated in what essentially appears to be an atomic operation to the software layer above the firmware.
US08171120B1
The invention consists of a new route optimization authorization enabling mechanism. The current Mobile IPv6 protocols do not allow for optional control over the use of route optimization. The present invention allows for system control over whether route optimization is allowed or not allowed. The conditional allowance of route optimization solves several billing and security issues by allowing the system to impose appropriate charges for the route optimization feature or prevent route optimization where traffic flow can be monitored by the home network.
US08171118B2
Disclosed are systems and methods for application streaming over HTTP. A virtual application running on a host computing device may detect the need for a page of memory that is not present on the host computing device. Accordingly, the virtual application may send a request to a virtual application server, seeking the absent memory page. The virtual application server may send to a web server an HTTP GET byte range request for the desired memory page. The web server may retrieve the requested block, which may be a portion of the virtual application image file. The requested data is returned to the host computing device via the virtual application server. The virtual application continues running on the host device using the requested data.
US08171114B1
Disclosed in some examples is a method of caching by storing data in a first cache specific to a first geographic area and accessible only by a first application in the first geographic area; storing data in a second cache specific to a second geographic area and accessible by a plurality of applications in the second geographic area including the first application and a second application, the second geographic area being larger than and encompassing at least part of the first geographic area; responsive to a miss in the first cache for data, contacting the second cache and searching for the data in the second cache; and responsive to a hit for the data in the second cache, sending the data to a first application, wherein the data was placed in the second cache by a second application.
US08171109B2
A method and apparatus for updating bookmarks is described. In one embodiment, a server has a bookmark database and a bookmark synchronizer. The bookmark synchronizer is configured to receive a communication from a web browser of a client of a user, to collect a list of bookmarks of the web browser of the client, to compare the list of bookmarks with a list of bookmarks stored in the server, and to synchronize the list of bookmarks of the web browser of the client with the list of bookmarks stored in the server.
US08171105B2
A method of disseminating information in system having data sources and data recipients includes receiving a generic utility function at a data source for information to be delivered to a data recipient based upon an application for which the information is to be used. Data related to an environment in which the information is to be propagated is used to modify the generic utility function.
US08171085B1
Methods and systems and machine readable media for processing email and other electronic messages. In one exemplary embodiment, a method includes storing a plurality of domain names, each of which correspond to a portion of a full email address; receiving a first email; determining whether a sender address specified by the first email is within a domain specified by the plurality of domain names; determining whether the first email is authentically from an entity which controls the domain specified by the plurality of domain names if the sender address is within the domain; and presenting an indication of nonauthenticity if the first email is not authentically from the entity.
US08171077B2
A facility for presenting an adaptive message is described. The facility receives a message in the computer system. Based upon the contents of the received message, the facility tests two or more digital content capabilities of the computer system. The facility then selects one of a number of different digital content elements based upon the results of the testing. The facility presents the selected digital content element.
US08171072B2
A server stores a media content and an execution program for processing the media content, and determines a usage rule for the media content to be transmitted to a terminal. The server distributes the usage rule, the media content, and the execution program to the terminal. The terminal stores the distributed usage rule, media content, and execution program. The terminal executes the stored execution program and processes the stored media content within the bounds of the usage rule as stored. The server may perform a billing process in accordance with the determined usage rule, or select and distribute a media content or an execution program in accordance with the processing ability of the terminal or a state of communications. Moreover, the server may distribute, in addition to the execution program, middleware for constructing an operating environment for the execution program.
US08171071B2
A messaging system and method for creating a messaging hierarchy in a computer network are described. The network is made up of multiple network entities, which include both publishing entities and subscribing entities, where the publishing entities have data of which the subscribing entities may have need. The messaging system and method for creating a messaging hierarchy also include a data hierarchy applied to the data exchanged between the publishing entities and subscribing entities. The data hierarchy determines the virtual connections formed between the network entities in response to publication and subscription requests exchanged between the entities, such that the virtual connections established between network entities form a hierarchy corresponding to the data hierarchy.
US08171067B2
Provided is a method for implementing a file system that includes a combination of read-only and read/write parts. A file system located on a data server maintains an original copy of a data store. An “Ephemeral” file system (EFS) is created on a client computer. The data server is contacted only once for each file accessed and the copy is in an original state each time the system is mounted. Changes made to the file system by one client are not seen by other clients. The EFS maintains the file system state in memory and uses the NFS server as a backing stored for cached file data. File data for files created on the client are backed up by the client system's swapping space.
US08171062B2
Since both a physical storage place and a logical storage place in a storage system are separately managed as a directory structure, or a hierarchical structure, even in such a case that the physical storage place has been changed, the logical storage place which is displayed to the user is not changed, and thus, the user can use the file while the user need not become aware of the change of the file. When the contents of a file is displayed, a physical storage destination of the file is acquired based upon both a reference path and a relative path of the file, and then, the file is acquired from the physical storage destination.
US08171060B2
By considering a device life and time needed for data migration, data stored in a storage apparatus is securely preserved until a retention term of each of the data. Multiple disk devices 40A to 40C that store a data file generated by a service server apparatus 30 are included. A migration manager 11 of a management server apparatus 10 acquires preservation period information that indicates a preservation period of the data file from the service server apparatus 30, and calculates a preservation term of the data file based on the preservation period information. The migration manager 11 of the management server apparatus 10 also acquires data amount information of the data file from the service server apparatus 30, and calculates a necessary time needed for migrating the data file to other disk devices A40A to 40C. When the preservation term comes later than an operation guarantee term recorded in advance for each of the disk devices 40A to 40C, the migration manager 11 of the management server apparatus 10 compares the end of the migration with the operation guarantee term, and determines the necessity of the migration.
US08171054B1
An attribute of a hierarchical class-based object is received. The attribute in a database is stored both in a first location in a first table at a first level of a hierarchy of database tables which table hierarchy is based at least in part on a class hierarchy associated with the hierarchical class-based object and in a second location in a second table at a second level of the table hierarchy which second level is higher than the first level.
US08171052B2
A system, method and computer program product for searching at high speed for documents matching a dependency pattern from document data containing a large volume of text documents. The system includes a storage device for storing, index storage means for storing in the storage device occurrence information, receiving means for receiving information, reading means for reading from the index storage means, and searching means for comparing occurrence information. The method and computer program product include the steps of storing in the storage device, receiving information, reading from the storage device, comparing occurrence information, and searching. The computer program product includes instructions to execute the steps of storing each of the plurality of document data in the storage device, storing in the storage device occurrence information.
US08171049B2
An apparatus and method facilitate combined query based searching with serendipitous browsing in a multimedia collection. A user selects objects to label from a local map, which may include representations of objects retrieved from the collection as being responsive to a text or image base query. The text and image portions of the object can be independently labeled. Unlabeled objects are scored and ranked based on the applied labels of labeled objects, which may take into account cross-media pseudo-relevance and user selectable (or default) parameters, such as a forgetting factor, which tends to place greater weight on more recently labeled objects, and a modality parameter, which laces greater weight on the modality (text, image, or hybrid) currently selected by the user. The local map is modified, based on the ranking, optionally after reranking of objects to improve the diversity of the displayed objects.
US08171042B2
Methods and apparatuses for searching metadata are described herein. In one embodiment, an example of a process for search metadata includes, but is not limited to, in response to a search query for metadata stored in one or more of metadata stores, the search query is partitioned into multiple search query segments. Thereafter, searches corresponding to the search query segments are performed, where each search is performed independently within the one or more metadata stores. Other methods and apparatuses are also described.
US08171040B2
A method and system are provided for navigation of a data structure. The method includes receiving an input path expression (104) for a query of a data structure (101) to locate one or more elements (110) in the data structure (101) at runtime. The input path expression (104) includes one or more path steps. The method includes accessing a schema (103) of the data structure (101) and obtaining information relating to the one or more elements (110). The path expression (104) is modified to specify an index in one or more of the path steps to limit the number of occurrences of an element located in a path step. In one embodiment, modifying the path expression (104) also expands any wildcard characters and specifies one or more full paths of the elements (110), wherein if there are two or more full paths they are combined by a union operator, and the modified path expression is used to query (111) the data structure (101) at runtime.
US08171037B1
Method and system are disclosed for expanding a reference number range without altering existing data storage length. Such reference numbers may include employee numbers, social security numbers, customer account numbers, and the like. The method/system takes advantage of the way decimal numbers are stored by computers to allow text to be used in numeric reference numbers. In one implementation, letters A-Z are used for the leftmost position, increasing the domain count of reference numbers from 10 to 36 for that position. A reference number expansion utility is then used to convert the additional reference numbers to and from the existing data storage format.
US08171034B2
The relevance of advertisements to a user's interests is improved. In one implementation, the content of a web page is analyzed to determine a list of one or more topics associated with that web page. An advertisement is considered to be relevant to that web page if it is associated with keywords belonging to the list of one or more topics. One or more of these relevant advertisements may be provided for rendering in conjunction with the web page or related web pages.
US08171026B2
The invention provides a document representation method and a document analysis method including extraction of important sentences from a given document and/or determination of similarity between two documents.The inventive method detects terms that occur in the input document, segments the input document into document segments, each segment being an appropriately sized chunk and generates document segment vectors, each vector including as its element values according to occurrence frequencies of the terms occurring in the document segments. The method further calculates eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a square sum matrix in which a rank of the respective document segment vector is represented by R and selects from the eigenvectors a plural (L) of eigenvectors to be used for determining the importance. Then, the method calculates a weighted sum of the squared projections of the respective document segment vectors onto the respective selected eigenvectors and selects document segments having the significant importance based on the calculated weighted sum of the squared projections of the respective document segment vectors.
US08171024B2
A job log collection unit cooperates with job log management programs of copying machines to collect job logs held in the copying machines and store the collected job logs in a job log storage unit. A user change history creation unit refers to a human resource database to thereby determine whether a section which each user belongs to has been changed or not in a range of newly collected job logs. The user change history creation unit creates a user change history for each user who has encountered the change and stores the user change history in a user change history storage unit. A job log aggregation unit classifies the job logs of the job log storage unit into user sections by referring to the user change history of the user change history storage unit and aggregates the job logs in accordance with each section.
US08171023B2
The invention is directed to techniques for de-serializing data from a software system, such as an enterprise software system, upon request. For example, techniques are described for converting a data description language, such as the extensible markup language (XML), representation of data from an enterprise software system to an object when requested by a software application. A computing device connected to the enterprise software system loads multidimensional data via an XML data stream. The XML data is de-serialized to create objects as the objects are requested by software applications executing on the computing device. The remaining XML data may be stored on the computing device until the corresponding objects are requested by the software applications.
US08171012B2
A document management apparatus that searches at least one document group saved in advance for a document group having attributes that correspond to a search condition. The apparatus includes an updating unit configured to update the attributes of the document group in accordance with an operation performed by a user on a document in the document group, and a search unit configured to search for a document group having attributes that correspond to user information inputted from the exterior.
US08171007B2
Domain specific topics, and optionally uniform resource locators (URLs) can be received from a user, and from those domain specific topics and URLs, domain tuned search definitions are generated for a given domain. The domain tuned search definitions are saved and the user is provided with a definition of a domain tuned search interface that is embedded on a site specified by the user. When someone reviewing the user's web site performs a search using the domain tuned, embedded search interface, a search engine is invoked which performs a search on the user's input query, and then returns domain specific search results. The search engine searches for domain specific search results over web sites in addition to the web site that the user is currently reviewing, so the search is more precise than a general web search but broader than a specific site search.
US08171006B1
Retrieving stored data is disclosed. A retrieval request is received for an object. A retrieval response is generated that includes: 1) a first set of searchable attributes associated with the object, wherein an attribute of the first set of attributes is stored in a database in a manner that enables a database query to be performed against the attribute of the first set of attributes; and 2) a second set of non-searchable attributes associated with the object, wherein an attribute of the second set of attributes is stored in the database in a manner that does not enable a database query to be performed against the attribute of the second set of attributes.
US08170989B2
The present invention embodiments pertain to managing and exchanging documents. A descriptor is added to an original document, wherein the descriptor includes at least one document identifier representing a logical subject of the document. Modifications to a document being sent or received are identified based on comparing the descriptor of the sent or received document and the descriptor of the original document. The modifications are introduced into the original document to become a single master document of consolidated information relating to the same logical subject.
US08170985B2
A protected file is retained in secondary storage for a retention period, and a corresponding stub file is retained in primary storage for the retention period. The stub file retains attributes of the file indicating a location of the file data in the secondary storage and indicting that the stub file is to be retained for the retention period. A system administrator may instruct a primary file server that a secondary file server supports retention based protection and it is desired to protect stub files corresponding to protected files that are migrated to the secondary file server. The primary file server may request the secondary file server to return a protection status of the file after migration. This enables automatic policy-based migration to both file level retention (FLR) and non-FLR retention protected secondary storage from diverse applications accessing FLR or non-FLR files in the primary storage.
US08170966B1
In some embodiments, a streaming message classification method dynamically allocates a stream of messages to a variable number of clusters (e.g. message categories), each containing messages which share a set of similar features. Incoming messages are compared to a collection of known spam clusters. New spam types are identified, and new clusters are created automatically and dynamically in order to accommodate the new spam types. Message clustering is performed in a hyperspace of message feature vectors using a modified k-means algorithm. Triangle inequality distance comparisons may be used to accelerate hyperspace distance calculations.
US08170958B1
A method and apparatus for providing an on-line reputation manager whereby review and/or ratings data associated with a given business and/or product is obtained from two or more Internet based business ratings/review system sources. The review and/or ratings data is aggregated, and/or processed, according to one or more aggregation/processing parameters. The aggregated, and/or processed, review and/or ratings data is then provided to an owner, manager, and/or agent of the given business. The review and/or ratings data is then monitored and updated periodically and/or on the occurrence of specified trigger events.
US08170952B2
A system and method for issuance of a financial network-based payment card (generally known as a “payment card” or a “credit card”) almost instantaneously after application, wherein an applicant applies for a credit card by entering data into a data entry system using a handheld electronic device, advantageously by filling in a plurality of predefined forms in a computer-based data entry system. The applicant's data is sent via a data network to a central decision center, which approves or disapproves the application. If the application is approved, data is generated, a payment card is activated, and a result of the determination to issue is sent to the handheld electronic device.
US08170951B2
A method and apparatus for facilitating the shipment of a package or packages, each package containing one or more items, from a Sender to a Recipient, via one of a number of shippers. The apparatus includes a database for storing shipper data, a processor for processing the data in the database, a Sender's terminal for selectively receiving and sending shipment information to and from the processing system, a first communications link for selectively enabling communication between the database/processor and the Sender's terminal, a second communications link for selectively communicating between the database/processor and the shipper of the package(s), and a third communications link for selectively communicating between the database/processor and customs facilitation entities such as customs brokers. The Internet may be used as at least one of the communication links, and the database may be made available through a Web site.
US08170950B1
Orders are automatically sent to the market when certain user defined conditions are met. In particular, a trader can configure the trading application to automatically send orders for preset quantities at price levels with queues falling below a user-defined threshold. The length of queues may be measured in several ways, for example, the queue length could be measured by quantity at a given price level or the queue length could be measured by the number of orders at a given price level, or the queue length could be measured by a combination of quantity and orders. The present embodiments can more quickly recognize opportunities and send an order to take advantage of it than a trader can do manually. Other advantages and features are described herein.
US08170947B2
A method of identifying fraud in a telecommunications system, the method including receiving data related to a current call placed from an originating ANI to a terminating ANI, where the received data includes the terminating ANI and a billing number used to place the call. Billing numbers for prior calls to the terminating ANI, if any, and corresponding indicia of the times of the calls are retrieved. A determination is made of whether the number of billing numbers used for the current and prior calls to the terminating ANI over a prior period of time falling within a time interval satisfies a threshold. If the threshold is satisfied, a fraud alert is generated.
US08170945B2
A system for managing electronic trading, comprises an interface application including a mapping module that defines a plurality of controller signal relationships. Each controller signal relationship associates one or more of a plurality of game controller signals with one of a plurality of trading system commands associated with the electronic trading of financial instruments. The interface application receives a plurality of game controller signals generated by a game controller, and determines, based on the controller signal relationships, that one or more of the plurality of received game controller signals are erroneous. The interface application causes the communication of a command to lock the game controller based on the determination of the one or more erroneous game controller signals.
US08170943B2
The present invention relates to, among other things, systems and methods for generating a metric of an entity's financial status relative to a financial goal. In generating the metric, the value of an entity's total assets is simulated over time based on data comprising historical rates of returns. In one embodiment, the present invention provides a computer system and method for generating a metric of an individual's probable present-day financial status relative to financial independence on a desired future date. In this embodiment, the metric is called a Financial Independence Score. The Financial Independence score is a single number that represents the individual's financial status relative to achieving financial independence by a desired date.
US08170942B2
A system and method provides investors with meaningful information extracted from large volumes of available data for a particular stock, mutual fund, bond, or other investment. The system includes one or more computers that receive and process multiple data feeds to extract information relating to each type of investment. The processed data is compared to “alert rules” each corresponding to a predefined condition, and a truth table is established that identifies alerts that are true for each particular investment. An investor logs onto a web site and enters a stock ticker symbol or similar investment identifier. Computer software displays a web page including “alerts” that are presently true for that particular investment. The alerts can be predefined by financial experts to make them useful to novice investors. When an investor selects a particular investment, a display is generated showing all of the alerts that are true for that investment and allowing the user to get more information concerning the significance of the alerts. The alerts can be grouped into different categories according to their content or time sensitivity.
US08170938B2
Commercial size of spending wallet (“CSoSW”) is the total business spend of a business including cash but excluding bartered items. Commercial share of wallet (“CSoW”) is the portion of the spending wallet that is captured by a particular financial company. A modeling approach utilizes various data sources to provide outputs that describe a company's spend capacity. Research analysts can use CSoW/CSoSW to provide a comprehensive and robust indication of the business prospects of a rated company.
US08170927B2
An adaptive critical low level management system is described. In some embodiments, the system includes a configuration module configured to receive a service level setting and a storage module configured to receive usage information for at least one inventory of at least one type of medical item. The system also includes a processor configured to adaptively determine a critical low level based on the usage information and the service level setting, and an analysis module configured to determine when the critical low level has been reached by the at least one inventory of the at least one type of medical item, and to produce an output indication that the critical low level has been reached.
US08170926B1
A system, method and computer program product for instant redirection of an online consumer from a referring website to a vendor website is disclosed. The method includes administering, via a single administrator, a plurality of referring websites in a plurality of goods and service provider categories and associating a single URL (uniform resource locator) for a client's website with at least one zip code as predetermined by the client. The method also includes automatically determining a zip code for the consumer visiting one of referring websites and comparing the zip code predetermined by the client with the consumer's zip code for a match. The method further includes instantly redirecting the consumer's browser to the client's website via the single URL when there is a match and otherwise directing the consumer's browser to a self-maintaining goods and service provider directory for a specific zip code.
US08170924B1
A real time auction system operates in a non real time mode, and an end game mode in which the users are placed in a forum. In both modes the users are capable of placing bids along with times when those bids should be executed. An agent treats the bids as secret until the time, and then at the time executes those bids.
US08170922B2
The present invention involves a server for accommodating multiple payments in an e-commerce transaction. The server includes a processor with a communications device and software modules. The vendor software module is adapted to receive payment requirements from a vendor via the communications device, and also to receive payment parameters from an initiator. The payment parameters include an item payment amount and an identification of at least one contributor. The contributor software module is adapted to obtain payment information from at least one of the initiator and the contributors wherein the payment information is sufficient to authorize the commitment of funds to a transaction. The aggregation software module is adapted to send participation messages via the communications device to at least one contributor. The participation messages include information on the item, the item payment amount, and directions for the contributor to interact with the contributor module. Further, the aggregation software module maintains a total of committed funds and initiates a payment transaction when the committed funds are sufficient to pay the vendor the item payment amount.
US08170915B2
A technique for effecting electronic commerce using a data network is described. The data network includes a plurality of subsystems which, together, form an integrated system for receiving customer orders for selected items via a data network, fulfilling the customer orders, and delivering the ordered products to the customers. Moreover, according to a specific embodiment, the integrated nature of the system architecture of the present invention allows the on-line merchant to provide a guarantee to the customer that the ordered items will be available to be delivered to the customer at the specified delivery date, time, and location.
US08170909B2
A system for monitoring the performance of at least one task associated with operation of a retail store. The system includes at least one monitoring device positioned and adapted to provide images of at least one location within the retail store, with each image showing at least one factor related to performance of the at least one task. A controller is adapted to obtain and store images from the at least one monitoring device. An interface is adapted to enable a user to selectively view stored images and to manually analyze the at least one factor shown in the viewed images to evaluate the performance of the at least one task.
US08170908B1
Apparatus and method for optimizing different amounts of output products derived from an initial biomass material. The method includes obtaining economic data of costs and availability of raw materials and resources, and prices that would be paid for output products derived, performing calculations to determine an optimum amount of each of the output products; and controlling processes that generate the output products. In some embodiments, the processes convert initial biomass materials into intermediate and output products, an economic engine that obtains economic data relating to costs of initial materials and prices that would be paid for output products derived from the raw materials, and performs calculations to determine an optimum amount of each of the output products, and valves that are controlled by the economic engine to route variable amounts of the initial biomass materials to the processes to obtain a mix of output products that provides an optimum profit.
US08170906B2
A method and apparatus are presented with which to conduct information surveys. Contemporary methods of accessing and exploiting information resources, including search techniques and category browsing, have become less effective and efficient at these tasks due to the growing infoglut and the widening knowledge gap between the content, structure, and navigational paths of information resources on the one hand, and what users know and desire of these on the other. The information survey method and apparatus disclosed herein enables a user to survey information in order to rapidly discover the area of the information resource that is most useful to them, the survey niche, and evaluate the knowledge and information found there.
US08170903B2
A system and method for generating a business critical impact analysis report includes steps of: inserting a rank value field in each configuration item relationship type definition; inserting a rank value field in each single relationship between configuration items; determining default rank values for the rank value fields; assigning the default rank values to the single relationships and the relationship type definitions; receiving a user request to generate the business critical impact analysis report at a selected rank level of configuration items; and presenting the business critical impact analysis report to the user, displaying the configuration items and their relationships corresponding to the selected level.
US08170902B2
A system for managing information of a case relating to possible lack of compliance of enterprise transactions with one or more predetermined compliance policies of an enterprise. An exceptions database stores information corresponding to exceptions indicative of a violation of an enterprise compliance policy. An input receives exceptions from a rules engine that determines a violation of an enterprise compliance policy based on information stored in one or more enterprise systems; the exceptions are stored in the exceptions database. A user interface is provided for assigning a case number to at least one exception, assigning an owner to the exceptions, collecting additional information relating to a case, and other functions. The system further provides a display of information relating to the exception, the entities involved in the exception, and the case to a user.
US08170901B2
A user interface for building a componentized workflow model. Each step of the workflow is modeled as an activity that has metadata to describe design time aspects, compile time aspects, and runtime aspects of the workflow step. A user selects and arranges the activities to create the workflow via the user interface. The metadata associated with each of the activities in the workflow is collected to create a persistent representation of the workflow. Users extend the workflow model by authoring custom activities.
US08170893B1
Processes and software are provided for eliminating sources of maintenance losses in machine intensive environments such as manufacturing, processing and assembly plants.The processes and software include creating financial and work order metrics to trend maintenance variables, a process for creating work orders, a process for using alarms for integrating measurement technologies and spare parts, a process for managing repair and replacing activities and projects by improving documenting and communicating processes while involving users such as executives and senior managers.
US08170892B1
Automobile insurance rates are established by performing calculations for defining a single tier placement dependent upon a combination of mutually exclusive factors based on applicant data. The factors include a household driving record gradient, a stability gradient and an operator driving record gradient. In the case of a new policy, the factors also include a named insured driving experience gradient and a prior insurance gradient. Alternately, in the case of a renewal policy, the factors also include a household claims record gradient, a member relationship gradient and an operator claims record gradient. No single factor is the sole determinant for placement in a tier.
US08170891B2
Methods, computer storage media, systems and user interfaces for generating and/or managing medical documentation sets are provided. Medical documentation sets are generated by replicating a predetermined medical template. After the predetermined medical template is replicated, the medical label associated with the medical documentation set may be modified so that the medication documentation set includes a unique medical label. Upon the completion of a medication documentation set, it may be retrieved and managed as desired.
US08170890B1
A system and method for inferring a possible pregnancy based on a first filled prescription and blocking the sale of a second prescription for a drug contraindicated for pregnancy is disclosed. First prescription information may be received and a possible pregnancy of the patient may be inferred. An association of the inferred possible pregnancy and the patient may be retained for a given length of time. When second prescription information is received, a check for the association may be made. If an association exists, the filling and the sale of the second prescription may be blocked. The block of the sale of the second prescription may be overridden.
US08170889B2
A computer implemented method of evaluating interaction two or more medical products or conditions, in the context of a reference condition, based on a dataset of patient records includes developing a reference contingency lattice of lattice subsets from a subset of the patient records containing the reference condition, wherein the lattice subsets correspond to the number of patient records that contain each of the two or more medical products or conditions and combinations thereof. A plurality of comparison contingency lattices are developed, each of the comparison contingency lattices developed from a respective random subset of patient records not containing the reference condition, where each of the comparison contingency lattices include lattice subsets that correspond to the number of patient records that contain each of the two or more medical products or conditions and combinations thereof. The lattice subsets of the reference contingency lattice are compared to the corresponding lattice subsets of the comparison contingency lattices to determine whether a lattice subset is indicative of an interaction between the medical products or conditions with respect to the reference condition.
US08170887B2
A system and method for providing continuous expert network critical care services from a remote location. A plurality of healthcare locations with associated patient monitoring instrumentation is connected over a network to a command center which is manned by intensivists 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The intensivists are prompted to provide critical care by a standardized series of guideline algorithms for treating a variety of critical care conditions. Intensivists monitor the progress of individual patients at remote intensive care units. A smart alarm system provides alarms to the intensivists to alert the intensivists to potential patient problems so that intervention can occur in a timely fashion. A data storage/data warehouse function analyzes individual patient information from a plurality of command centers and provides updated algorithms and critical care support to the command centers.
US08170881B2
The present invention can include a method of call processing using a distributed voice browser including allocating a plurality of service processors configured to interpret parsed voice markup language data and allocating a plurality of voice markup language parsers configured to retrieve and parse voice markup language data representing a telephony service. The plurality of service processors and the plurality of markup language parsers can be registered with one or more session managers. Accordingly, components of received telephony service requests can be distributed to the voice markup language parsers and the parsed voice markup language data can be distributed to the service processors.
US08170880B2
Systems and methods herein use an annotation guide to label utterances and speech data with a call type. A system practicing the method embodiment monitors labelers of speech data by presenting via a processor a test utterance to a labeler, receiving input from the labeler that selects a particular call type from a list of call types and determining via the processor if the labeler labeled the test utterance correctly. Based on the determining step, the system revises the annotation guide, retrains the labeler, and/or alters the test utterance.
US08170878B2
The invention proposes a method and apparatus for significantly improving the quality of voice morphing and guaranteeing the similarity of converted voice. The invention sets several standard speakers in a TTS database, and selects the voices of different standard speakers for speech synthesis according to different roles, wherein the voice of the selected standard speaker is similar to the original role to a certain extent. Then the invention further performs voice morphing on the standard voice similar to the original voice to a certain extent, in order to accurately mimic the voice of the original speaker, so as to make the converted voice closer to the original voice features while guaranteeing the similarity.
US08170875B2
A rule-based end-pointer isolates spoken utterances contained within an audio stream from background noise and non-speech transients. The rule-based end-pointer includes a plurality of rules to determine the beginning and/or end of a spoken utterance based on various speech characteristics. The rules may analyze an audio stream or a portion of an audio stream based upon an event, a combination of events, the duration of an event, or a duration relative to an event. The rules may be manually or dynamically customized depending upon factors that may include characteristics of the audio stream itself, an expected response contained within the audio stream, or environmental conditions.
US08170871B2
An encoding device (1) and method convert a set of signals (l, r) into a dominant signal (m) containing most signal energy, a residual signal (s) containing a remainder of the signal energy, and signal parameters (IID, ICC) associated with the conversion. The dominant signal (m) and selected parts of the residual signal (s) are encoded. Selecting parts of the residual signal involves a residual signal (s′) passing perceptually relevant parts of the residual signal (s), attenuating perceptually less relevant parts of the residual signal and suppressing least relevant parts of the residual signal. An associated decoding device (2) and method decode the encoded dominant signal and the encoded residual signal so as to produce a decoded dominant signal (m′u) and a decoded residual signal (s′mod) respectively. A synthetic residual signal (s′syn) is derived from the decoded dominant signal (m′u) and is attenuated so as to produce an attenuated synthetic residual signal (s′syn,mod). The attenuated synthetic residual signal (s′syn,mod) and the decoded residual signal (s′mod) are combined to produce a reconstructed residual signal (s′). The decoded dominant signal (m′) and the reconstructed residual signal (s′) are then converted into a set of output signals (l′, r′).
US08170861B2
Manufacturing facility process optimization includes monitoring communication signals within a facility device network, analyzing work station specific patterns in the communication signals, developing operational dependencies for work stations based upon the work station specific patterns, and predictively evaluating impacts to the work stations of the proposed configuration of the manufacturing facility process based upon the operational dependencies.
US08170859B1
Arbitrary, unmodified code and/or software may be executed directly on a host processor operating in a virtualized mode using hardware virtualization support and performance counters. The arbitrary software may be run on the host processor until the host processor exits from the virtualized mode. An end execution time may be calculated in response to the host processor exiting from the virtualized mode. An event may then be handled based on an execution time at which the host processor exited from the virtualized mode and a time at which a scheduled event was to occur.
US08170854B2
A model of a device is generated. An input port of the device is stimulated with a large amplitude signal having a central frequency. A first port of the device is perturbed with a small amplitude signal tone. The small amplitude signal tone is at a frequency offset slightly from a harmonic of the central frequency. Spectral component frequencies of a resulting signal from the device are obtained to determine model coefficients for the device. At least some of the spectral component frequencies occur at frequencies offset slightly from harmonics of the central frequency.
US08170842B2
A method of modelling fabric properties and behavior first involves generating (16) a yarn model from fiber parameters, which may be empirically determined. The yarn model is homogenised (18, 20) to produce a homogenous representation of the yarn (YMM), suitable for use in finite element analysis. The method may then, secondly, involve generating (24) a fabric weave model by finite element analysis of the yarn representation (YMM). The fabric model is then also homogenised (26, 28) to produce a homogeneous representation of the fabric (FMM), suitable for use in finite element analysis. Finite element analysis of the fabric representation (FMM) can then be used to assess the suitability of various fabric materials for technical applications.
US08170841B2
Models are generated using a variety of tools and features of a model generation platform. For example, in connection with a project in which a user generates a predictive model based on historical data about a system being modeled, the user is provided through a graphical user interface a structured sequence of model generation activities to be followed, the sequence including dimension reduction, model generation, model process validation, and model re-generation.In connection with a project in which a user generates a predictive model based on historical data about a system being modeled, the user is enabled to validate the model development process with cross-validation between at least two subsets of the historical data; the validated model development process is enabled to be reapplied.
US08170838B2
The process of modeling a complex two-dimensional periodic structure is improved by selectively truncating the Fourier expansion used in the calculation of resulting scatter signature from the model. The Fourier expansion is selectively truncated by determining the contribution for each harmonic order in the Fourier transform of the permittivity function and retaining the harmonic orders with a contribution that is above a threshold. The Fourier space may be compressed so that only the selected harmonic orders are used, thereby reducing the required memory and calculation times. The compressed Fourier space may be used in a real-time analysis of a sample or to generate a library that is used in the analysis of a sample.
US08170834B2
The present disclosure provides a system and method for monitoring and controlling modifications to beverage equipment. The system includes at least one beverage equipment which may include a controller. The controller communicates over a communications network with a data collection server which may be accessible to a central office or equipment provider. A method is also disclosed for first monitoring or querying beverage equipment for a setting or configuration modification. Next, the modification may be compared against a modification threshold to determine whether the modification warrants corrective action. A corrective action may include but is not limited to, resetting the equipment to original or default settings, notifying an end user, notifying the equipment providers, logging the action, or some combination of two or more of these actions.
US08170817B2
In a method for determining the electrical loadability of power lines by temperature measurement, the temperature is measured with at least one sensor arranged on the power line and connected to a data processing system, wherein the time-dependent temperature of the power line is determined by an existing or a weighted load parameter, and wherein based on the electrical current and the temperature measured by the sensor, taking into account either the existing or a weighted load parameter, a time-dependent electrical load is determined in the data processing system.
US08170815B2
The location of a terminal is estimated within an area of coverage of a wireless network comprising at least one fixed node by measuring a complex frequency response of a radio channel between the terminal and one of said fixed nodes and estimating the location of the terminal on the basis of at least a comparison between data representing a first metric of the measured complex frequency response and data representing a plurality of stored metrics, each of said plurality of stored metrics being related to one of a plurality of different locations within the network and each stored metric being of a complex frequency response measured between the said one of said fixed nodes and the location within the network to which the metric relates.
US08170801B2
Physical models of wells are used to determine rate and phase composition for fluid produced from or injected into the wells on a near real time and continuous basis. The method can be used to alert operators or others of conditions in a well or field to permit more immediate response. The method can be more tolerant of sensor faults, sensor drift, anomalous data or other occurrences which could otherwise lead to incorrect output. More than one model can be used to permit a hierarchy of calculation such that the rate and phase determination is more tolerant of anomalous data. The calculated rate and phase values from one or more wells can be reconciled against facility data.
US08170800B2
The present invention provides a computer-implemented software tool that is adapted to listen continuously to data streams from a drilling operation and to process the data to generate a situation description for a current drilling situation in a form useful for automated continuous matching with a set of past cases stored in a knowledge database. The invention implements a case-based reasoning (CBR) approach to match the current drilling situation as defined by the situation description with one or more stored past cases having a degree of similarity above a predetermined threshold level. Matching cases are displayed to the drilling engineer as symbols on a case “radar”, allowing the drilling engineer to retrieve and view the details of a past case and take appropriate action based on drilling advice provided within the past case.
US08170797B2
A method and an apparatus for estimating behaviors of a vehicle are provided. At least two GPS antennas are located along a longitudinal axis of a vehicle so that speed vectors at the positions where the GPS antennas are located can be determined based on GPS signals received by the GPS antennas. The speed vectors are known to be estimated with high accuracy based on the GPS signals. The positions of the GPS antennas on the local coordinate system are estimated based on such highly accurate speed vectors, so that the estimated positions may also have high accuracy. Based on a line connecting these highly accurate positions of the GPS antennas, an inclination of the longitudinal axis of the vehicle is estimated. Use of the high-accuracy speed vectors enables high-accuracy estimation on the positions of the GPS antennas and the vehicle direction on the local coordinate system.
US08170791B1
A list of places of interest geographically located near a travel route may be generated by accessing a routing database storing shape points capable of defining a travel route, determining a travel route from the shape points stored in the routing database, accessing a place of interest database including geographic centers, selecting from the places of interest database at least one geographic center that is geographically proximate to the travel route, and generating a list of places of interest associated with at least one of the selected geographic centers.
US08170790B2
A portable navigation device operable to present a plurality of operating modes. The device may include a display; a location determining component operable to determine a current geographic location of the navigation device; mount detection circuitry operable to determine a mounting status of the navigation device; and a processor coupled with the location determining component, the mount detection circuitry, and the display. The processor is operable to select one of a plurality of operating modes based on the determined mounting status and present information specific to the selected operating modes on the display.
US08170786B2
In a method and apparatus for the management of data, particularly coordinate data, which are determined with respect to a number of predetermined reference points with a spatial distribution around the respective reference points using at least one sensor arrangement, such as a coordinate determination arrangement, the data points are grouped into a number of classes in accordance with a first distance criterion, a respective center point of the data point classes is determined, a distance of each data point from the center points of the data point classes is compared with a second distance criterion, and the various individual data point classes are assigned to respective reference points.
US08170785B2
For creating a route plan for a group of agricultural working machine systems for working a territory, the machine systems include route planning data determination devices and they exchange data with each other and, based on exchanged route planning data, one shared route plan is created for the particular territory. For controlling a group of agricultural working machine systems while it works a territory, one shared route plan—which has been created accordingly—is used, and a route planning system is provided for creating a route plan for a group of agricultural working machine systems to be used to work a territory.
US08170784B2
A method and apparatus is provided for moving content to a mobile device (2). A data item (34) of a predetermined type is received at a first device (14), the data item (34) including a content URI for fetching content associated with the data item. Upon detecting that the data item (34) is of the predetermined type, the first device (14) generates a symbol (40) representing at least: a local address of a content-retrieval device (14) on a local wireless network, and an explicit or implicit identifier of the content associated with the data item. The symbol (40) is then read using the mobile device (2). The mobile device (2) decodes the symbol and transmits a request, containing the content identifier, to the content-retrieval device (14). On receiving the request, the content-retrieval device (14) uses—the content identifier in the request to obtain that content, and replies to the request with the obtained content.
US08170778B2
On incompletion of port learning, an auto stop-permitting water temperature is set to a temperature which is higher than a temperature set on completion of the port learning and is higher than a port injection temperature as an upper limit temperature that enables an engine to be driven in a port injection drive mode. This arrangement increases the opportunity of continuing the operation of the engine with fuel injection from a port fuel injection valve without an auto stop, thus increasing the opportunity of the port learning.
US08170772B2
A method of reducing icing-related engine misfires during operation of a vehicle is provided. The vehicle can include an engine and an engine control unit operable for at least partially controlling operation of the engine. The vehicle can further include a plurality of sensors in electrical communication with the engine control unit. The engine can include an air intake system and an exhaust system, wherein the air intake system can include a positive crankcase ventilation valve. The method includes predicting the presence of ice within the air intake system based upon an input to the engine control unit from at least one of the sensors.
US08170767B2
A method and system for controlling vehicle stability may comprise determining whether a vehicle is oversteering or understeering and, if the vehicle is oversteering or understeering, determining an amount by which to reduce a speed of the vehicle to correct for understeering or oversteering and applying brake pressure to at least the rear brakes of the vehicle to reduce vehicle speed. The method and system also may comprise determining an engine torque reduction amount based on vehicle oversteer or understeer conditions, reducing engine torque by the determined amount or to zero if the determined amount of engine torque reduction is greater than an actual engine torque, and applying braking to at least the rear brakes of the vehicle if the determined amount of engine torque reduction is greater than the actual engine torque.
US08170762B2
Method and apparatus to control operation of a hydraulic pump for an electro-mechanical transmission
A method for controlling a hydraulic flow within a powertrain comprising an electromechanical transmission mechanically-operatively coupled to an engine adapted to selectively transmit power to an output, wherein the transmission utilizes a hydraulic control system serving a number of hydraulic oil consuming functions includes monitoring minimum hydraulic pressure requirements for each of the functions, determining a requested hydraulic pressure based upon the monitoring minimum hydraulic pressure requirements and physical limits of the hydraulic control system including a maximum pressure, determining a desired flow utilizing a hydraulic control system flow model based upon the requested hydraulic pressure, and utilizing the desired flow to control an auxiliary hydraulic pump.
US08170759B2
An engine control system of a vehicle comprises a torque module and a chassis request evaluation module. The torque module controls a torque output of an engine based on a driver torque request and selectively increases the torque output based on a chassis torque request. The chassis request evaluation module selectively prevents the increase of the torque output based on at least one of a vehicle speed, a transmission state, and an accelerator pedal position.
US08170755B2
A method of detecting a minispare tire in a vehicle having a vehicle control system. The method includes detecting a rotational velocity of each of a plurality of wheels of the vehicle; determining whether a minispare tire is mounted on the vehicle based on the rotational velocities detected at each of the plurality of wheels; adjusting the vehicle control system if a minispare tire is mounted on the vehicle; sensing a hydraulic pressure of a braking system of the vehicle; and suspending determination of whether a minispare tire is mounted on the vehicle if the hydraulic pressure exceeds a predetermined critical pressure level.
US08170754B2
A vehicle body drifting restraining device which restrains a drifting of a vehicle body, wherein: when a brake control device operation prohibition switch, which prohibits an operation of a brake control device, is in a state of prohibition, a control for restraining the drifting of the vehicle body is prohibited.
US08170750B2
A vehicle parametric active front steering (AFS) system remedial action is described herein. AFS system modules inter-communicate via messages containing parameters. The AFS system detects a message error, determines an invalid parameter, and takes appropriate remedial action. An error is detected if an error condition is satisfied or if occurrence of incorrect messages reaches or exceeds a certain predetermined frequency. The AFS system takes the remedial action by setting default values of valid parameters corresponding to the invalid parameter.
US08170747B2
A fleet maintenance method for generating a suggested speed for each vehicle in a fleet to maintain the vehicle in the fleet is provided. In the fleet maintenance method, vehicles are clustered into a plurality of sub-fleets, and in each sub-fleet, one vehicle is selected as a leader vehicle and the other vehicles are considered as member vehicles. Besides, a position coordinate and a speed of each vehicle in each sub-fleet are obtained, and the position coordinate is converted into a corresponding linear coordinate. In addition, a sub-fleet gravity center of each sub-fleet and a fleet gravity center of the entire fleet are calculated according to the linear coordinates. Moreover, a suggested speed of each leader vehicle is generated according to a gravity center distance of the leader vehicle, and a suggested speed of each member vehicle is generated.
US08170743B2
An integrated diagnosis and prognosis system that collects vehicle information over the life of a vehicle and its development. The system provides the collected vehicle information to supplier management, product development management, service/dealership management, customer relations departments and production facilities, which use the information to take certain action for existing vehicles, fleets of vehicles or future vehicles to improve vehicle reliability and quality.
US08170742B2
A method of diagnosing, installing, repairing and/or maintaining an antilock braking system (ABS) unit in a motorcycle. The method includes connecting a diagnostic tool to an ABS unit of a motorcycle, communicating with the ABS unit using the diagnostic tool and informing a mechanic utilizing the diagnostic tool about a component in the ABS unit. Also, a tool for diagnosing, installing, repairing and/or maintaining an antilock braking system (ABS) unit in a motorcycle.
US08170740B2
An adaptive vehicle control system that classifies a drivers driving style based on vehicle launching maneuvers. A process determines whether the vehicle speed signal during a predetermined time window is greater than a speed threshold, whether the vehicle speed signal before the time window is less than the speed threshold and whether the average of the vehicle longitudinal acceleration during the time window is greater than a first longitudinal acceleration threshold and, if so, determines if the vehicle is in a vehicle launching maneuver. The process then determines that the vehicle launching maneuver has ended if the average of the vehicle longitudinal acceleration during a second time window is less than the longitudinal acceleration threshold. The style characterization processor can then classify the vehicle launching maneuver using selected discriminant features.
US08170739B2
A system for providing path generation for automated lane centering and/or lane changing purposes. The system includes a desired path generation processor that receives signals detecting the roadway on which the vehicle is traveling, a request for a lane change, vehicle state information and a steering angle of the vehicle. The system also includes a path prediction processor that predicts the vehicle path based on vehicle state information including vehicle longitudinal speed, vehicle lateral speed, vehicle yaw-rate and vehicle steering angle. The desired path information and the predicted path information are compared to generate an error signal that is sent to a lane change controller that provides a steering angle signal to turn the vehicle and reduce the error signal. The desired path generation processor can use a fifth order polynomial equation to determine the desired path of the vehicle based on the input signals.
US08170736B2
A control device includes a target rotation speed determination unit that determines a target rotation speed of an engine, a filtering process unit that receives an output of the target rotation speed determination unit, changes the received output such that the target rotation speed changes gently, and outputs the changed output, a property switching control unit that switches properties of the filtering process unit in accordance with a vehicle state, and a first torque value calculation unit that calculates a target torque of a motor generator in accordance with a difference between the output of the filtering process unit and an actual rotation speed of the engine. Preferably, the property switching control unit increases a time constant of the filtering process in accordance with a shift switch instruction to switch a vehicle state from a traveling state to a neutral state.
US08170731B2
Systems and methods for planning and executing a search route by a mobile sensor platform for detecting reflection are disclosed. The search route of the mobile sensor platform is based on the angle of a radiation source relative to the ground in a search area. While executing the search route, a sensor on the mobile sensor platform is configured to detect the reflection of radiation from an object in the search area.
US08170729B2
Methods and systems for operating a display device that is viewable by a user of an aircraft are provided. A first image is caused to be displayed on the display device. The first image is at least representative of a field of view from on-board the aircraft of an actual terrain. A second image is rendered over the first image on the display device. The second image includes a vertical position indicator indicating a vertical position of the aircraft relative to a selected flight path. The vertical position indicator is moved in a pitch direction on the display device in response to the aircraft moving relative to the actual terrain. The pitch direction corresponds to a change in the pitch of the aircraft.
US08170725B2
A system that classifies driver driving skill based on on-ramp or off-ramp maneuvers. The system reads sensor signals for vehicle speed and vehicle yaw rate. The system determines that the vehicle has made an on-ramp or off-ramp maneuver using the vehicle speed signal and the yaw-rate signal and then classifies the driver's driving skill using selected discriminant features obtained or derived from the on-ramp or off-ramp maneuver.
US08170723B2
The present disclosure relates to power system sensitivities as computed from power flow parameters and control parameters of a Power Flow Control Device (PFC). To this end, control parameter variations are applied to or generated by a PFC, and comprise variations in a control input u, a control effort e (injected series voltage, inserted series reactance), or a control effect q (power flow, active power transfer, phase-shift, current). A power flow response measuring unit measures a variation of a power flow response such as current, active or apparent power, in a way sufficiently synchronized with the control parameter variation to allow establishing an unambiguous causal relationship or correspondence in the form of a power system sensitivity. The latter may be on-line adapted to continuously reflect an updated aspect of the power system behavior, and thus enable an improved, fast and reliable power flow control in power systems comprising a meshed power network with two parallel flow paths or corridors connecting two areas or sub-systems.
US08170721B2
Methods and devices are provided to automatically determine plant water requirements and adjust irrigation in order to make efficient use of water. In one implementation, an irrigation control unit comprises a memory storing historical values of a plurality of variables used at least in part in calculating plant water requirements, and at least one input adapted to receive signals corresponding to current values of one or more of the plurality of variables. The unit also comprises a processor coupled to the at least one input and the memory, the processor adapted to determine the plant water requirements at least in part using, for each of the plurality of variables, a current value in the event the current value is available and at least in part using, for each of the plurality of variables, a stored historical value in the event the current value is not available.
US08170712B2
A flexible, non-linear, unit-level sortation system for sorting mixed collections of items into orders. Collections of unsorted items for fulfilling requests are delivered to one or more singulation stations. At a singulation station, individual units of items are selected from a collection, associated with particular conveyance receptacles, and placed into the receptacles, with one and only one unit per receptacle. The receptacles may be inducted into a conveyance mechanism under the direction of a control system. The receptacles are not fixed to the conveyance mechanism. The control system may direct the conveyance mechanism to route the receptacles to a particular one of one or more sorting stations. At a sorting station, the units may retrieved from receptacles and placed into locations corresponding to particular orders under control or direction of the control system. The conveyance mechanism may, but does not necessarily, return empty conveyance receptacle to a singulation station.
US08170708B2
Systems, methods, and apparatus for embroidery thread color management are disclosed. An example method comprises determining a first set of thread colors to be used in an embroidery design, determining a second set of thread colors assigned to a first embroidery machine, determining a third set of thread colors assigned to a second embroidery machine, determining a first difference of the number of thread colors in the first set of thread colors that are not in the second set of thread colors, determining a second difference of the number of thread colors in the first set of thread colors that are not in the third set of thread colors, and assigning the embroidery design to a queue for the first embroidery machine when the first difference is smaller than the second difference.
US08170705B2
An orthotic vending machine may comprise a measuring apparatus and an orthotic fabricating apparatus. The measuring apparatus may comprises a plurality of probes capable of sensing pressure at various pixels on the underside surfaces of the person's feet at various configurations (e.g., flat plane, shoe contour, or prescriptive optimal) and determining the heights at the various pixels for the various configurations. The fabricating apparatus may lay down a plurality of discs on a base layer having different hardnesses based on the measured pressure and heights by the measuring apparatus to fabricate customized orthotics. Alternatively, the fabricating apparatus may form the customized orthotic via solidifying a polymerizeable material in a honeycomb structure based on the measured pressure and heights by the measuring apparatus. As a further alternative, the fabricating apparatus may form the customized orthotic via milling orthotic blanks based on the measured pressure and heights by the measuring apparatus. The orthotic vending machine may be placed in shoe retail shops such that shoe purchasers may purchase a shoe and a customized orthotic during one visit to the shoe store.
US08170695B2
Methods and a system are disclosed for one or more appliances including a controller for managing power consumption within a household. The controller is configured to receive and process a signal indicative of one or more energy parameters of an associated energy utility, including at least a peak demand period or an off-peak demand period. A generated serial number is obtained from an original serial number of the appliance or controller, which is configured for a signal to communicate to the appliance within a population and command the appliance to operate in an energy savings mode and a normal mode at various time periods. The generated serial number (GSN) is used to segregate a total population into segments to provide granularity in assigning DR activations and deactivations based upon the GSN.
US08170694B2
A network unit in a programmable controller of a building block mutually connects an information system network and a control system network. The network unit includes transfer analyzing units that judge to which of interface units received data received from the information system network and the control system network should be allocated. Moreover, received data that needs to be transferred is converted into predetermined data by conversion processing units included in the networks and output to the information system network or the control system network without being transmitted to a system bus.
US08170670B2
A system and method is disclosed for system fault recovery by an implantable medical device which employs a global fault response. The system enables the device to consistently recover from transient faults while maintaining a history of the reason for the device fault. Upon detection of a fault, the primary controller of the device signals a reset controller which then issues a reset command. All sub-systems of the primary device controller are then reset together rather than resetting individual sub-systems independently to ensure deterministic behavior.
US08170667B2
An implantable cardiac monitor upgradeable to an implantable pacemaker or an implantable cardiac resynchronization device allows the use of a single implantable medical device for monitoring cardiac conditions and later, if needed, for cardiac pacing. The implantable medical device includes a circuit that can be configured, by programming through an external programmer, to either the implantable cardiac monitor or the implantable pacemaker. The implantable medical device is first configured to and used as the implantable cardiac monitor for acquisition of physiological data indicative of a need for a pacing therapy. If the pacing therapy is to follow, the implantable medical device is reconfigured from the implantable cardiac monitor to the implantable pacemaker, thus eliminating the need of using two implantable medical devices.
US08170663B2
A system and method for delivering both anti-tachy pacing (ATP) therapy and high-voltage shock therapy in response to detection of abnormal cardiac rhythms is disclosed. The system controls the time between delivering ATP therapy and the charging of high-voltage capacitors in preparation for shock delivery based on a predetermined set of criteria. In one embodiment, the inventive system operates in an ATP During Capacitor Charging (ATP-DCC) mode wherein all, or substantially all, of the ATP therapy is delivered during charging of the high-voltage capacitors. Based on evaluation of the predetermined set of criteria, the system may switch to an additional ATP Before Capacitor Charging (ATP-BCC) mode, wherein substantially all of the ATP therapy is delivered prior to charging of the high-voltage capacitor. According to one aspect of the invention, the predetermined set of criteria is based, at least in part, on the effectiveness of previously-delivered ATP therapy.
US08170662B2
One aspect of this disclosure relates to an apparatus for providing a selective capacitance. An embodiment of the apparatus includes a first and second capacitor in a stack, and a switching circuit connected between the first and second capacitors. The switching circuit has at least two states, and is adapted to provide a first defibrillation capacitance in a first state and a second defibrillation capacitance in a second state. A switching circuit embodiment includes a field effect transistor (FET) adapted to have a source connected to the first capacitor and a drain connected to the second capacitor, a bipolar junction transistor (BJT) adapted to have an emitter connected to the source of the FET and a collector connected to a gate of the FET, a first current source connected to the collector of the BJT, and a second current source connected to a base of the BJT.
US08170658B2
Methods and related systems for modulating neural activity by repetitively blocking conduction in peripheral neural structures with electrical stimuli are disclosed. Methods and systems for reversing effects of blocking stimuli and/or for producing substantially permanent conduction block are also disclosed.
US08170656B2
A “Wearable Electromyography-Based Controller” includes a plurality of Electromyography (EMG) sensors and provides a wired or wireless human-computer interface (HCl) for interacting with computing systems and attached devices via electrical signals generated by specific movement of the user's muscles. Following initial automated self-calibration and positional localization processes, measurement and interpretation of muscle generated electrical signals is accomplished by sampling signals from the EMG sensors of the Wearable Electromyography-Based Controller. In operation, the Wearable Electromyography-Based Controller is donned by the user and placed into a coarsely approximate position on the surface of the user's skin. Automated cues or instructions are then provided to the user for fine-tuning placement of the Wearable Electromyography-Based Controller. Examples of Wearable Electromyography-Based Controllers include articles of manufacture, such as an armband, wristwatch, or article of clothing having a plurality of integrated EMG-based sensor nodes and associated electronics.
US08170652B2
A method and apparatus for predicting acute response to cardiac resynchronization therapy is disclosed. The method can comprise measuring a first interval during an intrinsic systolic cycle and measuring a second interval during a stimulated systolic cycle. The acute response can be predicted by comparing the percent change in duration between the first interval and the second interval against a pre-determined threshold value. The first and second time intervals can be measured using, for example, a surface ECG or, alternatively, an intracardiac electrogram. In one embodiment, the first interval can be the duration of an intrinsic QRS complex measured during a non-stimulated systolic cycle. Similarly, the second interval can be the duration of a stimulated QRS complex measured during a stimulated systolic cycle.
US08170645B2
This document discusses, among other things, a fiducial marker kit. In one example, the kit includes a fiducial marker assembly that includes a bone screw base for receiving an imageable marker or locatable divot. A valved protective sleeve prevents debris from accumulating in a receptacle portion of the base, which may otherwise degrade the accuracy of patient registration in an image-guided surgical procedure. In one example, the valve automatically opens or closes upon insertion or removal of a screwdriver or other tool, or a shaft portion of the imageable marker or locatable divot. Various bone screw base and receptacle combinations are also discussed.
US08170641B2
A method of imaging a body part of a patient can include acquiring a first, second and third sets of image data from a first, second and third anatomical reference areas. The first, second and third sets of image data can then be compiled to produce a legend of the body part. The legend can have positional information of the first, second and third anatomical reference areas. A fourth, fifth and sixth sets of image data of the first, second and anatomical reference areas can be acquired. The fourth, fifth and sixth sets of image data can have increased image information relative to the first, second and third sets of image data, respectively. The locations of the fourth, fifth and sixth sets of image data relative to the first, second and third sets of image data can be correlated using the legend to determine a characteristic of the body part.
US08170639B2
A case for defibrillator electrode pads on a release liner is described which protects the pads prior to use and retains them in either an electrically connected or electrically disconnected configuration. When the case is closed, spring contacts on opposite sides of the inside of the case retain the pads and release liner in place. The retention either holds electrical conductors in contact with each other to retain the pads in electrical connection with each other, or in a different configuration in which the pads are not electrically connected.
US08170637B2
An electrode set is disclosed that has two separable parts including an assembled base with printed circuit board basement, biasing member and top cover and an electrode. The basement and top cover may be made by metal or conductive material.
US08170635B2
A radio apparatus including a first housing section, a second housing section and a hinge section is provided. The second housing section is rotatably connected to the first housing section. The second housing section includes an antenna feed circuit and a ground circuit. The hinge section is constituted by an axis member fixed to the second housing section and a bearing member fixed to the first housing section. The axis member is put through the bearing member for forming an axis of rotation of the second housing section with respect to the first housing section. The axis member has a conductive portion connected to the antenna feed circuit at a feed point.
US08170627B2
A wireless communication system having a terminal unit operates in a reduced noise state during receipt of a wireless transmission from a control unit. The terminal unit includes terminal circuitry, a radio and noise management circuitry. The noise management circuitry partially or fully disables operation of the terminal circuitry during a receipt by the radio. Noise management circuitry may disable a terminal processor, disable interrupts, buffer interrupts and otherwise modify operation of the terminal circuitry to reduce generated radio noise that would otherwise interfere with receipt of data by the radio. The wireless communication system includes noise management circuitry located in a control unit that operates in conjunction with noise management circuitry in a first terminal unit and a second terminal unit to schedule transmissions from the control unit. These scheduled transmissions allow the terminal units to perform required processing functions outside of the reduced noise period.
US08170626B2
Provided is a portable electronic device which can equalize deterioration of a display device and reduce a deterioration speed, even during a time when a user is performing input operation. When the user is continuously using (operating) keys other than call start and call end keys (14a, 14b), it can be estimated that the user is playing a game or editing on the portable telephone. Therefore, deterioration of a display device configuring a display section (30) is equalized and the deterioration speed is reduced by reducing luminance gradation of display of an area not related to the game and editing on the display section (30).
US08170620B2
A mobile terminal including a display configured to display a first keypad in a first display portion and to display information input using the first keypad in a second display portion, a sensing unit configured to detect a touch and drag action on the first keypad displayed in the first display portion, and a controller configured to change the first keypad displayed in the first display portion to a second keypad that is different from the first keypad when the detected touch and drag action is determined to be more than a predetermined distance.
US08170619B2
An event display apparatus and method of a mobile terminal are disclosed. The event display method of a mobile terminal includes: detecting events in the mobile terminal; displaying time graphics on a screen; and positioning the detected events on the time graph according to their types. Various scattered events in the mobile terminal are detected and displayed on the time graphics indicating time according to types of the detected events, so the events can be easily viewed and managed.
US08170617B2
A radio frequency (RF) transmitter is coupled to and controlled by a processor to transmit data. A physical layer circuit is coupled to the RF transmitter to encode and decode between a digital signal and a modulated analog signal. The physical layer circuit comprises a high rate physical layer circuit (HRP) and a low rate physical layer circuit (LRP). In a first embodiment, the LRP circuit generates a LRP packet comprising an LRP transmit power control feedback. In a second embodiment, the LRP and HRP circuit generate a packet comprising a beam-forming phase and magnitude feedback information. In a third embodiment, the LRP and HRP circuit supports up to 64 independent transmit antenna elements.
US08170613B2
An electronic apparatus with a subscriber identity module (SIM) card and the phone directory management method thereof are provided. The electronic apparatus allows the user to store a group of phone numbers which belong to the same contact name in the SIM card using specially designed identity codes.
US08170610B2
In order to continually receive messages in a dual personal computer system (PC) and personal digital assistant system (PDA) computer architecture, the PC system is deactivated to conserve battery power while the PDA continues to receive messages. As PDA memory is filled with messages, messages that are synchronized and archived with the PC system are deleted and space is freed for incoming messages. When new and non-synchronized messages completely fill the PDA memory array, the PC system is reactivated or the user is informed.
US08170601B2
A base station (BTS) may instruct a client station (CS) to transmit sounding signals that the BTS may analyze to determine what adjustments, such as power, time, and/or frequency adjustment(s) should be made by the CS. The BTS may control when and how the sounding signals are sent by the CS. This helps reduce the possibility of adjustment signals transmitted by two or more CSs colliding. Thus, sounding signals transmitted by the CS in response to a request by the BTS can be received by the BTS with higher a probability of success. This permits the BTS to more accurately characterize the channel and to provide better adjustment of power level, frequency offset, and/or timing offset for more optimal communication. Such techniques can be used to reduce bit error rates and to improve the overall signal to noise ratio encountered by the system.
US08170594B1
A method and computer-readable medium for precedence group calling in a dispatch station is provided. The method includes: receiving a precedence order for each of a plurality of group call originators, based upon a group call identifier of each of the plurality of group call originators; receiving a new group call from one of the plurality of group call originators; and automatically switching the dispatch station from a current group call to the new group call, if the group call identifier of the originator of the new group call has a higher precedence than the group call identifier of the originator of the current group call.
US08170593B2
A mobile communication system (100) includes a plurality of mobile stations (104, 105), a serving base station (101) and, associated with the base station, a channel selector (220, 309) for selecting and allocating downlink wireless traffic communication channels, the selector being operable: (i) to obtain an estimate of a ready time when a downlink wireless traffic signal including traffic data received from a source remote to the base station to be sent to at least one of the served mobile stations will be ready for sending; and (ii) to select and allocate for sending the downlink traffic signal a downlink traffic channel which is the first downlink traffic channel available following the ready time.
US08170583B2
At least one portable RF communications device in conjunction with at least two fixed-location service-area antenna stations respectively capable of RF communication with the at least one device performs the steps of: (I) using a portable device at a selected location to measure RF communications signals from the plurality of local fixed-location service-area antenna stations and electronically storing at least two of the respective reception signal strength measurements; and (II) monitoring a portable device location by causing the device to measure reception signal strength associated with local fixed-location service-area antenna stations signals, and to electronically compare these measurements with the stored at least two measurements.
US08170579B2
The location of a wireless mobile device may be estimated using, at least in part, one or more pre-existing Network Measurement Reports (“NMRs”) which include calibration data for a number of locations within a geographic region. The calibration data for these locations is gathered and analyzed so that particular grid points within the geographic region can be determined and associated with a particular set or sets of calibration data from, for example, one or more NMRs. Received signal level measurements reported by a mobile device for which a location estimate is to be determined may be compared with the data associated with the various grid points to estimate the location of the mobile device.
US08170578B1
A communication system receives a registration message from a device that identifies a location of the device and a device identifier. The system transmits the location of the device to a location database. The system receives a watch list that identifies a plurality of devices. The system also receives a session request from the device for a session. The system processes the device identifier to determine if the device is a one of the plurality of devices. In response to determining that the device is one of the plurality of devices, the system transfers the location of the device from the location database to a location reporting system.
US08170573B2
A base station apparatus which conducts a packet communication with a wireless communication terminal includes: a retransmission request detection unit which detects a retransmission request from the wireless communication terminal; a bandwidth assignment unit which assigns a communication bandwidth applied to the packet communication; a modulation class calculation portion, based on both bandwidth information regarding the bandwidth assigned by the bandwidth assignment unit and a data amount of packets corresponding to the retransmission request, calculates a modulation class applied to a retransmission in order to adjust a number of retransmitted packets to be the same as a number of previously transmitted packets; a modulation class determination unit which determines whether or not the modulation class is lower than a modulation class applied to a previous packet transmission; and a retransmission unit which retransmits packets corresponding to the retransmission request based on the determination result regarding the modulation class.
US08170571B2
A multicarrier communication apparatus that is capable of suppressing interference of feedback information with other channels and alleviating a reduction in an uplink capacity. In PL signal reception section (260) of this apparatus, PL signal extraction section (261) extracts pilot signals and reception quality measuring section (262) measures reception quality such as an SIR. Here, since pilot signals are included in respective subcarriers, reception quality measuring section (262) measures reception quality of subcarriers. FBSC determining section (270) determines a feedback information subcarrier based on the reception quality of subcarriers. More specifically, FBSC determining section (270) determines a subcarrier having the highest reception quality as a feedback information subcarrier. FBSC determining section (270) outputs information about the feedback information subcarrier (FBSC information) to control CH transmission section (110) and FB information reception section (250).
US08170565B2
A method of domain selection for routing control, applied to a communication system including a Circuit Switched (CS) network and an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) includes: obtaining call status(es) of a user in any one or both of the CS network and the IMS; selecting a domain via which an incoming call is to be delivered according to the call status(es) upon receiving a routing decision query request from a routing decision query entity, and indicating the routing decision query entity to deliver the incoming call via the CS network or the IMS selected. The method provided by embodiments of the present invention selects the domain according to the call status(es) of the user in any one or both of the CS network and the IMS. Therefore, the problem that two calls are respectively delivered via the CS network and the IMS at the same time may be avoided.
US08170560B2
A method for managing the context of the mobile station (MS) is applied in an MS handover process of a wireless access network. The function entity identification information of acting on the MS is carried in the context of the MS, and the MS addresses based on the function entity identification information and handovers to the target base station. By adding the identifications of various logic entities acting on the MS to the context information of the MS, the correct addressing of these logic entities is ensured during the handover. The different local policies of the source and destination ends are considered during conveying the context of the MS, in which the destination end may update certain context of the MS according to its own local policy during conveying; and the hierarchy of the context conveying of the MS during the handover is also considered.
US08170555B1
A method for selecting a new cell for a station in a cellular telecommunications system, the station being associated with a current cell is provided. The method comprises the steps of measuring at the station the strength of a communication from the current cell, measuring at the station the strength of a communication from at least one other cell, modifying the result of the measuring step in which the strength of the communication from at least one other cell and/or the current cell is measured to take into account a condition of the current and/or said at least one other cell if the measured strength of the communication from the current cell and/or the measured strength of the communication from the at least one other cell satisfy a predetermined condition, if the modifying step is performed, comparing the measured strength of the communication from the current cell and the measured strength of the communication from the at least one other cell at least one of the measured strengths being modified in the modifying step and depending on the results of the comparison changing the current cell with which the station is associated.
US08170554B2
A system and method for complete message delivery to a multi-mode communication device is presented. The communication device is adaptable to communicate with one or more carrier networks and one or more data networks. When a new message is received for the communication device, a message notification is sent to the device via a first network. The communication device parses the message notification and retrieves the complete message via a second network. Alternatively, the message notification may be delivered and the complete message may be retrieved via the same network.
US08170549B1
Electronic communication messages are routed according to a user's current physical location and the physical locations of communication devices. A plurality of communication devices such as telephones and computers are associated with the user. The physical locations of the plurality of communication devices are tracked. The current physical location of the user is also tracked in real-time. Incoming communication messages to the user and outgoing communication messages from the user are routed according to routing preferences based on at least the current physical location of the user and physical locations of at least one of the communication devices.
US08170548B2
A user equipment terminal for selecting a standby cell based on a specified priority of cell selection includes a determining unit configured to receive a signal transmitted from a base station apparatus and determine whether priority information of cell selection is included in the signal; and a cell selecting unit configured to perform, based on the determination result by the determining unit, cell selection with a same priority for each cell, when the priority information is not included.
US08170542B2
A mobile communication system is provided such that multiple identity codes assigned to a terminal device are displayed on the terminal device, whereby such multiple identity codes are selectively and arbitrarily used without a specific provision, and an identity code is displayed according to an arrival of an appropriate notification chance. A subscriber identity code notification apparatus is also provided. A subscriber identity code holding device holds multiple identity codes such as telephone numbers, which are applicable to a single terminal device and which are different depending on the telecommunications carrier. A subscriber identity code notification apparatus is provide such that the subscriber identity code held by the subscriber identity code holding device notifies the terminal device of the corresponding subscriber identity code, in discrimination of an arrival of a given notification chance.
US08170536B2
The method is for provisioning content formatting in a device management system to facilitate provisioning of mobile devices of different capabilities with contents in a device management system in a mobile network infrastructure. The system has a device management application and repositories. The device management application in the device management system is initiated to perform provisioning content formatting. The device management application determines the applicable format for a mobile device to be provisioned on an analysis based on combining the capabilities of the mobile device identified by means of one or more of the repositories.
US08170531B2
A method in a mobile station for a communication system includes determining if a security module installed in a mobile station is able to produce authentication information for use in a predetermined authentication procedure with a communication system. If not, the method includes generating key material using the security module, and generating the authentication information based on at least the key material for use in the predetermined authentication procedure with the communication system.
US08170529B1
A method, system, and computer-readable media are provided for determining connection needs of a mobile device connecting to a wireless network. In one aspect, the computer-readable media provide a method that includes receiving a request from a mobile device to access a wireless network, and performing an authentication phase related to the mobile device attempting to access the wireless network. Furthermore, the method includes evaluating signaling behavior of the mobile device during the authentication phase to determine which access technology from a plurality of types of access technologies to use to connect the mobile device to the wireless network. Moreover, the method includes connecting the mobile device to the wireless network using the determined access technology.
US08170528B2
According to one embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a method of authorizing a communication device to connect to a network. The method comprises receiving, at a processor, a communication device identifier and a subscriber identifier, determining, by the processor, whether the received communication device identifier is associated with the received subscriber identifier in a data store. Where it is determined that the received identifiers are not so associated the method further comprise requesting, by the processor, a security token associated with the communication device, receiving, at the processor, a security token, determining, by the processor, whether the received security token matches a stored security token associated with the received communication device identifier in the data store, and where it is so determined, authorizing the communication device to connect to the network.
US08170523B2
A low power super regenerative receiver and a method of reducing the power consumption of the low power super regenerative receiver are provided. The super regenerative receiver includes: an oscillator having a start-up time period starting oscillation that varies according to an existence of an input signal; and a power controller supplying power within the start-up time period of the oscillator.
US08170517B2
A receiving apparatus comprising: a first mixing unit to output first and second mixed signals each having a first frequency that is a frequency difference between a received signal and a first local oscillator signal, the first and second mixed signals having phases substantially orthogonal to each other; a phase control unit to output second and third local oscillator signals each having a second frequency, the second and third local oscillator signals having a phase difference from each other corresponding to a phase difference between the first and second mixed signals; and a second mixing unit to add a signal obtained by mixing the first mixed signal and the second local oscillator signal, and a signal obtained by mixing the second mixed signal and the third local oscillator signal, to output an intermediate frequency signal having an intermediate frequency that is a difference between the first and second frequencies.
US08170516B2
A method for digital compensation of nonlinearities in a communication system that includes a transmitter, a transmission channel and a receiver, including: estimating the nonlinearities induced by the transmitter and/or the receiver, from at least one learning sequence received at the receiver and distorted by the nonlinearities, and compensating for the nonlinearities distorting a signal received at the receiver based on the estimating of the nonlinearities.
US08170514B2
A method for using a “B” channel of a dual channel measurement receiver as a transfer standard for power measurement, which may include, in an exemplary embodiment, correlating a measurement made with an “A” channel of the dual channel measurement receiver to a measurement made with an RF Power Meter on one RF signal source, so that readings from the “A” channel are aligned to the RF Power Meter; aligning the “B” Channel to the “A” Channel, once the “A” channel has been aligned to read the same as the RF Power Meter; and using the “B” Channel as a transfer standard to measure all remaining RF signal sources in the system.
US08170513B2
Techniques for detecting and demodulating data transmissions in wireless communication systems. In one aspect, a decision-directed detector detects for data transmissions in a received signal by utilizing received data symbols as well as received pilot symbols. The decision-directed detector may be designed to perform differential detection in the frequency domain or coherent detection in the time domain, and may be used with multi-carrier modulation (e.g., OFDM). In another aspect, an adaptive threshold is used to perform detection of received data transmissions. A threshold may be determined for each data transmission hypothesized to have been received. The threshold may be computed, for example, based on the signal plus noise energy of the hypothesized data transmission.
US08170504B2
A programmable transmitter generates a frame preamble to train a receiver with respect to a communication link format that corresponds to a transmission mode wherein the transmission mode may comprise transmitting the communication link over one or more antennas. Generally, the invention includes generating a preamble with an arrangement that depends upon whether a Greenfield (high data rate) or mixed mode transmission is to occur and that depends upon a number of spatial streams that are to be generated. One format for high data rate transmission includes a short training sequence, a long training sequence and a signal field. The mixed mode transmission further includes a legacy prefix.
US08170501B2
A baseband digital processing module operates cooperatively with an analog signal processing module to effectuate highly adjustable and highly accurate gain adjustment in accordance with transmitter processing within a communication device. The gain adjustment and/or gain control is partitioned between the digital and analog domains by employing two cooperatively operating digital and analog modules, respectively. Gain adjustment in the analog domain is performed in a relatively more coarse fashion that in the digital domain. If desired, gain adjustment in each of the analog and digital domains is performed across a range of discrete steps. The discrete steps in the analog domain are larger than the discrete steps in the digital domain. Also, the discrete steps in the digital domain may be interposed between two successive discrete steps in the analog domain.
US08170500B2
A radio-frequency switch circuit of the invention includes: n-stage through FETs (field effect transistors) connected in series between the antenna terminal and each of the radio-frequency terminals, where n is a natural number; a radio-frequency leakage prevention resistor connected to a gate of the through FETs; a control signal line commonly connected to the gates of the n-stage through FETs connected to the same radio-frequency terminal; and a resistor connected to each of at least two of the control signal lines and connected to the radio-frequency leakage prevention resistor in series The two control signal lines are capacitively coupled between the resistor and the through FETs.
US08170499B2
A mobile terminal is provided that includes a wireless communication unit configured to receive channel information and scan at least one channel, a controller configured to generate a channel database using the received channel information and generate a channel list according to a result of real time channel scanning using the channel database, and an output unit configured to display the channel list according to the result of the real time channel scanning under control of the controller.
US08170497B2
An integrated circuit (IC) includes a die and a package substrate. The die includes circuit modules and an RF bus transceiver module and the package substrate includes a micro-electromechanical (MEM) area. The RF bus transceiver module includes a baseband processing module, a transmitter section, a receiver section, a transformer, an impedance matching circuit, and a transmission line. At least one of the transformer, the impedance matching circuit, and the transmission line is within the MEM area.
US08170496B2
A wireless transceiver includes at least one phased array antenna, that transmits an outbound RF signal containing outbound data to at least one remote transceiver and that receives an inbound RF signal containing inbound data from the at least one remote RF transceiver, wherein the at least one phased array antenna is configurable based on a control signal. An antenna configuration controller generates the control signal to configure the phased array antenna to hop among a plurality of radiation patterns based on a hopping sequence. At least one RF transceiver section generates the outbound RF signal based on the outbound data and that generates the inbound data based on the inbound RF signal.
US08170490B2
A method and apparatus for testing multiple data signal transceivers substantially simultaneously with a common transceiver tester by analyzing previously captured data signal transmissions from some of the data signal transceivers while continuing to capture further data signal transmissions from additional ones of the data signal transceivers.
US08170489B2
A test method is for determining RF sensitivity of an RF receiver for a plurality of channels extending over a frequency band(s) using an RF source coupled to the RF receiver by an RF communications link. The plurality of channels may include channels having a predictable RF sensitivity and a channel(s) having a non-predictable RF sensitivity. The test method may include measuring an RF sensitivity for one or more of the channels having the predictable RF sensitivity, and generating a partial RF sensitivity function for the channels having the predictable RF sensitivity based thereon. The method may further include measuring an RF sensitivity for the channel(s) having the non-predictable RF sensitivity. Additionally, an overall RF sensitivity function may be generated for the plurality of channels based upon the partial RF sensitivity function, and based upon the measured RF sensitivity for the channel(s) having the non-predictable RF sensitivity.
US08170480B1
A method and apparatus for bypassing Bluetooth discovery for devices in a special list. A first Bluetooth device identification (ID) may be stored on a second device. A friendly name may be associated with the stored device ID. The first Bluetooth device ID may be accessed on the second device. An associated friendly name may be displayed as a representation of the first Bluetooth device id. A user of the second device may select to initiate Bluetooth communications with the first device. If so chosen, a Bluetooth communication session may be established between the two devices in a manner that bypasses the Bluetooth discovery process for these devices. In this novel manner, Bluetooth communication sessions may be established with trusted devices. Further, the time and power required for a Bluetooth discovery process may be conserved. In addition, the user interface may be improved over a user interface requiring Bluetooth discovery.
US08170477B2
A wireless communication device includes a first receiver section and a second receiver section. The first receiver section receives a first probe signal from a first transceiver at time t1. The second receiver section receives a second probe signal from a second transceiver at time t2, wherein the first and second probe signals have substantially similar carrier frequencies. The first receiver section then receives a first signal from the first transceiver and the second receiver section receives a second signal from the second transceiver in accordance with an adjusted delay. The first and second signals have similar content and have substantially similar carrier frequencies. The adjust delay corresponds to a delta time that is substantially equal to a difference between the time t1 and the time t2 when the difference between the time t1 and the time t2 compares unfavorably to a delay threshold.
US08170475B2
Provided are a non geostationary satellite orbit (NGSO) communication apparatus that extends an operation time using an ancillary territory component (ATC) and reduces a number of satellites, and an ATC and an operating method thereof. The NGSO communication apparatus extends an operation time using an ATC and reduces a number of satellites from a first ATC that communicates with a mobile earth station (MES), and a second ATC that communicates with the first ATC to relay data between the MES and the satellite when the first ATC is unable to communication with the satellite revolving along an orbit.
US08170473B2
A system and method of applying a known modification in the form of a distortion to a signal to enable a determination if a signal received by a first node is received directly from a second node or indirectly through a repeater. The repeater receives a primary signal and creates a secondary signal as a function of the primary signal and a known distortion, wherein the known distortion identifies the repeater. The primary signal is transmitted and injected with the secondary signal as the first signal to the primary receiver.
US08170471B2
A cooperative communication method for vehicular communication is provided. The method in which when one vehicle transmits a signal to another vehicle, a signal of a transmission vehicle passes through a roadside device or a plurality of vehicles and thereafter signals having a plurality of paths are transmitted to a reception vehicle, and the reception vehicle combines and demodulates the signals received through the plurality of paths.
US08170457B2
A disclosed cleaning device for removing adhering matter from a surface of a member subject to cleaning includes a belt-shaped film member arranged in a stretched configuration capable of being wound or endlessly move in a direction opposite to a surface movement direction of the member subject to cleaning while being in contact with the surface of the member subject to cleaning, and a cleaning blade configured to abut on the surface of the member subject to cleaning via the belt-shaped film member at a position where the belt-shaped film member is brought into contact with the member subject to cleaning.
US08170451B2
A housing of a developing apparatus is provided with a conveying member in a developer supplying and recovering portion, and with first and second agitating members rotating from the below to the above in portions opposed to each other in a developer agitating portion. A guide is provided in an inner bottom surface of the housing between the first and second agitating members. A discharge portion provided with a developer discharge port is provided on a downstream side of the developer agitating portion in a developer conveying direction of the first agitating member. A suitable amount of developer can be circulated while conveying a part of an excess amount of developer in a circulating conveying path to the discharge portion and discharging from the developer discharge port. Packing and leaking of the developer within the developing apparatus and breakage of the developing apparatus can be prevented and also a good image can be obtained even if high printing images are continuously provided.
US08170447B2
The image forming apparatus is provided with: an image carrier; an exposure member that exposes the image carrier and forms an electrostatic latent image on the image carrier; a developing member that develops the electrostatic latent image formed on the image carrier; and a contact-retracting unit that rotates the developing member taking a predetermined position as the rotational center, and brings the developing member in contact with or proximity to the image carrier or retracts the developing member from the image carrier.
US08170435B2
A belt driving mechanism includes an endless belt wound around first and second belt supporters, rotated by a driving source, a pressure member that presses against the first belt supporter via the endless belt, a deviation detector to detect a deviation of the endless belt in its thrust direction, a cam mechanism including a rotary cam shaft extending the thrust direction of the endless belt and a first pressure change member of irregular shape, and a controller to changes a rotational position of the first pressure change member according to a detection result by the deviation detector. The first pressure change member has multiple different lengths of radii between a center portion of the cam shaft and its outer circumference and is attached to the cam shaft to press a first end portion of one of the first belt supporter and the pressure member.
US08170433B2
An image forming apparatus includes a rotatable photosensitive member chargeable by a charging member; an applying device for applying to the charging member a charging bias; an image forming device for forming a toner image on the photosensitive member; a setting device for setting a first frequency of a first charging bias in a first rotation speed mode and for setting a second frequency of a second charging bias in a second rotation speed mode; a detector for detecting current passing between the charging and the photosensitive members during application of a test bias to the charging member; and an adjusting device for adjusting the second charging bias based on an output of the detector when the photosensitive member is rotated at a first speed and a test bias having the second frequency is applied to the charging member when switching from the first to the second rotation speed modes.
US08170431B2
A control method for a control apparatus includes obtaining an amount of a recording material applied on a first area of a sheet and an amount of a recording material applied on a second area of the sheet on the basis of image data recorded on the sheet stacked on a stacking unit; and performing control, in a case where a plurality of sheets are stacked on the stacking unit, so that a difference between a total amount of the recording material applied on the first area of the sheets and a total amount of the recording material applied on the second area of the sheets does not exceed a predetermined value on the basis of the obtained amount of the recording material. With this method, a limit of the number of stacked sheets is relieved while stability of the stacked sheets is maintained.
US08170430B2
An out-of-color registration table containing a correspondence of amounts of out-of-color registration detected by an out-of-color-registration amount detector and machine states detected by a machine state detector is prepared. The out-of-color registration table is updated when there is a change in the current machine state.
US08170429B2
In a printer, the image-forming unit performs an image-forming operation in one of a non-saving mode and a saving mode. An amount of the printing agent used in the saving mode is less than an amount of the printing agent used in the non-saving mode. The determining unit determines, based on the remaining amount of the printing agent in the accommodating unit and the remaining times the image-forming unit can perform the image-forming operation, whether the image-forming unit should perform the image-forming operation in the non-saving mode or the saving mode. The controlling unit controls the image-forming unit to perform the image-forming operation in the mode determined by the determining unit.
US08170428B2
A method may include the steps of providing a printing assembly that includes a plurality of printing modules that each include a specific toner color, wherein a first printing module is failing and at least one second printing module is functioning; determining a toner use demand for the plurality of printing modules; and swapping the first printing module with the at least one second printing module to facilitate reducing a downtime of the printing apparatus, wherein the first printing module has a toner use demand that is substantially greater than the toner use demand of the at least one second printing module.
US08170420B2
The present invention provides a new and unique method and apparatus for a new data speed switching scheme for a wired data interface. The method features receiving high-speed serial data over a physical link using a first coding scheme in a receiver; receiving a transmission mode change signal transmitted with sequential information about a change in a data transmission mode of the receiver using a second coding scheme and switching the data transmission mode of the receiver in response thereto. The data transmission modes may include at least one low-power mode where no data transmission is possible and the receiver is powered down. The at least one low-power mode may include two different power down states, each having different wake-up times. The data transmission modes may also include at least one high speed mode where data transmission is possible and the receiver is on. The at least one high speed mode may include several high speed modes, each having different data transmission rates.
US08170419B2
Provided are an image processing system and method thereof which communicates with an external image source device, the image processing system including: a display device which receives a modulated remote control signal modulated by a modulation method and demodulates the modulated remote control signal to generate a demodulated remote control signal and transmits the demodulated remote control signal; and a relay device which receives the demodulated remote control signal and modulates the demodulated remote control signal according to the modulation method to output an output remote control signal to the external image source device.
US08170396B2
The present disclosure includes systems and techniques relating to changing video playback rate. In general, one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in a method that includes providing a user interface for a digital video editing system, the user interface including a graphical representation of playback rate and playback duration for a sequence of digital video, and the user interface including defined points that reference respective frames in the sequence of digital video; receiving input specifying a change in playback rate for the sequence of digital video; and showing the change in playback rate and a corresponding change in playback duration for the sequence of digital video, the showing including moving one of the defined points in accordance with a new temporal position of a corresponding frame referenced by the one of the defined points.
US08170395B2
Video data may be extremely useful in online property commerce. However, the current methods of handling this video data fail to provide users of the data with effective and convenient ways of consolidating footage from multiple videos or portions thereof and conveying their particular viewpoints and other property features. Among other things, embodiments of the invention address these failures by providing methods and systems for generating and handling montage video data.
US08170393B2
There is disclosed a digital broadcast recording/reproduction device capable of easily searching for an updated data broadcast. In this device, a data broadcast update recording unit (125) receives an event message and a report on a module modification from a data broadcast reproduction unit (111) and, by analyzing the contents reported, it records the updated information and the update time in a data accumulation unit (109). When a whole control unit (122) receives a rewinding request from an input control unit (121), a reproduction control unit (127) is controlled so that the reproduction control unit (127) reproduces a data broadcast from the updated portion recorded in the data accumulation unit (109).
US08170387B2
Frequency standards based on mode-locked fiber lasers, fiber amplifiers and fiber-based ultra-broad bandwidth light sources, and applications of the same.
US08170380B1
A method, apparatus and computer program product for importing, exporting and determining an initial state for files having multiple layers is presented. A file having a plurality of layers is imported, the file in a first format and wherein each layer of the plurality of layers includes a first state of the layer and a second state of the layer. One of the first state of the layer and the second state of the layer are displayed for each of the plurality of layers. A swapping is permitted between the first state of the layer and the second state of the layer. One of the first state of the layer and the second state of the layer are then committed. The file may be exported in a format different than the first format.
US08170377B2
An image processing apparatus includes an interpolation unit (205, S708) which interpolates, based on the result of forming an image when executing calibration and the result of forming an image after executing calibration, the fluctuation amount of the image quality of each of image forming devices capable of outputting image data, a calculation unit (205, S710) which calculates, for each of the image forming devices on the basis of the interpolation result, the fluctuation amount of the image quality for image data to be output, a determination unit (205, S711) which determines the priority order of the image forming devices as output destinations of the image data on the basis of calculation results, and a display unit (205, S712) which displays a list of image forming devices selectable from the image forming devices in accordance with the determined priority order.
US08170372B2
The present invention is a method and system to precisely locate objects of interest in any given image scene space, which finds the presence of objects based upon pattern matching geometric relationships to a master, known set. The method and system prepares images for feature and attribute detection and identifies the presence of potential objects of interest, then narrows down the objects based upon how well they match a pre designated master template. The method by which matching takes place is done through finding all objects, plotting its area, juxtaposing a sweet spot overlap of its area on master objects, which in turn forms a glyph shape. The glyph shape is recorded, along with all other formed glyphs in an image's scene space and then mapped to form sets using a classifier and finally a pattern matching algorithm. The resulting objects of interest matches are then refined to plot the contour boundaries of the object's grouped elements (arrangement of contiguous pixels of the given object called a Co-Glyph) and finally snapped to its component actual dimensions e.g., x, y of a character or individual living cell.
US08170367B2
A design image is transformed into a projection design image comprising the design image as it will appear when projected onto a physical 3-dimensional (3-D) curved object. In an embodiment, pixels of the design image are mapped into corresponding mapped pixels in a projection design image according to how the design image will appear in a flattened image of the design projected or printed onto the object having 3-dimension curves. The projection design image may be combined with a product image of the object having 3-dimension curves to generate a customized product image of the object having 3-dimension curves incorporating the design image. The customized product image is displayed to a user when customizing a product with a design to ensure that the user understands how the physical product will appear when the design is printed or projected onto the physical product.
US08170362B2
An edge-enhancement device for subjecting input image data to edge enhancement so as to generate output image data has an edge-component generator, a weighting processor, and an addition processor. The input image data is obtained from a frame image having a plurality of pixels, and the input image data contains luminance data. The edge-component generator generates an edge component of the input image data. The weighting processor applies a weight according to the value of the luminance data of each pixel to a calculated edge component of each pixel so as to generate a weighted edge component for each pixel. The addition processor adds the weighted edge component of each pixel to the input image data of the pixel so as to generate the output image data.
US08170358B2
An image processing method is provided. The image processing method includes obtaining a least significant bit (LSB) associated with a pixel block. Further, two bits are reduced from a bit number of each of the pixels of the pixel block. Thereafter whether to carry the pixel or not is determined according to the LSB. When the LSB is 01 or 11, the carry manners of each pixel of the pixel block in two consecutive frames are asymmetric one to another. Further, under the conditions of when the LSB is 01 and 11, respectively, the carry manners of the pixels of the pixel block mutually compensate. Therefore, the display performance of a display is improved.
US08170354B2
A system and method for rendering images, and performing operations such as windowing and leveling, when the parameters of a client appliance are known and rendering images when the parameters of a client appliance are unknown. The invention also considers the rendering from the client appliance perspective and the server appliance perspective.
US08170352B2
In embodiments of the present invention improved capabilities are described for scanning a data set for the presence of a target string. The data set may be received at a computing facility and cause a scanning program to execute. A first character pair in the data set may be identified where each character making up the first character pair is identified in a vector map. It may then be confirmed that the first character pair matches a positive indicated bitmask in a bitmap matrix, and verify that the position of the first character pair matches a position of a matching character pair in the target string. An action may be caused to be taken as a result of the verification.
US08170326B2
Techniques and systems are disclosed for electronic target recognition. In particular, techniques and systems are disclosed for performing electronic surveillance and target recognition using a multiple parallax exploitation (MPEX) electronic eye platform. Among other things, a MPEX system can include an imaging unit that includes multiple image capture devices spaced from one another to form an array to provide overlapping fields-of-view and to capture multiple overlapping stereo images of a scene. The MPEX system can also include a processing unit connected to the imaging unit to receive and process data representing the captured multiple overlapping stereo images from the imaging unit to characterize one or more objects of interest in the scene.
US08170322B2
A system for obtaining an image of an object using an optical imager having an illumination source that is positioned on one side of the object to be imaged and a reflective background positioned on the other side of the object. The imaging system may be implemented in an assembly line or sample processor by using at least one imager and a reflective background positioned behind the samples moving along the assembly or process line. The imager is programmed to decode barcode information and to identify objects in the image using pattern matching techniques.
US08170312B2
A cardiac wall motion compensation system quantitatively compares images acquired at different phases of cardiac and respiratory movement and excludes motion contributed by respiratory movement. A system compensates for respiratory motion induced tissue displacement in cardiac wall motion determination. The system includes an imaging device for acquiring multiple sequential cardiac images of a patient and a data processor. The data processor processes data representing first and second images selected from the multiple sequential cardiac images, to determine heart wall respiratory motion representative displacement from a ventricle wall positional difference indicated between the first and second images, in response to a respiratory motion representative signal and a heart electrophysiological signal. The data processor subtracts heart wall respiratory motion representative displacement from a heart wall displacement measurement to provide a respiration compensated heart wall displacement value.
US08170310B2
Certain embodiments of the present invention provide a system for analyzing a treatment of a patent including: an interactive image editor for allowing a user to interact with a first set image data corresponding to a pre-treatment radiological study of a patient, the first set of image data including an untreated clinical area of interest, such that the user is capable of interacting with the first set of image data to form a target outcome image for the clinical area of interest; a criterion determination module for allowing the user to determine a target outcome criterion; processing module for performing a comparison by comparing the first set of image data with a second set of image data corresponding to a post-treatment radiological study of the patient, the second set of image data including a treated clinical area of interest; and a criterion evaluation module for automatically evaluating the comparison to determine a post-treatment effect. In an embodiment, the criterion evaluation module is further for evaluating automatically a treatment effectiveness evaluation based on an extent to which the post-treatment effect satisfies the target outcome criterion.
US08170304B2
Methods and systems for modeling cerebral aneurysm and their incoming and outgoing vessels from 3D image data are disclosed. Aneurysms and vessels are segmented from their background using a graph-cuts method. Begin and end of vessels are determined. Construction of a centerline of the incoming and outgoing vessels using a measure of vesselness in calculating a minimum cost path in a graph with nodes being representation of pixels is also disclosed. Vessel surface models are constructed from sub-voxel cross-sectional segmentation. The interpolation of vessels inside an aneurysm based on smooth continuity is disclosed. Selection of endo-vascular stents based on interpolation results is also provided.
US08170300B2
A biometric image pickup apparatus with a simple configuration capable of reducing light amount variations in a picked-up image. The biometric image pickup apparatus includes: a light source applying light to a living organism; a detection section for placing the living organism thereon; an image pickup lens section condensing light from the living organism; an image pickup device obtaining image pickup data on the basis of the light condensed by the image pickup lens section; and a transmittance distribution filter arranged between the detection section and the image pickup device, in which the transmittance distribution filter has a transmittance distribution in which the transmittance is higher in a region far from the light source than in a region near the light source.
US08170292B2
An imaging apparatus is provided including an imaging unit configured to obtain image data, a display unit, and a communication unit configured to communicate with a plurality of external apparatuses. The imaging apparatus further includes a storing unit configured to store person identification information including at least face image data while associating the person recognition information with information relating to the external apparatuses, a collation unit configured to collate a target in the image data with the person identification information, a detection unit configured to detect an external apparatus that is communicating with the imaging apparatus, and a display control unit configured to display a plurality of pieces of face image data on the display unit each as a candidate of a transmission destination of the image data in an order based on a result of collation by the collation unit and a result of detection by the detection unit.
US08170281B2
According to one disclosed method, coordinates in a multi-dimensional space are determined for an image point characterizing a particular object. An equation describing a model in the space is provided. The model is characteristic of a set of training images of one or more other objects. The coordinates are applied to the equation to determine a distance between the image point and the model. Based on the determined distance, a determination is made as to whether the particular object matches the one or more other objects. A set of training images may be received. A multi-dimensional space (e.g., eigenspace) may be determined based on the set of training images. A set of training points may be generated by projecting the set of training images into the multi-dimensional space. An equation describing a model in the multi-dimensional space that is characteristic of the set of training points may be determined.
US08170273B2
This disclosure describes apparatus and systems for encoding and decoding signals from a host signal such as audio, video or imagery. One claim recites an apparatus comprising: electronic memory for storing a media signal representing audio or video; and an electronic processor. The electronic processor is programmed for: extracting data representing at least some features of the media signal; using the extracted data as a key to select coefficients in a transform domain, the coefficients representing the media signal; and modifying selected coefficients to hide a steganographic signal in the media signal. Of course, other claims and combinations are provided as well.
US08170272B1
Methods for processing overhead imagery of a vessel include the step of determining an initial classification and classification probability based on the vessel length and length-to-width ratio. Next, mutually exclusive deck features can be extracted from the image. For several embodiments, the extracted deck features that can be spherical tanks, hatches and containers that are stored on deck. The initial classification probability is then weighted using the results of the deck feature extraction step to yield a posterior classification probability for the ship image. If the posterior classification probability is above a predetermined value, the image is assigned a posterior classification. If the posterior probability is below the predetermined value, the vessel image is classified as unknown, and the gross tonnage of the vessel is calculated using the length and width of the vessel.
US08170263B2
The invention provides a system for enabling the assembly and suspension of a plurality of loudspeakers in a line array where the splay angle between the adjacent speakers can be adjusted and rigidly maintained. The line array system utilizes rigging frames that allow for the coupling and supporting of the loudspeakers through the use of adjustable hinge bars. The rigging frames and adjustable hinge bars together form and rigidly maintain the splay angles between adjacent loudspeakers and correspondingly the curvature of the line array speaker assembly.
US08170262B1
A wireless air tube headset that includes a wireless transceiver operating in a radio frequency band, which wireless receives audio signals. The headset includes an acoustic chamber with an acoustic port through to the exterior thereof, and an acoustic transducer that is electrically coupled to the transceiver, and that operates to generate acoustic signals. The acoustic transducer is aligned with the acoustic chamber to emit the acoustic signals through the acoustic port. There is an acoustic isolator disposed to attenuate extraneous acoustic signals emitted from the acoustic transducer and also to attenuate ambient noise entry into the acoustic chamber. An acoustic conduit is formed from an electrically non-conductive material, and has a first opening engaged with the acoustic port and a second opening engaged with an acoustic coupler, which has a first earpiece engagement means. An earpiece is engaged to the first earpiece engagement means, and thereby forms an electrically non-conductive acoustic path from the acoustic transducer to the earpiece. The acoustic path has a length to enable displacement of the transceiver and the acoustic transducer from the earpiece at a distance sufficient to yield at least a six decibel radio signal propagation power loss at the radio frequency band.
US08170256B2
A microphone assembly for desktop communication systems utilizes a directional microphones in a desktop conferencing system without exposing the microphone to unfavorable mechanical or acoustic influence. The microphones is built into the front portion of the base of the system, in a mechanically controlled and robust way. The microphone assembly maximizes microphone sensitivity in the direction of a near end user while simultaneously minimizing microphone sensitivity in the direction of the loudspeaker.
US08170251B2
A battery compartment for a hearing apparatus and in particular for a hearing device is to be designed to be more compact. To this end, provision is made for a battery compartment with at least two gripping arms, which has an arm section on its one end and a gripping section on its other free end in each instance and for a sliding element which engages with the arm section of the gripping arms. In a first sliding position of the sliding element, the gripping arms assume an open position in order to insert a battery between the gripping sections and a closed position in a second sliding position in order to fix the battery, in which closed position the gripping sections are moved toward one another.
US08170240B2
An audio device has controls for setting parameters. In the audio device, a selection mode setting part sets a selection mode in which a parameter to be stored is selected. A position acquisition part acquires positions of the controls and locks setting states of the parameters that are set by the controls, when the selection mode is set by the selection mode setting part. A parameter selection part detects one or more control operated by a user among the controls and selects each parameter corresponding to each operated control among the controls as a parameter to be stored, after the setting states of the parameters are locked by the position acquisition part. A reset part returns positions of the controls to the positions acquired by the position acquisition part and memorizes a selection status of each parameter which indicates whether each parameter is selected or not, when the selection mode is completed.
US08170234B2
Mapping coherent/incoherent acoustic sources as determined from a phased microphone array. A linear configuration of equations and unknowns are formed by accounting for a reciprocal influence of one or more cross-beamforming characteristics thereof at varying grid locations among the plurality of grid locations. An equation derived from the linear configuration of equations and unknowns can then be iteratively determined. The equation can be attained by the solution requirement of a constraint equivalent to the physical assumption that the coherent sources have only in phase coherence. The size of the problem may then be reduced using zoning methods. An optimized noise source distribution is then generated over an identified aeroacoustic source region associated with a phased microphone array (microphones arranged in an optimized grid pattern including a plurality of grid locations) in order to compile an output presentation thereof, thereby removing beamforming characteristics from the resulting output presentation.
US08170231B2
A user wearable accessory provides push-to-tall (PTT), microphone and adjustable electrical cord length features in a single device. First and second adjustable electrical cords couple a portable communication device to an earpiece. The accessory is formed of front and back housing portions coupled together to provide a spooling feature therebetween. The spooling feature accommodates the two electrical cords such that a user is able to wrap each cord to provide an overall desired length. Users of different heights can adjust the cord length as desired thereby minimizing tangling of the cords.
US08170230B1
This specification describes technologies relating to reducing audio masking. In general, one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include the actions of receiving a primary audio signal and a secondary audio signal; for each audio signal, calculating an average perceived intensity over time for each of a plurality of frequency bands; comparing the average perceived intensity of the secondary audio signal with the average perceived intensity of the primary audio signal for each frequency band; and for each frequency band where the average perceived intensity of the secondary audio signal is greater than the average perceived intensity of the primary audio signal by a specified threshold amount, attenuating the secondary audio signal by a specified amount to form a modified secondary audio signal.
US08170229B2
Apparatus and Method for canceling or reducing voice sounds produced during a conversation by the user of a cellular telephone or other communication device such that other persons close to the user cannot hear the users voice and is not disturbed by the conversation.
US08170225B2
The invention relates to a method for adapting a vibration isolation system as well as to an arrangement with a vibration isolation system. By constructive measures in the environment of the vibration isolation system, particularly plane-parallel surfaces areas are avoided and thereby disturbing environmental influences are reduced.
US08170212B2
Device, system, and method of establishing secure wireless communication. A system includes at least one wireless communication device having a sensor to measure one or more parameters of a physical event shared between that device and another wireless communication device, and a processor to translate the one or more measured parameters into a secret data sequence known only to the devices sharing the event. A first of the wireless communication devices sharing the event is to combine a communication key with the secret data sequence, thereby to generate an encoded message for distribution over a wireless link accessible by the devices, and a second of the wireless communication devices sharing the event is to decode said encoded message using the secret data sequence, thereby to obtain the communication key. The wireless communication devices may then connect using the secret communication key as a basis for secure communication.
US08170207B2
This invention relates to a method for generating a shared secret value between entities in a data communication system, one or more of the entities having a plurality of members for participation in the communication system, each member having a long term private key and a corresponding long term public key. The method comprises the steps of generating a short term private and a corresponding short term public key for each of the members; exchanging short term public keys of the members within an entity. For each member then computing an intra-entity shared key by mathematically combining the short term public keys of each the members computing an intra-entity public key by mathematically combining its short-term private key, the long term private key and the intra-entity shared key. Next, each entity combines intra-entity public keys to derive a group short-term Si public key; each entity transmitting its intra-entity shared key and its group short term public key to the other entities; and each entity computing a common shared key K by combining its group short term public key (Si), with the intra-entity shared key ( Xi), and a group short term public ( Si) key received from the other entities.
US08170199B2
In a speech communication device capable of bidirectional communication, a clock deviation between the speaker side (the receiving side) and the microphone side (the transmitting side) is detected, and based on the above deviation, either a first frequency signal (speaker signal (reference signal)) or a second frequency signal (microphone signal) is frequency-shifted in the frequency domain, and therefore, an influence caused by the clock deviation can simply be corrected without an increased processing amount, and thus, an echo can be suppressed effectively.
US08170198B2
Upon selection of the frequency of a tone signal, a local oscillator generates a frequency signal having a shift frequency corresponding to the frequency of this tone signal. A frequency shifter generates a frequency-converted signal by shifting a frequency of the tone signal by a shift frequency of the frequency signal generated by the local oscillator. A BPF removes an image signal from the frequency-converted signal which the frequency shifter generated, and a normalizer normalizes the amplitude of the signal output from the second BPF. By this, even if the amplitude of the tone signal is small, the amplitude thereof is unified to a suitable magnitude. For this reason, even if there is a difference in the amplitude of the tone signal, the tone signal can be detected reliably and an false detection can be prevented.
US08170196B2
A method, software and system of developing personalities for interactive and/or automated call center applications are provided. According to teachings of the present invention, sample population questionnaires and interviews may be used to identify key personality traits. The impact of the identified key personality traits are then empirically determined. Based on the empirical determination of the key personality traits' impact on customer satisfaction, a plurality of personality profiles may be generated for evaluation. A plurality of application types and voice talents may then be employed to evaluate the impact of each personality profile on customer satisfaction, for different user populations and different types of automated systems. The personality traits for each automated system are preferably rated and reviewed to ensure a system accurately represents the identified key personality traits. The various voice talents may also be evaluated to identify those traits best at conveying a desired personality.
US08170195B2
A computer readable medium for controlling a computer is provided. The computer readable medium comprises a plurality of code segments for controlling a computer. A code segment receives a telephonic communication comprised of voice data and event data. A code segment receives computer application data comprising data associated with at least one computer application in use during the telephonic communication. A code segment analyzes the telephonic communication by translating the received voice data into a text format, the text format defining a plurality of components. At least one component of the text data and communication event data occurring during a time interval is classified into one of a plurality of object types, and the computer application data during the time interval is compared to the object type of the classified components.
US08170194B2
The present invention, in one aspect, relates to a method for replicating ring back tone (RBT). In one embodiment, the method includes the steps of sending a Play and Collect request to a media resource server (MRS) by an application server (AS), playing an RBT subscribed by the called party to the calling party and obtaining a Replicate RBT request initiated by the calling party according to the Play and Collect request by the MRS, receiving the Replicate RBT request obtained and sent by the MRS, by the AS, and sending a Replicate RBT command to an RBT platform according to the received Replicate RBT request by the AS, the Replicate RBT command carrying RBT replication information and instructing the RBT platform to replicate the requested RBT to an information library of the calling party. The invention also relates to a system and apparatus for implementing same.
US08170189B2
Systems, methods, and machine-readable media are disclosed to provide notification of receipt of a communication across multiple platforms of potential diverse types. Cross-platform message notification can comprise receiving a request to initiate a communication from an initiating end device. The request may identify a single intended recipient device. A plurality of possible recipient devices can be identified for the request to initiate a communication based on user profile information from a user of the initiating end device. The request to initiate a communication can be forwarded to each of the plurality of possible recipient devices at substantially a same time. The initiating end device can be connected to one of the plurality of possible recipient devices based on a response from at least one of the possible recipient devices.
US08170186B2
An electronic device may be controlled with a remote control device. The remote control device may be moved in a first manner to cause the electronic device to scroll through an ordered sequence. The remote control device may be moved in a second manner to cause the electronic device to select an entry from the ordered list. During scrolling of the ordered sequence, audio feedback regarding the nature of an associated entry may be provided to the user.
US08170182B2
Methods, devices, and systems are provided for employing an efficient call tracing algorithm. Messages may be filtered according to an initial filter criteria, then messages that meet the initial filter criteria are analyzed to develop a secondary filter criteria. The first and/or second filter criteria can then be applied to subsequently transmitted messages for a predetermined amount of time, most likely relating to the length of the call which met the first filter criteria.
US08170166B2
Apparatus, systems, and methods are provided for transmitting messages over a serial interface. A method comprises receiving a first signal at a first time and receiving a second signal at a second time, the second time being after the first time. If a difference between the second time and the first time is less than a threshold time period, the method comprises generating a first message that is representative of the first signal and the second signal and transmitting the first message over the serial interface. In accordance with one embodiment, the threshold time period is equal to one half of an interface acquisition delay time period associated with the serial interface.
US08170159B2
A preamble noise cancellation circuit according to an aspect of the invention may include: a coupler dividing an input signal; a preamble noise detection unit subtracting a predetermined reference preamble signal from a received preamble signal output from the coupler to detect preamble noise included in the received preamble signal; and a noise cancellation unit subtracting the preamble noise detected by the preamble noise detection unit from the received preamble signal output from the coupler.
US08170155B2
A method and apparatus are provided for measuring channel quality over which has been transmitted a sequence of symbols produced by encoding and constellation mapping a source data element sequence. The method includes receiving a sequence of received symbols over the channel whose quality is to be measured. The sequence of received symbols is de-mapped based on a first channel quality indicator previously transmitted to a transmitter of the sequence of symbols. The method also includes decoding the de-mapped symbols to produce a decoded output sequence. In some embodiments, the decoding may be based on the first channel quality indicator. The method also includes re-encoding the decoded output sequence to produce a re-encoded output sequence. The method also includes correlating the de-mapped symbols with the re-encoded output sequence to produce a second channel quality indicator. The second channel quality indicator is transmitted to the transmitter to adaptively select a type of mapping based on the second channel quality indicator. In some embodiments, the transmitter may adaptively select a type of encoding based on the second channel quality indicator.
US08170148B2
A demodulation circuit, a digital microwave system including the demodulation circuit, and a signal demodulation method are provided. The demodulation circuit includes a first circuit, a second circuit, a third circuit, and a fourth circuit connected in turn. The fourth circuit includes a pulse counting unit and a data decision unit connected in turn. The signal demodulation method includes: performing bandpass filtering on input signals; increasing gains of the bandpass filtered signals; extracting pulse signals are extracted from the gain-increased signals; counting the extracted pulse signals; filtering the pulse signals having counting values falling outside of a predetermined range, and outputting the filtered pulse signals.
US08170147B2
An apparatus and method for canceling a DC offset efficiently removes the DC offset by calculating the DC offset after acquiring synchronization in a terminal receiver used for an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing system. The apparatus for canceling the DC offset includes an adding/averaging unit (130), an accumulator (140), a synchronization determiner (150), and a pulse density modulation signal generator (160). The adding and averaging the added input data signals over one frame. The accumulator (140) outputs a DC offset control value by successively accumulating the DX offsets calculated from the adding and averaging unit. The synchronization determiner (150) determines whether to output the DC offset control value provided by the accumulator (140) based on synchronization information. The pulse density modulation signal generator (160) generates a digital pulse density modulation signal based on a representative value provided by the synchronization determiner (150).
US08170145B2
A receiver employing an OFDM system which uses a frequency band that is constituted by a plurality of subchannels, and receiving a signal added a phase rotation which is made to respectively differ for each transmission antennas of transmitter and transmitted from the transmission antennas, having a virtual subchannel quality estimating portion which estimates the quality of a propagation path in the case of same phase rotation is added to signal transmitted from transmitter, each group configured with a plurality of consecutive subcarriers.
US08170141B2
A transmitting device according to the present invention comprises: a coding unit which encodes a transmission information bit string to a code bit string; a low-order modulating unit which conducts low-order modulation on the code bit string outputted from the encoding unit; a first frequency domain converting unit which converts the low-order modulated signal outputted from the low-order modulating unit to a frequency domain signal; a partial spectrum selecting unit which selects a central 1/M portion (M is an integer greater than or equal to two) of a spectrum from the frequency spectrum outputted from the first frequency domain converting unit; and a first time domain converting unit which converts the spectrum selected signal outputted from the partial spectrum selecting unit to a time domain signal.
US08170134B2
The present invention is intended to realize a transmitter whose internal signal processing function can be duplicated without having to add any hardware components. The transmitter converts an input signal into an output signal using a plurality of calculation steps, comprising a backward calculation means for executing the plurality of calculation steps in reverse direction.
US08170131B2
The present invention relates to a method and arrangement for reducing feedback data in a communication system, said communication system comprising a number of transmitter antennas, nτ, and a number of receiver antennas, nR, for parallel spatially independent transmission and reception of signals, wherein a channel response is represented by a matrix (G) containing nR×nτ complex variables. The method comprises the steps of: decomposing an expression of said channel response matrix (G) into products of a unitary transform (V), nR×nT diagonal matrix (Λ) and a conjugate transpose of a unitary matrix (W). Choosing said unitary matrix (W) such that its diagonal elements are real, substituting said channel response matrix (G) with a representative subset of elements in said decomposed expression of said channel response matrix (G), said representative subset comprising diagonal of a first matrix (Λ) and lower triangle of a second matrix (W) excluding the diagonal.
US08170128B2
The present invention is related to joint trellis decoding and equalization using a decision feedback equalizer.
US08170126B2
A method for transmitting a plurality of sequences across a plurality of bands of a wireless spectrum is described in which a first sequence is produced using a set of reference signal sequences, wherein the set of reference signal sequences comprises at least CAZAC sequences and near-CAZAC sequences. A second sequence is also produced. The first sequence is transmitted in a first band of the wireless spectrum, and the second sequence is transmitted in a second band of the wireless spectrum. The first and the second sequences are transmitted concurrently by a same user equipment.
US08170121B2
A scalable video compression method and apparatus for encoding an input frame sequence having temporally sequential frames includes partitioning each of the frames of the input frame sequence into a top field and a bottom field to form a base layer sequence of fields and an enhancement layer sequence of fields. The base layer sequence and the enhancement layer sequence each comprise temporally alternating top and bottom fields of the partitioned frames of the input frame sequence. The base layer sequence and the enhancement layer sequence are encoded, wherein at least one field of the enhancement layer sequence is encoded in dependence upon at least one of the fields of the base layer sequence.
US08170120B2
An information processing apparatus for encoding a baseband signal, the information processing apparatus includes: a data splitting block; an encoder; a control block; and a splicing block. The data splitting block is configured to acquire the baseband signal before splitting it into predetermined encoding sections. The encoder is configured to generate encoded streams by parallelly encoding a continuous plurality of the encoding sections acquired by the data splitting block from the baseband signal. The control block is configured to control the encoder to perform the parallel encoding in a manner subject to predetermined constraints. The splicing block is configured to splice the encoded streams generated by the encoder.
US08170117B2
Intra-frame prediction coding data of a channel that the viewer is not viewing is stored. When the viewer has switched channels to be viewed, the stored intra-frame prediction coding data is output during a period before intra-frame prediction coding data of the newly selected channel is received.
US08170115B2
A media processing method for performing media processing by causing a processor to execute plural program modules, including: a first step of controlling input/output of media data, determining at least one call time, and calling a second program module in a second layer at each determined call time, by executing a first program module in a first layer, the first layer being higher than the second layer; a second step of calling at least one third program module in a third layer, the third layer being lower than the second layer, by executing the second program module in the second layer; and a third step of causing the processor to perform data conversion on the media data, the data conversion being an element of the media processing, by executing the third program module in the third layer.
US08170111B2
Data of both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 is generated simultaneously with a small circuit scale and a small power consumption. A moving picture encoding apparatus for encoding a moving picture through motion-compensated inter-frame prediction has: a MPEG-2 encoding unit including a motion vector estimator, a frame memory, a forward prediction circuit, a bidirectional prediction circuit, a prediction selection circuit, an intra-frame encoding circuit and a local decoding circuit; a MPEG-4 encoding unit including a frame extraction circuit for extracting a predetermined MPEG-2 frame and a transcoder for encoding the extracted frame; a motion vector calculator calculating a motion vector to be used for MPEG-4 prediction from a motion vector to be used for MPEG-2 prediction; and a prediction mode controller controlling the prediction mode of the MPEG-2 encoding unit in such that the MPEG-2 prediction mode becomes coincident with the MPEG-4 prediction mode.
US08170106B2
Apparatus including: a unit detecting a motion vector, among plural number of fields included in motion pictures, or fields, produced from the plural number of fields; a unit for converting the motion pictures into light-emission data for sub-fields; a unit for reconstructing the light-emission data for sub-fields, via calculating using the motion vector; and a unit for displaying the picture using the light-emission data outputted from the sub-field reconstruction unit, wherein the sub-field reconstruction unit selects the motion vector ending at a reconstruction target pixel of other one (1) field, among the motion vectors detected by the motion vector detection unit, and calculates a position vector, by multiplying a predetermined function onto this, and thereby reconstructing light-emission data for one (1) sub-field of the reconstruction target pixel, using the light-emission data for sub-fields corresponding to the one (1) sub-fields within the pixel, which is indicated by the position vector.
US08170104B2
A motion vector predicting method and apparatus for predicting motion vectors in image coding and decoding, including predicting a motion vector of each small block in a macro block divided into at least one small block. The method may include selecting at least one small block, where a motion vector can be estimated, using motion vector information of adjacent small blocks, and includes simultaneously performing a motion vector prediction of the selected small block. By reducing a 16-operation process, conventionally required for processing a macro block with 4×4 blocks, into an 11-operation process, the image coding and decoding processing times can be reduced without using a complicated motion vector predicting apparatus.
US08170094B2
A scalable video compression system (100) having an encoder (120), bit extractor (140), and decoder (160) for efficiently encoding and decoding a scalable embedded bitstream (130) at different video resolution, framerate, and video quality levels is provided. Bits can be extracted in order of refinement layer (136), followed by temporal level (132), followed by spatial layer (134), wherein each bit extracted provides an incremental improvement in video decoding quality. Bit extraction can be truncated at a position in the embedded bitstream corresponding to a maximum refinement layer, a maximum temporal level, and a maximum spatial layer. For a given refinement layer, bits are extracted from all spatial layers in a lower temporal level prior to extracting bits from spatial layers in a higher temporal level for prioritizing coding gain to increase video decoding quality, and prior to moving to a next refinement layer.
US08170085B2
The invention presented in this disclosure gives methods to estimate and compensate for the multi-path in a typical navigational or spread spectrum receiver. The multi-path delay is estimated based on the outputs of different correlators of the receiver. Unlike three correlators normally used, the present disclosure uses five correlators, namely, Early2 (E2), Early1 (E1), Prompt (P), Late1 (L1) and Late2 (L2). The possible multi-path scenarios are classified into six different cases depending upon the reflected signal delay and the errors are computed. Further, the algorithm in the present disclosure can be extended to any correlators spacing.
US08170082B2
Embodiments related to cross-talk mitigation are described and depicted.
US08170078B2
A method and apparatus may comprise a line narrowed pulsed excimer or molecular fluorine gas discharge laser system which may comprise a seed laser oscillator producing an output comprising a laser output light beam of pulses which may comprise a first gas discharge excimer or molecular fluorine laser chamber; a line narrowing module within a first oscillator cavity; a laser amplification stage containing an amplifying gain medium in a second gas discharge excimer or molecular fluorine laser chamber receiving the output of the seed laser oscillator and amplifying the output of the seed laser oscillator to form a laser system output comprising a laser output light beam of pulses, which may comprise a ring power amplification stage.
US08170075B1
Apparatus and method for driving laser diodes with electrical power in pulsed operation. Pulsed power, for example using pulse-width modulation, is applied through an inductor in one or more parallel regulator circuits having little or no output capacitance to provide a high-efficiency laser-diode-driver power supply. Some embodiments that use two or more parallel regulator circuits in the laser-diode driver, drive each from a different phase of a clock signal. Some embodiments provide a first DC-to-DC converter has a relatively high-voltage input (e.g., about 275 volts, 0.75 amps) and an intermediate output of, e.g., 11 to 15 volts, 15 to 11 amps used to charge a storage capacitor, and a second DC-to-DC converter diode driver having one or more parallel circuits (each having, e.g., a PWM switching-mode controller and its respective switch, inductor, and diode) to turn on, regulate, and turn off a constant laser-diode current through one or more laser diodes.
US08170061B2
A device including: a receiving unit receiving a packet; a packet determining unit determining whether the received packet is a head fragment packet or an intermediate or last fragment packet; a search control unit using search data registered previously for searching for packet information and search data used for identifying the same fragment of the fragment packet on the same search address; and an assembly processing unit assembling the fragment packets, wherein the search control unit extracts a fragment identifier from the head fragment packet and registers the fragment identifier as the search data on the same search address as the search address of the search data registered previously for searching for the packet information and extracts the fragment identifier of the intermediate fragment packet or the last fragment packet, makes a search in a way that uses the fragment identifier as search target data, and assembles the fragment packets.
US08170059B2
Systems and methods are provided for processing forward link only (FLO) messages. A device for processing forward link only (FLO) wireless messages comprises receiving a FLO message and processing the FLO message including a header, an 8-bit FLO information block field, a 7-bit FLO count, an RF channel identifier, a transmit mode indicator, an outer code rate, and a stream identifier.
US08170056B2
Methods and apparatus are disclosed for dynamic bandwidth expansion for wireless clients of a wireless wide-area network (WWAN), wherein each client has an allocated bandwidth for communicating over the WWAN and the clients are within wireless signal reception of each other. The WWAN clients may voluntarily or in a predetermined manner join a pool of bandwidth-sharing clients. A wireless aggregation server and a wireless pool boss work in cooperation to utilize unused transmit and receive bandwidth from each of the pool members.
US08170054B2
Apparatus and method for providing a data interface to a plurality of radio transceivers such as between a personal computer or other information processing device to one or more radio transmitter/receiver systems having a serial data interface in a manner that provides control of the radio and means to send and receive data via the radio without regard to the characteristics of the radio or its serial interface. A common control protocol is employed that exposes the functionality necessary to control the radio transmitter/receiver device in a generic manner. The invention may communicate with the data terminal equipment via a widely-available data interface or network protocol, such as an asynchronous serial interface, the Universal Serial Bus (USB), or an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The invention also provides a means of implementing synchronous serial framing formats through software implementation, allowing compatibility with future data systems to be achieved without requiring hardware modifications.
US08170053B2
A network interface and detection module to enable network communication within information handling systems is disclosed. According to an aspect, a network interface module is disclosed. The network interface module can include a housing including a first cavity configured to receive a first network plug having a first dimension. The housing also includes a second cavity within the first cavity, and configured to receive a second network plug having a second dimension that is less than the first dimension. The network interface module can also include a network detection circuit coupled to a first terminal within the housing. The network detection circuit can enable a first network type from a plurality of network types in response to an operating state of the first network terminal.
US08170043B2
Systems and methods for communication protocols in communication systems are disclosed. In some embodiments, systems and methods for communication protocols in communications systems include implementing efficient techniques for supporting single and multiple protocols. In some embodiments, systems and methods for communication protocols in communications systems include providing a multimode communication device that includes a first network layer configured to route data between nodes on a network according to a first network layer protocol; a first logical link control layer in communication with the first network layer and transmitting data to and from the first network layer and providing data flow control; a second network layer configured to route data between nodes on the network according to a second network layer protocol; a second logical link control layer in communication with the first network layer and transmitting data to and from the first network layer and providing data flow control; a media access control layer providing channel access control and transmitting data to and from the first logical link control layer and the second logical link control layer; a physical layer configured to transform data received from the media access control layer into signals for transmission and transmit the signals, to receive signals from the network, convert the received signals into data and provide the data to the media access control layer.
US08170037B2
A communication system according to various exemplary embodiments can include a broadcast station. At least one encoder can be coupled to the broadcast station, wherein the at least one encoder is configured to encode in real-time signals generated from the broadcast station and to convert the signals into Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) data packets. At least one server can be coupled to the at least one encoder for transmitting the TCP/IP data packets over a virtual connection between the at least one server to a content distribution network.
US08170035B2
A method and apparatus for bridging network protocols is disclosed. In one embodiment, a data frame is received and stored in a dual-port memory queue by hardware logic. An embedded processor is notified of the data frame once a programmable number of bytes of the data frame have been received and stored. Once notified, the embedded processor may then undertake to read the data frame from the memory queue while the hardware logic is still writing to the memory queue. In one embodiment, the processor may then translate the data frame's protocol and begin transmitting it out over a network connection, all while the data frame's payload is still being received.
US08170033B1
A network device includes a control unit configured to execute an extended layer three (L3) routing protocol within a control plane of the network device. The extended L3 routing protocol is extended to process a routing protocol control message having a set of layer two (L2) identifiers of customer devices attached to an autonomous system (AS) and an indicator that specifies a Route Target associated with a Virtual Private Local Area Network Service (VPLS) domain within the AS. The routing protocol control message conforms to a message type of the L3 routing protocol to initiate a flush of the set of L2 identifiers.
US08170029B2
In an intermittent communication system where an intermittent communication can be made between a base station and a mobile station, a transmitting unit of the mobile station transmits a request to start a normal communication after stopping an intermittent communication at timing different from the intermittent communication if a handover is determined to be required. A transiting unit transits from the intermittent communication to the normal communication after the transmitting unit transmits the request. A handover performing unit performs a handover upon completion of transition to the normal communication by the transiting unit.
US08170026B2
A method and apparatus for virtual circuit routes is described. A method in a network element comprises associating a virtual circuit to a layer 3 next hop, the virtual circuit being associated with a layer 2 protocol specific logical circuit, receiving a packet on the logical circuit, processing the packet with configuration information indicated by the virtual circuit, and forwarding the packet to the layer 3 next hop associated with the virtual circuit without processing the packet's layer 3 header.
US08170022B2
Methods and apparatus for identifying a best path from a plurality of equal cost paths while accounting for service level agreement (SLA) metrics are disclosed. According to one aspect of the present invention, a method for routing a packet that has a payload using a node includes obtaining the packet, and adding an address of the node to the payload. Adding the address of the node to the payload creates an augmented packet. The method also includes identifying at least one element to which the augmented packet is to be routed, and providing the augmented packet to that element. In one embodiment, the method also includes storing ingress and egress timestamps associated with the node.
US08170019B2
A network device for processing packet. The network device includes an ingress module for performing switching functionality on an incoming packet, wherein the network device determines a destination port to which the incoming packet is to be transmitted. The network device also includes a CPU processing module for transmitting information between the network device and an external CPU. The external CPU transmits a formatted packet to the network device through the CPU processing module. The formatted packet includes module header and a data field. The ingress module uses information in a start field of the module header to determine that the incoming packet is a formatted packet and generates instructions for notifying other modules of the network device that the formatted packet is not to be modified by the network device and determines that the formatted packet is to be transmitted to a destination field in the formatted packet.
US08170017B2
Reliable, high-throughput, high-performance transport and routing mechanism for arbitrary data flows
The present invention leverages an existing content delivery network infrastructure to provide a system that enhances performance for any application that uses the Internet Protocol (IP) as its underlying transport mechanism. An overlay network comprises a set of edge nodes, intermediate nodes, and gateway nodes. This network provides optimized routing of IP packets. Internet application users can use the overlay to obtain improved performance during normal network conditions, to obtain or maintain good performance where normal default BGP routing would otherwise force the user over congested or poorly performing paths, or to enable the user to maintain communications to a target server application even during network outages.
US08170016B2
A network utilizes centralized control for the transport of a packet flow to a destination via an intermediary network. The network identifies the intermediary network best suited for offloading the packet flow and then develops a routing policy based on Multiprotocol Label Switching or other circuit-switching type techniques. This ensures that the packets of the packet flow are automatically forwarded to a peering router connected to the identified intermediary network, and ensures that the peering router automatically outputs the packets of the packet flow to the identified intermediary network in a manner that bypasses autonomous routing decisions by the routers of the network.
US08170014B1
Systems, methods, and other embodiments associated with multiple NAT traversal are provided. A request is received from a host for a publicly-routable communication path identifier for the host, where the host is a member of a private network associated with a first network address translation device. The first network address translation device communicates with a second network address translation device using an address-port-borrowing-protocol to acquire information related to the publicly-routable communication path identifier. Information related to the publicly-routable communication path identifier is received with the first network address translation device and the publicly-routable communication path identifier is provided to the host.
US08170007B2
A packet telephony appliance includes a Euphony network processor that integrates networking and DSP functions to provide a low cost and efficient solution in building a networked appliance. In particular, a Euphony ATM Telephone (EAT) is built around the Euphony network processor. The EAT uses a real-time operating system to provide predictable processing and networking support. The EAT implements IObufs, which provides a unified buffering scheme that allows zero-copy data movement. Furthermore, the EAT uses an Event Exchange (EVX), which provides a flexible mechanism for event distribution, allowing software modules to be composed together in an extensible manner. EVX and IObufs are used together to provide highly efficient intra-appliance communication. The EAT provides a platform that can evolve gracefully to support new protocols, advanced telephony services and enhanced user interfaces.
US08170006B2
A digital telecommunications system, a method of managing a communications network in such a system and a program product for managing audio transmission in a digital communications system. A softswitch manages communications between devices at network endpoints, e.g., session initiation protocol (SIP) devices, and detects when communications include a non-human, e.g., an audio system, at an endpoint. The softswitch selects conversational communications for calls between voice devices and messaging communications parameters with lower overhead for communications with an audio system, e.g., messaging systems such as voice mail.
US08169999B2
Aspects of a method and system for preserving content timing across femtocell interfaces via timestamp insertion are provided. In this regard, a femtocell may receive a first time-stamped packet via a first interface and transcode the time-stamped packet. The femtocell may buffer the transcoded packet based on a time-stamp recovered from the packet and may transmit the buffered transcoded packet via a second interface. One of the first interface and the second interface may utilize the Internet Protocol. One of the first interface and the second interface may be a non-cellular interface and the other interface may be a cellular interface. The femtocell may be operable to generate a timestamp corresponding to a time instant at which a time-stamped packet arrived via the first interface or the second interface. The timestamp may be referenced to a clock within a cellular enabled communication devices communicatively coupled to the femtocell.
US08169994B2
A method and system for wireless frequency division multiple access communications in the uplink and/or downlink directions, having an improved pilot insertion scheme for single carrier based communications is provided. A first time duration for transmission of a data payload block (7) is established, and the transmission is processed using a first frequency domain or a time domain. A second time duration for transmission of at least one pilot block (70) is established, and the transmission is processed using a second frequency domain or the time domain, the second time duration (70) is not greater than the first time duration (7).
US08169981B2
A method (400) and a mobile station (160) for controlling communication via a radio link based on a multi-slot based power class designation are described herein. The mobile station (160) may provide a multi-slot based power class designation to the communication network (110) to establish a radio link for communication service. The designation may be associated with a power level of the mobile station (160) and a number of slots corresponding to the power level. Based on the designation, the mobile station (160) may communicate with the communication network (110) via the radio link.
US08169973B2
A method and arrangement in a mobile terminal such as a UE for selecting a transport format for an uplink transmission to a base station, wherein the selector selects a transport format from a set of transport formats which are generated based upon parameters of a radio connection established with the base station. Upon establishing a radio connection, the base station sends parameters to the UE describing a radio bearer configuration. The UE generates a set of transport formats based upon the radio bearer parameters. A classifier then classifies each of the transport formats in the set as either power-efficient or power-inefficient. When a grant is received from the base station, the UE derives a set of allowed transport formats. A transport format selector then selects a transport format that is both power-efficient and allowed.
US08169970B2
In a mobile communication system utilizing Mobile IP, information on the access network is exchanged between access routers. And when a mobile terminal performs a handover, the previously exchanged information on the neighbor access routers and the access network information are provided to the mobile terminal. By so doing, the mobile terminal can determine a destination access router in advance, enabling to realize an efficient handover processing.
US08169961B2
A distributed method for dynamically assigning time-frequency resources in a network comprising several stations is disclosed. The stations are organized in groups (or interfaces) of several stations with each group comprising an allocation table Tsi. Each group exchanges this allocation table by means of a signaling protocol with groups that are defined as being in conflict with it by a constraints graph. The method uses an arbitration function to settle the conflicts and the assignments of allocations between the groups in conflict according to the constraints graph. In performing the method, each interface Ji transmits the allocation table TJi associated with it to the interfaces K indicated as being in conflict in the constraints graph. An interface Ji looks, for each allocation AJi that it has entered in its table TJi, whether the allocation AJi is used in the table received from an interface K that is in conflict. The interface Ji uses the arbitration function to modify the allocation AJi in the table TJi.
US08169955B2
Methods for controlling orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) communications over satellite links. The methods include estimating a differential delay in a satellite spotbeam between a mean propagation delay in the spotbeam and a propagation delay between a user terminal in the spotbeam and a satellite, estimating an overlap between an OFDMA uplink frame and an OFDMA downlink frame as a result of the differential delay, and providing a guard band in the OFDMA uplink frame and/or the OFDMA downlink frame to reduce an overlap between remaining portions of the OFDMA uplink frame and the OFDMA downlink frame other than the guard band. Corresponding systems and devices are also disclosed.
US08169953B2
A Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network supports multi-carrier operation on the downlink and/or uplink for a mobile station. The mobile station receives an assignment of multiple carriers for a first link in the GSM network, receives an assignment of at least one carrier for a second link in the GSM network, and exchanges data with the GSM network via the multiple carriers for the first link and the at least one carrier for the second link. The first link may be the downlink and the second link may be the uplink, or vice versa. The mobile station may receive data on multiple carriers at the same time for multi-carrier operation on the downlink. The mobile station may transmit data on multiple carriers at the same time for multi-carrier operation on the uplink.
US08169948B2
A code synchronization circuit for a delay time measurement device used in a low C/N environment is provided. The code synchronization circuit is capable of high precision timing phase measurement and stable operation against variations in the reception level. For these purposes, the code synchronization circuit includes: a numeric control frequency variable oscillation section (5) for generating a clock signal with a variable frequency; a 2-divider (23) for dividing the clock signal by 2 to generate a component code signal (X); a T/2 delay device (4) for outputting a delayed component code signal (x) lagging in phase behind the component code signal (X) by half a bit; and a second correlator (3B) for outputting a second correlation value indicating similarity between the delayed component code signal (x) and the carrier signal, where the numeric control frequency variable oscillation section (5) controls the frequency of the clock signal according to the second correlation value so that the carrier signal and the clock signal are in sync.
US08169945B2
A network device may select between two or more network connections based on a determination of whether the network device can access general Internet resources via an available, higher-preference network without providing additional (e.g., OSI Model Layer Seven) login credentials. In one example, a network device includes a first network interface configured to maintain a connection to a first network gateway, a second network interface configured to connect to a second, different network gateway upon determining that the second network gateway is both available and preferable over the first network gateway, and means for determining whether a remote network resource is currently accessible via the second network gateway. When the remote network resource is accessible via the second network gateway, the second network interface maintains the connection to the second network gateway.
US08169940B2
An embodiment of the present invention provides a method, comprising notifying of device and piconet controller (PNC) availability in wireless personal area network (WPAN) and/or wireless local area networks (WLAN) at the start of a superframe, wherein whether the PNC will stay awake or go to sleep during a part of the superframe depends on whether or not there are any services to provide in the WPAN and/or WLAN during a given period of time, and wherein the PNC shall stay awake if there are services to provide in the WPAN and/or WLAN to maintain network performance, otherwise the PNC will go to sleep to minimize its energy consumption.
US08169936B2
Methods for inter-mixer communication enable a “self-formed” cascaded mixer node tree topology. One method enables inter-mixer node signaling and includes first selecting a plurality of media flow payloads at a first cascaded mixer node. A set of conference payloads are generated and each include the media flow payloads from the plurality of media flow payloads that are part of the same conference call, an identifier for the conference call, and a node identifier for each media flow in the conference call. For each media flow in the conference call, each conference payload further identifies whether the first cascaded mixer node is a root node or a leaf node. The set of conference payloads are bundled into a single packet and sent to a second cascaded mixer node. Another method enables the “self-forming” of the mixer node tree topology. Yet another method enables active talker identification within the “self-formed” tree topology.
US08169926B2
Enhanced channel changing within multi-channel communication systems. A CMTS directs channel changing of a CM, sometimes between upstream data bursts. Logical channels, part of a single frequency channel, may be used, and the channel changing may be performed between those logical channels. Multiple upstream burst profiles and/or modulation densities may be used providing high degrees of robustness, fidelity, and throughput and allowing great channel flexibility. A CM may be switched between channels without losing transmitter capability. Even if some throughput rate may be sacrificed during the channel changing, the CM will still be able to continue data throughput. Then, the new channel may then undergo the initialization and ranging processes thereby enabling greater throughput on that new channel. After undergoing the initialization and ranging processes, the new channel will then be a fully equivalent member of the CM communication system.
US08169914B2
A method of transmitting data over a communication network using negative acknowledgment is presented. In the method, a stream of data packets is transmitted from a first node of the network to a second node of the network. All but at least two of the stream of data packets is successfully received at the second node, wherein the data packets that are not successfully received are not located sequentially within the stream of data packets. A status packet is transmitted from the second node to the first node, wherein the status packet includes an indication of each of the data packets that were not successfully received. In response to receiving the status packet at the first node, the data packets that were not successfully received at the second node are retransmitted from the first node to the second node in response to receiving the status packet.
US08169909B2
In the preferred embodiments, it is first determined whether or not a TCP connection from a sending device to a receiving device in the wireless communications network is in a slow start phase. If the TCP connection is in a slow start phase, then the data to be sent in the TCP connection that is allocated a priority that is higher than the priority allocated to other data to be sent by the sending device. The sending device may be a mobile terminal, a Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN), a device in a WiMAX environment or other network device, and the method of the preferred embodiments may be implemented by software installed and executed on the network device.
US08169908B1
A method for discarding perpetually-rejected packets in a fabric-based interconnect having a reliable physical layer is disclosed. A transmitting component keeps a count of the number of negative acknowledgements (NAKs) it receives from the receiving component for packets the transmitting component sends. If the transmitting component receives a number of consecutive NAKs for the same packet that exceeds some pre-determined threshold, the packet is not resent, but is, instead, treated as having been acknowledged, and subsequent packets are allowed to be transmitted. Higher-level processes are then notified of the problem so as to allow the error to be dealt with at a higher level, but without obstructing the flow of packets on the physical layer.
US08169903B2
Methods and devices for managing traffic are described. Traffic from a source in a virtual private network (VPN) is received. The traffic is directed to a virtual interface that is designated to receive traffic from the VPN. The virtual interface is configured to associate the traffic with an identifier that uniquely identifies the VPN to a session border controller (SBC). The SBC can use the identifier to determine whether the source and the destination of the traffic are in the same VPN.
US08169902B2
A wireless transmitter device has a predetermined upper limit of an accumulated data transmission time per predetermined duration corresponding to a predetermined maximum value. The wireless transmitter device includes a timer which starts keeping time when the wireless transmitter device sends a wireless signal and stops when it reaches a timeout value, a total transmission measurer for measuring the data transmission time of the wireless transmitter device during a period from the timer starting to stopping, and a transmission controller for refraining the data transmission at the earliest until the time being measured by the timer reaches the timeout value if the accumulation time is, or likely to be, equal to or larger than a threshold value.
US08169901B1
The present invention is directed to protecting media packet processors from rogue or malicious data packet flows. According to the present invention, feedback obtained from components of a media packet processor having information regarding media stream flows is used to adjust a counter or token bucket controlling the admission of such flows. More specifically, feedback is used to adjust a counter value such that the count value is decremented, or the operation of the counter in incrementing the count value according to a periodic schedule is suppressed, if a dropped packet is detected. Accordingly, the present invention may utilize the predictable quality of media stream flows, and information from components such as jitter buffers and CODECs, in order to tailor bounds on the flow of ingress traffic to a media packet processor.
US08169886B2
Systems (100) and methods (500) for method for providing a redundant or distinct transmission feature to a communication system (100). The methods involve (508) detecting if there is a communication system fault. If a communication system fault is detected (508:YES), then (512) a plurality of modified transmit signals are generated by combining a transmit signal with a plurality of complex weights (W1, W2, W3). The modified transmit signals are then (514) transmitted from a plurality of antenna elements (106a, 106b, 106c) of the communication system to an object of interest (108). If a communication systems fault is detected (508:NO), then (526) a plurality of redundant or distinct transmit signals are generated by combining the transmit signal with a plurality of first orthogonal or approximately orthogonal numerical sequences. The redundant or distinct transmit signals can then be (528) synchronously transmitted from the antenna elements.
US08169880B2
An optical pickup includes a first source which emits a first beam with a first wavelength; a second source which emits a second beam with a wavelength shorter than the first wavelength; a first collimate lens which collimates the first beam; a second collimate lens which collimates the second beam; a first objective lens which converges the first collimated beam onto an optical disc; and a second objective lens which converges the second collimated beam onto the disc. The first and second objective lenses are arranged in the disc radial direction. The second objective lens is arranged closer to the side of the disc outer circumference than the first objective lens. The first collimate lens is arranged on the right-hand side when the second objective lens is viewed from the first objective lens. The second collimate lens is arranged on the left-hand side when the first objective lens is viewed from the second objective lens. The gap between the first collimate lens and the first objective lens is larger than the gap between the second collimate lens and the second objective lens.
US08169878B2
An optical pickup apparatus according to the present invention includes: a first light source for emitting a first light flux; a second light source for emitting a second light flux; a third light source for emitting a third light flux; and an objective optical element. The objective optical element has an optical surface including at least two areas provided with optical path difference providing structures. The objective optical element converges the first to third light fluxes each passing through the predetermined areas on the objective optical element onto respective information recording surfaces of the first to third optical disks. The optical pickup apparatus provides a wavelength dependency of a spherical aberration so as to correct a change in a spherical aberration due to a refractive index change with a temperature change of the objective optical element.
US08169872B2
According to one embodiment, an optical recording medium is provided in which interlayer crosstalk is low and in which stable and high-quality recording characteristics can be obtained. To this end, an optical recording medium comprises a first recording part which includes a first recording layer and a first light reflecting layer and which is disposed on a side closer to a light receiving surface, and a second recording part which includes a second recording layer and a second light reflecting layer and which is disposed on a side farther from the light receiving surface, the first recording part and the second recording part being stacked, wherein the thickness of the second light reflecting layer is larger than the thickness of the first light reflecting layer.
US08169868B2
An optical defect detection method for patterned media includes: irradiating a laser beam onto a patterned medium and obtaining reflected light by reflection very close to a sample; outputting the reflected light as an analog electrical signal from an optical receiver; converting the analog signal to a digital signal; obtaining a surface profile in a track direction by sampling the analog signal; obtaining a servo area profile by setting a slice for detecting servo area; calculating an average value in a track width direction based on plural servo area profiles; generating a master servo area profile based on the average value; obtaining a difference between the master servo area profile and the specific servo area profile; and detecting the presence of a defect including surface roughness, process fluctuation, and adhesion of foreign matters, from a differential waveform.
US08169859B1
A clock assembly having a primary body in the shape of a type of animal. The primary body has a front face and a back face, and the secondary body has a front portion and a back portion. The primary and secondary bodies each have substantially circular openings with inner surfaces that are configured for selective receipt of a clock. At least a portion of the secondary body is secured to at least a portion of the secondary body, such that when the primary body and the secondary body are secured together, the substantially circular openings of the primary and secondary bodies are flush with one another. The clock assembly has at least one eyepiece. The outer surface of a clock having a clock display and a housing is mounted inside the inner surface of the opening of the primary body and the inner surface of the opening of the secondary body.
US08169857B2
An electronic timepiece having a function for receiving satellite signals transmitted from positioning information satellites, including a satellite signal reception unit that receives the satellite signals, a satellite capturing unit that executes a process of capturing the positioning information satellites within a capture time based on the satellite signals received by the satellite signal reception unit, a time adjustment information generating unit that acquires satellite information from the satellite signal sent from the positioning information satellite captured by the satellite capturing unit, and generates time adjustment information based on the satellite information, a time information adjustment unit that adjusts internal time information based on the time adjustment information, a time information display unit that displays the internal time information, and a time limit setting unit that variably sets a time limit for the time adjustment information generating unit to generate the time adjustment information based on the number of positioning information satellites captured by the satellite capturing unit and a reception level of the satellite signals transmitted from the positioning information satellites.
US08169854B2
The invention relates to a system and method for wireless data transmission in an open process regime, for example a producing (or injecting) well associated with oil and gas production, the system comprising means for data acquisition, means for en data conversion, means for wireless data transmission, control means, power source, and a static pulse generation device adapted for generating static pressure fluctuations in the well fluid. The data conversion means are adapted to convert data to a simplified number format to be transmitted by the induced fluctuations in the process fluid.
US08169845B2
Some embodiments include apparatus and methods having a sense amplifier unit, a supply node to receive a supply voltage, and a line coupled to a memory cell of a device. The sense amplifier unit includes a circuit path coupled between the supply node and the line to carry a current having a value based on a value of information stored in the memory cell; and a second circuit including a second circuit path coupled between the supply node and the line to charge the line during the memory operation. Additional embodiments are disclosed.
US08169843B2
A wafer test trigger signal generating circuit of a semiconductor memory apparatus includes an enable timing control unit configured to generate an enable signal by using a plurality of address signals, and a trigger signal generating unit configured to generate a test trigger signal, which designates a decoding timing of a test mode defined by the plurality of address signals, in response to the enable signal.
US08169837B2
A bit line equalizing signal generator of a semiconductor memory device uses a supply voltage and a pumping voltage in stages during a period where a bit line equalizing signal is enabled, thereby enhancing an equalizing speed and an active speed while minimizing power consumption. The semiconductor memory device includes a bit line equalizing signal generating unit configured to drive an output terminal with the supply voltage during a first activation period at the beginning of the period where the bit line equalizing signal is enabled, and to drive the output terminal with the pumping voltage higher than the supply voltage during a second activation period following the first activation period, thereby outputting the bit line equalizing signal, and a bit line equalizing unit configured to equalize a bit line pair in response to the bit line equalizing signal.
US08169836B2
A buffer control signal generation circuit includes a burst start signal generator, a command decoder, a burst controller, and a burst column controller. The burst start signal generator shifts a write pulse into a first period to generate a first burst start signal and shifts the write pulse into a second period to generate a second burst start signal, such that the second period being shorter than the first period. The command decoder generates a burst period pulse and a column active pulse in response to the second burst start signal and a column control signal. The burst controller receives the column active pulse and buffers the burst period pulse to generate a burst end signal. The burst column controller generates the column control signal from the burst end signal and the column active pulse.
US08169829B2
A memory system has a memory unit that is made of memory cells, each of which assumes a record state with a threshold voltage according to data. If an inverter has performed reverse processing on a data sequence so as to make the number of the memory cells in a predetermined record state great based on a count of a counter in a record operation, the memory system sets a flag added to the data sequence to indicate that the reverse processing has been performed, and performs re-reverse processing on the data sequence to which the flag indicating that the inverter has performed the reverse processing is added in a reproducing operation.
US08169824B2
A semiconductor device includes a first MOS transistor, second MOS transistors, first contact plugs, and a second contact plug. The first MOS transistor with a first conductivity is formed on a semiconductor substrate. The second MOS transistors with a second conductivity are formed on the semiconductor substrate. The first contact plugs has a circular planar shape. The second contact plug has an elliptical planar shape and is formed on a source or a drain in one of the second MOS transistors. The first contact plugs are formed on sources or drains in the remaining second MOS transistors and the first MOS transistor.
US08169818B2
A recording method for a magnetic memory device that includes applying, when recording one piece of information, one or more main pulses and one or more sub-pulses in the same direction and applying the one or more sub-pulses after the one or more main pulses, the one or more main pulses each being a pulse that has a sufficient pulse height and pulse width to record information, the one or more sub-pulses each being a pulse that satisfies at least one of conditions that a pulse width is shorter than that of the one or more main pulses and that a pulse height is smaller than that of the one or more main pulses.
US08169809B2
A tree-structure memory device including a plurality of bit lines formed on a substrate and arranged in at least one plane substantially parallel to a substrate surface and extending substantially in a first direction, a plurality of layers having a plurality of memory cells arranged in a first array, a tree structure corresponding to a plurality of layers and a bit line; and a word-line group including at least one word line crossing with the tree structure, a memory cell of the first array being located at the first intersection region in a layer of said layers.
US08169807B2
In a content addressable memory device, before search operations in two TCAM cells connected to first and second match lines, respectively, a memory controller connects the first match line to a power source and connects the second match line to a ground, and then connects the first and second match lines to each other so as that electric potentials of the first and second match lines are the same as each other.
US08169803B2
Power transistor chip with built-in junction field effect transistor and application circuit thereof
A power transistor chip and an application circuit thereof have a junction field effect transistor to act as a start-up circuit of an AC/DC voltage converter. The start-up circuit can be turned off after the PWM circuit of the AC/DC voltage converter operates normally to conserve the consumption of the power. Besides, the junction field effect transistor is built in the power transistor chip. Because the junction field effect transistor is fabricated with the same manufacturing process as the power transistor, it is capable of simplifying the entire process and lowering the production cost due to no additional mask and manufacturing process.
US08169802B2
Disclosed are a switch controller, a switch control method, a converter using the same, and a driving method thereof. A first voltage is generated by using a voltage that is input to an input terminal, and a soft start signal is generated by using the first voltage during a soft start duration. A switching operation is controlled by using the soft start signal during the soft start duration.
US08169789B1
Apparatus and methods for mounting of a processor coupled to a circuit board include use of a frame disposed around the processor. The frame decreases flexibility of the circuit board around the processor. Further, the frame may act as a mechanical stop limiting tilting of a heat sink coupled to the processor.
US08169779B2
Systems and apparatus are provided for power electronics substrates adapted for direct substrate cooling. A power electronics substrate comprises a first surface configured to have electrical circuitry disposed thereon, a second surface, and a plurality of physical features on the second surface. The physical features are configured to promote a turbulent boundary layer in a coolant impinged upon the second surface.
US08169763B2
A transient blocking unit (TBU) is a circuit having series-connected transistors that normally conduct current, but automatically switch to a high-impedance current blocking state in response to an over-current condition. Here enhancement mode devices are used in the primary TBU current path, as opposed to the conventional use of depletion mode devices in this context. This approach provides two main advantages. The first advantage is that the dependence of TBU parameters on poorly controlled depletion mode device parameters can be reduced or eliminated. The second advantage is that such TBUs can provide over-voltage protection in addition to over-current protection.
US08169761B2
An ESD clamp circuit applied to a power amplifier is provided. The ESD clamp circuit includes a first line, a second line, a first circuit, a second circuit, an ESD detecting unit, a buffer unit, and an ESD clamp unit. The first line is coupled to the output terminal of the power amplifier. The first circuit is coupled to the first line. The second circuit is coupled to the first circuit. The ESD detecting unit is coupled to the first circuit and the second line. The buffer unit is coupled to the second circuit, the second line and the ESD detecting unit. The ESD clamp unit is coupled to the buffer unit, the first line and the second line. Therefore, at normal operation mode, the problem of signal loss caused by the leakage current of ESD clamp circuit can be avoided.
US08169759B2
Apparatus, systems, and methods are disclosed that operate to boost an electrical potential of a control terminal of a transistor from a signal on an input terminal of the transistor to render a channel in the transistor more conductive. Additional apparatus, systems, and methods are disclosed.
US08169753B2
A current-perpendicular-to-plane (CPP) tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) or giant magnetoresistance (GMR) read sensor with ferromagnetic amorphous buffer and polycrystalline seed layers is disclosed for reducing a read gap, in order to perform magnetic recording at higher linear densities. The ferromagnetic amorphous buffer and polycrystalline seed layers couples to a ferromagnetic lower shield, thus acting as part of the ferromagnetic lower shield and defining the upper surface of the ferromagnetic polycrystalline seed layer as the lower bound of the read gap. In addition, a CPP TMR or GMR read sensor with nonmagnetic and ferromagnetic cap layers is also disclosed for reducing the read gap, in order to perform magnetic recording at even higher linear densities. The ferromagnetic cap layer couples to a ferromagnetic upper shield, thus acting as part of the ferromagnetic upper shield and defining the lower surface of the ferromagnetic cap layer as the upper bound of the read gap.
US08169749B2
A post-assembly head/disk offset adjuster is disclosed. One embodiment provides a housing and at least one disk coupled with the housing. In addition, an adjustable pivot plate is coupled with the housing such that access to at least one adjustment point of the adjustable pivot plate is provided regardless of a state of assembly of the hard disk drive. Furthermore, an actuator is coupled with the adjustable pivot plate. In so doing, an adjustment to the at least one adjustment point of the adjustable pivot plate results in an adjustment to the actuator regardless of the state of assembly of the hard disk drive.
US08169744B2
A slider resistant to lubricant accumulation. The slider resistant to lubricant accumulation includes a positive-air-pressure portion of the slider configured to levitate the slider above a magnetic-recording disk and a negative-air-pressure portion of the slider configured to bring the slider into proximity with the magnetic-recording disk at a fly height sufficient for writing data to and reading data from the magnetic-recording disk. The slider resistant to lubricant accumulation also includes a lubricant-accumulation barrier disposed in proximity to a trailing edge of the slider. The lubricant-accumulation barrier is configured to reduce lubricant accumulation on the slider.
US08169737B2
A tape library apparatus includes a recording/reproducing unit for accessing data in the tape cartridges, a first driver for producing a driving force, a conveyer for carrying the recording/reproducing unit in the direction of the alignment of the plurality of the tape cartridges, by the driving force produced by the first driver, an identification information reader mounted near the insertion slot and on a surfaces of the tape cartridges, the image identification information being on a surface of each of the tape cartridges which faces opposite to a surface which faces the conveyer, a second driver for moving the tape cartridge in the magazine at opposed position of the conveyer to the recording/reproducing unit, and a controller for controlling the first and second drivers, to move one of the tape cartridges stored in the magazine to a position of the recording/reproduction unit.
US08169722B2
A flexible printed circuit according to the present invention is anchored to a holding member disposed within electronic equipment, and comprises: a main body portion 70 that includes electrical lines; a first connection portion 71 disposed in the main body portion 70 and to which an electric component or another flexible printed circuit is connected; and a first cover portion 72 formed as part of the main body portion 70 and disposed so as to cover the first connection portion. Part of the first cover portion is held by a lens holder 6. According to this configuration, an insulated state can be reliably maintained by using a configuration in which soldered connection portions are covered by part of the FPC and the covering portion is held by the housing.
US08169721B2
A lens assembly comprises a first lens and a second lens. The first lens includes a first central round portion and a first peripheral stepped portion surrounding the first central round portion. The first peripheral stepped portion comprises a downward-facing surface, a first supporting surface, and a first inclined surface interconnected. The second lens includes a second central round portion and a second peripheral stepped portion surrounding the second central round portion. The second peripheral stepped portion includes an upward-facing surface, a second inclined surface, a third surface, and a second supporting surface. The second lens is engaged on the first lens in a manner that the first supporting surface contacts the second supporting surface, the downward-facing surface is facing toward the upward-facing surface, the first inclined surface contacts the second inclined surface but a gap is defined between the first inclined surface and the third surface.
US08169716B2
A phase-adjusting element configured to provide substantially liquid-invariant extended depth of field for an associated optical lens. One example of a lens incorporating the phase-adjusting element includes the lens having surface with a modulated relief defining a plurality of regions including a first region and a second region, the first region having a depth relative to the second region, and a plurality of nanostructures formed in the first region. The depth of the first region and a spacing between adjacent nanostructures of the plurality of nanostructures is selected to provide a selected average index of refraction of the first region, and the spacing between adjacent nanostructures of the plurality of nanostructures is sufficiently small that the first region does not substantially diffract visible light.
US08169712B2
A zoom lens system and an image capturing apparatus having the same. The zoom lens includes a first lens group having a positive refractive power; a second lens group having a negative refractive power; a third lens group having a positive refractive power; and a fourth lens group having a positive refractive power, wherein the first through fourth lens groups are sequentially arranged from an object side to an image side, and the third lens group includes a first positive lens, a doublet lens including a second positive lens and a third negative lens, and a fourth positive lens sequentially arranged from the object side.
US08169710B2
An image capture apparatus includes: a zoom lens; and an image pickup device converting an optical image formed by the zoom lens into an electric signal. The zoom lens includes, in order from the object side, a first lens group with a negative focal length, a second lens group with a positive focal length, a third lens group with a negative focal length, and a fourth lens group with a positive focal length. During zooming from a wide-angle end to a telephoto end, the first lens group moves along a locus having a convex shape toward an image side while decreasing an air space between the first and second lens groups, and the second and third lens groups move toward the object side while increasing an air space therebetween.
US08169706B2
Provided are: a light-diffusing plate for a liquid crystal display device which plate can give an assured or improved luminance with assured light-diffusibility, suppress itself from dimensional changes caused by moisture absorption, and also prevent the device from deterioration caused by ultraviolet light generated from a lighting unit; and a polycarbonate resin composition for a light-diffusing plate which has both high light transmittivity and light-diffusibility and is excellent in flame retardancy. The present invention is a light-diffusing plate for a liquid crystal display device which plate has a lamination structure comprising two or more kinds of plastic layers; said lamination structure having at least two layers of which are different from each other in refractive index.
US08169705B2
The invention is directed to optical elements that are coated with dense homogeneous fluoride films and to a method of making such coated elements. The coatings materials are a high (“H”) refractive index fluoride material and a low (“L”) refractive index material that are co-evaporated to form a coating layer of a L-H coating material (a co-deposited coating of L and H materials). Lanthanide metal fluorides (for example, neodymium, lanthanum, dysprosium, yttrium and gadolinium, and combinations thereof) are preferred metal fluorides for use as the high refractive index materials with lanthanum fluoride (LaF3) and gadolinium fluoride (GdF3) being particularly preferred. Aluminum fluoride (AlF3) and alkaline earth metal fluorides (fluorides of calcium, magnesium, barium and strontium) are the preferred low refractive index materials, with magnesium fluoride (MgF2) being a preferred alkaline earth metal fluoride.
US08169700B2
A reflective screen comprising: a projection surface on which an image light is projected, a plurality of unit structures provided on the projection surface, one of the plurality of unit structures being formed of a concavely curved surface or a convexly curved surface, a first reflection portion that reflects the image light incident thereon toward a preset field of view, the first reflection portion being provided on the concavely curved surface or on the convexly curved surface and a second reflection portion that reflects at least a part of the image light incident thereon toward a region outside the preset field of view, the second reflection portion being provided on the concavely curved surface or on the convexly curved surface.
US08169696B2
Disclosed are systems for intraoperative nerve imaging using compact high collection power imaging devices for fluorescence and white light imaging of myelin basic protein (MBP) nerve imaging agents during open and minimally invasive surgery.
US08169692B2
A waveguide parametric device including a multi-mode waveguide having orientation layers formed in a propagation direction of a signal beam and a pump beam propagating down the waveguide. The orientation layers are oppositely oriented to provide non-linear coupling between the pump beam and the signal beam and have a periodicity that provides quasi-phase matching for a fundamental propagation mode, where the waveguide has a size to accommodate multi-mode wave propagation.
US08169691B1
One embodiment of the present invention is a multi color display panel, having a transparent substrate, a color filter layer, a transparent electrode layer, a microcapsule layer, an adhesive layer; and a rear electrode plate, wherein the rear electrode plate is an electrode plate in which a pixel electrode is arranged on a substrate, a film thickness of the color filter layer is 0.5-2.0 μm, a step between pixels or inside a pixel inside a display screen, the step being difference of the film thickness, is equal to or less than 0.3 μm, one of the pixels does not overlap an adjacent pixel, and a top edge of each of the pixels of a trapezoid shape is within 5.0 μm from a border of the pixel.
US08169685B2
The thermally switched absorptive optical shutter may be a self-regulating “switchable absorber” device that may absorb approximately 100% of incoming light above a threshold temperature, and may absorb approximately 50% of incoming light below a threshold temperature. The shutter may be formed by placing a thermotropic depolarizer between two absorptive polarizers. This control over the flow of radiant energy may occur independently of the thermal conductivity or insulation of the shutter device and may or may not preserve the image and color properties of incoming visible light. This has energy-efficiency implications as it can be used to regulate the internal temperature and illumination of buildings, vehicles, and other structures without the need for an external power supply or operator signals. It also has aesthetic implications since the shutter device has unique optical properties that are not found in traditional windows, skylights, stained glass, light fixtures, glass blocks, bricks, or walls. Additionally, the shutter device may have application as a building material.
US08169681B2
Electro-optic elements are becoming commonplace in a number of vehicular and architectural applications. Various electro-optic element configurations provide variable transmittance and or variable reflectance for windows and mirrors. The present invention relates to various thin-film coatings, electro-optic elements and assemblies incorporating these elements.
US08169676B2
An apparatus for reading from and/or writing to holographic storage media is described, and more specifically an apparatus for reading from and/or writing to holographic storage media with two or more reference beams that overlap inside the holographic storage medium for reading and/or writing a single hologram. The two or more reference beams are mutually incoherent during reading and/or writing.
US08169667B2
A controller is to receive a halftoning job having a number of pages. The controller is to divide each page into a number of sections. A number of halftoning mechanisms correspond in number to the number of sections into which each page is to be divided. Each halftoning mechanism is to perform halftoning on a different section of each page. At any given time, no halftoning mechanism is to perform halftoning on a same page on which any other halftoning mechanism is to currently perform halftoning.
US08169666B2
Each of moire elements which are repeat elements of first-order moire appearing by overlaying halftone images of first and second color components is positioned at one of candidate positions arranged at a moire pitch Pm in first and second moire directions orthogonal to each other. In a matrix area of a third color component, dot centers are arranged in a first tilt direction tilted relatively to the first moire direction by an angle of arctan((Pm)/(Pm)) and a second tilt direction orthogonal to the first tilt direction at a pitch of the square root of ((Pm2)+(Pm2)), and a threshold matrix of the color component is generated so that a halftone dot grows from each dot center in accordance with increase of gray level of the color component of the original image. Thus, it is possible to suppress second-order moire appearing in overlaying halftone images of the first to third color components.
US08169654B2
A method of sequencing and reproducing sets of text and graphics across a collection of printable areas and a computer readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing the method. The method providing the user the ability to select many variables for the printing of labels for tabs. The method and computer readable medium providing for the creation of divider insert tab labels for the tabs of a set of divider inserts thereby identifying the divided contents. The method and computer printable medium provide for printing of the divider insert tab labels in an order that they are assembled into a binder.
US08169652B2
A layout information generating apparatus is provided, for automatically selecting an original image appropriate to be laid out in a template based on information on an output device. The layout information generating apparatus according to the present invention includes: a low-capacity image receiving section for receiving a low-capacity image obtained by reducing the capacity of an original image from an orderer apparatus; an output characteristic information acquiring section for acquiring output characteristic information indicative of the output characteristic of an output device for outputting an image created by an image creating apparatus; an image selecting section for selecting a low-capacity image to be laid out among the low-capacity images based on the output characteristic information; a layout information generating section for generating layout information of the low-capacity image; and a layout information transmitting section for transmitting the layout information to the output device and causing the output device to lay out an original image provided from an orderer and output the same.
US08169651B2
A data processing apparatus scans a web page image printed on paper, recognizes the character array for a URL included in the image, acquires data for the web page in the image through the Internet, identifies the positions of entry spaces in the web page, recognizes the content entered by hand on the paper, and stores this content in RAM. The data processing apparatus prompts the user to select whether to perform a verification print for verifying the recognized content and prints the recognized content when the user indicates such a desire. Further, the data processing apparatus prompts the user to select whether to transmit the content to the server and transmits the content stored in RAM when the user indicates such a desire.
US08169647B2
An image processing apparatus 30 is used with an IC card 32 capable of outputting first location information specifying a location where a user belongs to, and includes a card reader 50 obtaining the first location information from the IC card 32, a GPS 54 obtaining second location information related to a location where the image processing apparatus 30 is installed, and location information comparing modules 52 and 56 connected to the first and second location information obtaining apparatuses and permitting or restricting use of the image processing apparatus 30 depending on whether the region specified by the first location information overlaps with the location indicated by the second location information.
US08169645B2
A printer includes a data obtaining unit, a storage unit, an engine, and a printing unit. The data obtaining unit obtains, from print data stored in the storage unit, print data for sheets less than the maximum number of sheets dischargeable to a discharge tray as target print data and sends the target print data to the engine via the printing unit. The target print data includes first print data of odd pages and second print data of even pages. After printing the first print data on one side of sheets fed from a feed tray and discharges the sheets onto the discharge tray, the engine prints the second print data on the other side of the sheets manually returned from the discharge tray to the feed tray.
US08169644B2
A thermal dye sublimation printer to which an ink ribbon cassette having a function of transmitting and receiving data via wireless communication with a printer main body is attached, is disclosed. The thermal dye sublimation printer includes: communication means that transmits and receives data via wireless communication with an ink ribbon cassette; and control means that acquires management information of the ink ribbon cassette stored in the ink ribbon cassette side via the communication means and controls printing processing based on the acquired management information.
US08169636B2
In a method, a computer, and computer program modules to transfer data between servers of a computer network, a computer program module supplying the data from a first server is provided, and a reading computer program module is provided that reads the supplied data, and wherein one of the following transmission modes is selected: 1) a complete storage of the data in a file occurs before the reading computer program module reads the data; 2) a segment-by-segment storage of the data in a file occurs such that the reading computer program module already begins with the reading of a segment while the supplying computer program module is still supplying data; and 3) a direct transmission of the data between the supplying computer program module and the reading computer program module occurs without buffering.
US08169628B2
A method for streaming media. The method can include requesting, at a client, a first portion of raster data from a server. The raster data can be referenced in a scalable vector graphics (SVG) document. The first portion of raster data and a selection can be received by the client. A second portion of the raster data can be requested from the server based on the first portion and the selection. The client can receive the second portion of raster data.
US08169627B2
There is described an image outputting system including a controlling apparatus and an image outputting apparatus. The image outputting apparatus is provided with an inputting unit to input a change instruction with respect to the print products and a setting-change instructing unit to transmit the change instruction to the controlling apparatus, when the change instruction, inputted from the inputting unit, includes a change of the setting information. The controlling apparatus is provided with a first changing unit to rewrite the setting information attached to the first-type image data being an object of the change instruction, based on the change instruction when receiving the change instruction and an image develop processing section to convert the first-type image data, being an object of the change instruction, to the second-type image data, based on the setting information rewritten, and to send the second-type image data to the image outputting apparatus.
US08169625B2
The conversion of a document of a first format that supports a set of raster operations into a document of a second format that does not support one or more unhandled raster operations of the set of raster operations is disclosed. For example, one disclosed embodiment comprises locating a region in the document of the first format that contains an unhandled raster operation, rasterizing the region in the document of the first format that contains the unhandled raster operation to form a rasterized region, and incorporating the rasterized region into the document of the second format.
US08169623B2
An optical apparatus and method for measuring the attitude of an object in outer space includes an optical system having an aperture to receive optical radiation and a focal plane to image the optical radiation and an aperture-sharing element attached to the optical element and at least partially surrounding an optical path into the aperture. The aperture-sharing element directs optical radiation from a field of view of the aperture-sharing element to a corresponding first portion of the focal plane to provide multi-axis stellar attitude measurements, and the aperture receives optical radiation along the optical path into the aperture and directs the optical radiation to a second portion of the focal plane.
US08169622B1
An optical sensor (10) for fitting to a washing machine or dishwasher is proposed, comprising: a housing (16), an arrangement, which is housed in the housing, of optical components, the optical components comprising a controllable light emitter (26) and a first and a second light receiver (28, 30), and an electronic analysis and control unit (36) which is connected to the light emitter (26) and the two light receivers (28, 30), the first light receiver (28) being arranged at the end of a first light measurement path (54) which starts at the light emitter (26) and runs on a portion outside the housing (16), and the second light receiver (30) being arranged at the end of a second light measurement path (56) which starts at the light emitter (26), and when the sensor is fitted to the machine as specified, the first light measurement path running on a portion through a washing space (14) of the machine, and is the second light measurement path running completely outside this washing space, the analysis and control unit (36) being set up to control the luminous flux of the light emitter (26), depending on an output signal of the second light receiver (30).
US08169621B2
The present invention relates to a system for three-dimensional (3-D) acoustic imaging of a scattering structure using information from a two-dimensional (2-D) image. The system uses a characterized sensor array to emit a signal from the sensor array into an object of interest to generate at least one 2-D representation of the object of interest. The 2-D representation comprises a plurality of x and y coordinate pairs and at least one candidate scattering structure. The candidate scattering structure comprises a shape defined by at least one pair of x and y coordinates. The candidate scattering structure shape is restricted to at least one pair of x and y coordinates. The pair of x and y coordinates of the candidate scattering structure shape are then compared with a first coordinate-dependent response function to assign an x, y, and z position of a scattering structure in 3-D space.
US08169619B2
A detector element array for an optical position measuring instrument, by way of such array a fringe pattern resulting in a detector plane can be converted into electrical scanning signals. The detector element array includes a plurality of light-sensitive detector elements disposed in matrix-like fashion in rows and columns. The plurality of light-sensitive detector elements include a first detector element in a first column of the columns, a second detector element in the first column that is adjacent to the first detector element and a third detector element in a second column of the columns that is adjacent to the first column, wherein the third detector element is diagonally adjacent to the first detector element. The detector element array includes a first switch that selectively directly connects the first detector element with the second detector element and a second switch that selectively directly connects the first detector element with the third detector element. The detector element array includes a memory element associated with the first detector element, wherein memory element information is stored in the memory element that indicates which of the second and third detector elements is connected to the first detector element in an established scanning configuration, wherein no more than the first and second switches are associated with the memory element.
US08169615B2
A sensor for detecting the presence of a target analyte, ligand or molecule in a test fluid, comprising a light transmissive substrate on which an array of surface plasmon resonant (SPR) elements is mounted is described. A multi-channel sensor for detecting the presence of several targets with a single microchip sensor is described. A multi-channel sensor including collections of SPR elements which are commonly functionalized to one of several targets is also described. The detectors sense changes in the resonant response of the SPR elements indicative of binding with the targets.
US08169613B1
A polarizing device may be used with sample inspection system having one or more collection systems that receive scattered radiation from a region on a sample surface and direct it to a detector. The polarizing device disposed between the collection system(s) and the detector. The polarizing device may include a plurality of polarizing sections. The sections may be characterized by different polarization characteristics. The polarizing device is configured to transmit scattered radiation from defects to the detector and to block noise from background sources that do not share characteristics with scattered radiation from the defects from reaching the detector while, maximizing a capture rate for the defects the detector at a less than optimal signal-to-noise ratio.
US08169608B2
An optical characteristic measurement device includes a photodetector and a processor. The photodetector has a detection surface greater than a light incident surface receiving light from a spectrometer. The processor is configured to obtain a measurement spectrum detected in a first detection area corresponding to the light incident surface and a signal intensity detected in a second detection area different from the light incident surface, correct a pattern prepared in advance and exhibiting a noise characteristic of the photodetector based on the signal intensity to calculate a first correction spectrum, subtract a correction value calculated based on the signal intensity from each component value of the measurement spectrum to calculate a second correction spectrum, and subtract each component value of the first correction spectrum from a corresponding component value of the second correction spectrum to calculate an output spectrum.
US08169607B2
A processing unit obtains a first spectrum detected in a first detection area and a first signal intensity detected in a second detection area after the light entering the housing is cut off, and then calculates a first correction spectrum by subtracting a first correction value calculated based on the first signal intensity from each component value of the first spectrum. The processing unit obtains a second spectrum detected in the first detection area and a second signal intensity detected in the second detection area while a cut-off portion is opened, and then calculates a second correction spectrum by subtracting a second correction value calculated based on the second signal intensity from each component value of the second spectrum. The processing unit calculates an output spectrum representing a measurement result by subtracting a corresponding component value of the first correction spectrum from each component value of the second correction spectrum.
US08169606B2
An appearance inspection apparatus analyzes a difference in detection characteristics of detection signals obtained by detectors to flexibly meet various inspection purposes without changing a circuit or software. The apparatus includes a signal synthesizing section that synthesizes detection signals from the detectors in accordance with a set condition. An input operating section sets a synthesizing condition of the detection signal by the signal synthesizing section, and an information display section displays a synthesizing map structured based on a synthesized signal which is synthesized by the signal synthesizing section in accordance with a condition set by the input operating section.
US08169603B2
One embodiment of the invention provides a lens-testing apparatus being used for testing a lens device. The lens-testing apparatus comprises a light module, at least one first and second image sensors, and at least one image sensor module. The light module generates a patterned light beam passing the lens device. The first and second image sensors receive first and second portions of the patterned light beam; the first image sensor is disposed between the second image sensor and the lens device. The image sensor module receives a substantially parallel third portion of the patterned light beam, and comprises a third image sensor and a collimator. The third portion of the patterned light beam is focused onto the third image sensor by the collimator; the distance between the first image sensor and the lens device is smaller than the distance between the second image sensor and the lens device.
US08169574B2
A liquid crystal display includes: a liquid crystal layer squeezed between first and second transparent substrates and vertically aligned at a retardation of 300 nm or larger to 940 nm or smaller; two or three viewing angle compensators disposed on the first transparent substrate on the side opposite to the liquid crystal layer, each of the viewing angle compensators having a retardation of 90 nm or larger to 350 nm or smaller in a thickness direction and a retardation of 5 nm or larger to 30 nm or smaller in an in-plane direction; a first polarizer disposed on the two or three viewing angle compensator; and a second polarizer disposed on the second transparent substrate and crossed-Nichol disposed relative to the first polarizer, wherein an in-plane slow axis of each viewing angle compensator is disposed perpendicular to an absorption axis of the first polarizer.
US08169571B2
A transflective type LCD including: a substrate in which a pixel region having a reflection region and a transmission region are defined; a gate line and a data line crossing each other on the substrate to define the pixel region; a TFT (thin film transistor) formed at the crossing of the gate line and the data line; a transparent electrode formed in the pixel region and connected to a drain electrode of the TFT; a storage electrode formed on the gate line; a reflective electrode formed in the reflection region; and an insulation layer with a protrusion pattern formed in the reflection region, wherein the insulation layer in the reflection region is in between the transparent electrode and the reflective electrode.
US08169570B2
A liquid crystal display device having a non-rectangular display panel includes an active area which is defined by a peripheral shield layer. A plurality of pixels are formed in the active area in a matrix and typically each pixel includes a plurality of sub-pixels to display respective different colors. The pixels include a first pixel arranged in the peripheral region of the active area and a second pixel arranged at an inner region. A part of the first pixel located in a peripheral region of the active area is covered with the peripheral shield layer. The thickness of the color filter layer arranged in the first pixel where the peripheral shield layer overlaps with the first pixel is smaller than that of a same color filter arranged in the second pixel having a larger effective display area than that of the first pixel area.
US08169565B2
A mounting mechanism for fixing a computer mainframe includes a retaining base and an article; the retaining base includes a first plate, a second plate and an extensible screw; the retaining base is coupled to the article; the first plate is disposed with at least one hanging tab; the lower end of the first plate is coupled to the second plate, and the hanging tab is positioned above the second plate in order to couple to a computer mainframe with a different width conveniently; the hanging tab may be extended in a hanging hole of the computer mainframe corresponding thereto; a bolt of the extensible screw may be extended out of a hole of the second plate to engage with a screw hole of the computer mainframe corresponding thereto thereby allowing the computer mainframe to be coupled to or detached from the mounting mechanism easily without using tools.
US08169564B2
A display module including a display panel, a frame and a bracket is provided. The frame surrounds the display panel and has a protruding part and a first position limiting structure. The bracket has a body with a second position limiting structure and a first protrusion, wherein the protruding part is aligned with the first protrusion when the first position limiting structure is engaged with the second position limiting structure to fix the bracket on the frame in a non-screw manner.
US08169559B2
In an array substrate and a method of manufacturing the array substrate, an array substrate includes a first switching element, a second switching element, a third switching element and a fourth switching element. The first switching element is electrically connected to a first data line. The second switching element is electrically connected to a second data line adjacent to the first data line. The third switching element is electrically connected to a data power line interposed between the first and second data lines. The fourth switching element is electrically connected to a gate power line receiving a voltage having different polarity from a voltage applied to the data power line. Therefore, light transmittance, opening ratio and display quality are improved.
US08169558B2
A liquid crystal display device includes pixels A and pixels B, wherein a width BB of the pixel B is smaller than a width AA of the pixel A. A pixel electrode formed in the pixel B is smaller than a pixel electrode formed in the pixel A in area and hence, capacitance formed between the pixel electrode and a counter electrode which is formed below the pixel electrode with an insulation film sandwiched therebetween becomes small. To eliminate this difference in capacitance, a first branch electrode and a second branch electrode are formed on the pixel electrode of the pixel B thus increasing capacitance between the pixel electrode and the counter electrode. Due to such a constitution, it is possible to prevent the deterioration of image quality attributed to imbalance of capacitance.
US08169556B2
Disclosed is an LCD comprising a plurality of data lines extending in a first direction, a plurality of gate lines extending in a second direction defining with the plurality of data lines a plurality of pixel areas arranged in a matrix configuration and supplying a gate signal to at least two rows of the pixel areas simultaneously. Thin film transistors are connected to the plurality of gate lines and the plurality of data lines. Also disclosed is a driving method for an LCD including a thin film transistor substrate including pixel areas arranged in a matrix form with a gate line extending in a first direction and a data line extending in a second direction, along with a backlight providing the TFT substrate with light of three primary colors. In the method, the three primary colors are sequentially provided in one frame period and at least two rows of pixel areas and simultaneously provided with a common gate signal.
US08169550B2
A cursor control method for controlling a cursor on an image display includes: providing at least two reference points for generating light of a predetermined spectrum and defining a predetermined area; providing an image sensor pointing inside the predetermined area; receiving the light of the predetermined spectrum by the image sensor to form a digital image; identifying positions and shapes of the images of the reference points on the digital image to form a first parameter; performing distance and angle compensations on the first parameter; moving the aiming point of the image sensor inside the predetermined area to form a second parameter; and calculating an displacement of the images of the reference points on the digital image according to the compensated first and second parameters so as to accordingly control the cursor. The present invention further provides a cursor control apparatus.
US08169541B2
A method of converting a frame rate of a video signal includes the steps of: receiving a pulldown film sequence existing in or converted from a sequence of successive-in-time frames of the video signal, in which the pulldown film sequence comprises a plurality of diverse original frames each having a corresponding number of duplicate frames; modifying the original frames; performing estimation of at least one motion vector associated with the modified original frames; and interpolating new frames between the modified original frames in accordance with the motion vector.
US08169540B2
A camera body allows the mounting of a lens unit configured to form an optical image of a subject, and includes a body mount, an imaging element, a capacitor, and a housing member. The body mount allows a lens unit to be mounted. The imaging element includes a light receiving face arranged to receive light passing through the lens unit, and converts an optical image of the subject into an electrical signal. The capacitor is disposed above the imaging element and more to the imaging element side than the body mount in a landscape orientation. The housing member accommodates the imaging element and the capacitor.
US08169532B2
A portable electronic device for measuring a distance of an object by performing an auto focus function and a distance measuring method are provided. The portable electronic device includes an image pickup module and a distance measuring program. The image pickup module includes a lens, an optical sensing element and a transmission mechanism. The distance measuring program includes a distance look-up table. The distance look-up table is established by correlating a plurality of lens moving step numbers with corresponding object distance values. The auto focus function is performed to capture an image of an object by the image pickup module, thereby obtaining a current lens moving step number required for performing the auto focus function. A current object distance value corresponding to the current lens moving step number is acquired according to the distance look-up table.
US08169524B2
An image sensing apparatus comprises: a pixel array; a plurality of column signal lines; a readout unit; a driving unit that, in a transferring period for the readout unit to transfer pixel signals of columns in a first row to the output line, supplies to the pixel array and/or the readout unit a driving pulse for reading out the pixel signals from a second row, in a transferring period for the readout unit to transfer the pixel signals of the columns in the first row to the output line; and a correction unit that corrects a pixel signal of a first column in the first row that was transferred by the readout unit at a timing at which a level of the driving pulse transitions in the transferring period, according to at least a level of a pixel signal of the first column in the second row.
US08169520B2
A solid-state imaging apparatus including a plurality of sensors that are formed on a substrate on a pixel basis and photoelectrically convert the light incident from a first surface side of the substrate, and a readout circuit that is formed on a second surface side of the substrate, which is the opposite side to the first surface side, and processes a signal from the plurality of sensors. The readout circuit includes a plurality of transistors and the transistors are disposed in a region between the pixels in an aligned manner.
US08169496B2
An image processing system includes an illumination unit and an illumination control unit configured to adjust light emitted from the illumination unit so as to illuminate a limited area in a space, the system generates a timing signal for controlling emission/non-emission of light from the illumination unit, captures a first image of an imaging area including the limited area or part of the limited area based on the timing signal, the first image being taken from a position different from the illumination unit when the illumination unit emits light, captures a second image of the imaging area based on the timing signal, the second image being taken from the position when the illumination unit emits no light, and acquires a third image which is a difference image between the first image and the second image.
US08169491B2
Provided are an apparatus and method of obtaining a high-quality image by efficiently processing an image obtained at low-light levels. The image obtaining apparatus comprises a sensor which detects a pixel array value by using a color filter including color pixels for obtaining a color image and a reference pixel for obtaining a reference image used for hand-trembling function estimation; an exposure controller which controls exposure times of the color pixels and the reference pixel; and an image generator which generates a long-exposure color image signal and a short-exposure reference image signal from the detected pixel array value, the long-exposure color image signal and the short-exposure reference image signal being aligned with each other. Accordingly, accurate estimation of the hand-trembling function is possible, thereby enabling the high-quality color image restoration.
US08169483B1
A subject is connected to a monitoring system and videoed while being monitored. The monitoring system receives raw data from the subject and processes the raw data into waveform data, and transmits the waveform data to a marking device. The marking device simultaneously marks the waveform data with a waveform reference point and causes a light emitting diode to flash in the video, thereby creating a video reference point. A computer program locks the waveform reference point with the video reference point and thereby synchronizes the waveform data with the video.
US08169482B2
A surveillance video accumulation system pertaining to the present invention includes a plurality of surveillance camera units and a video accumulation unit that are connected with each other via a network. Among pieces of video data that have been encoded according to a prediction encoding method and transmitted from all the surveillance camera units, the video accumulation unit accumulates video data transmitted from a selected one of the surveillance camera units. Before the selection, if specified as a surveillance camera unit that is expected to shoot a subject, each of the surveillance camera units encodes video data of the subject based only on intra frame prediction and transmits the encoded video data to the accumulation unit.
US08169481B2
A multi-perspective context sensitive behavior assessment system includes an adaptive behavior model builder establishing a real-time reference model that captures intention of motion behavior. It operates by modeling outputs of multiple user defined scoring functions with respect to multiple references of application specific target areas of interest. The target areas have criticality values representing a user's preference regarding the target areas with respect to one another. The outputs of the scoring functions are multiplied by the critically values to form high level sequences of representation that are communicated to the user.
US08169478B2
A method for calibrating a mark quality verifier assembly wherein the assembly includes a camera including a camera field of view (FOV) and a processor for running software programs that are stored in a memory that is accessible to the processor, the method comprising the steps of providing a calibration program in the memory that is accessible by the processor, providing a calibration code on a surface of a calibration tool wherein the calibration code includes calibration information, positioning the calibration tool adjacent the camera so that the calibration code is within the FOV, obtaining at least one image of the calibration code via the camera, using information in the calibration code to determine that a verifier calibration process should be performed and commencing the calibration program when the calibration code indicates that a calibration process should be performed.
US08169474B2
The invention relates to a system (100) for capturing images of the face of an individual comprising: an image capture device (110) having a line of sight (112) directed towards the place from where the individual arrives, and two illumination devices (102, 104) disposed symmetrically with respect to the line of sight (112) and at a distance therefrom, each comprising means of generating a light flux intended to illuminate the face of the individual as he moves and whereof the illumination lobe (106, 108), representative of the luminance in a horizontal plane, has a maximum, the two lobes (106, 108) being symmetrical with each other with respect to the line of sight (112), the capture system (100) being characterized in that the generation means are such that each lobe (106, 108) is asymmetric with respect to the straight line bearing said maximum and has, from this maximum, a first front (122) curved towards the image capture device (110) and a second front (120) that is substantially plane and extending on the side from where the individual comes.
US08169470B2
An optical imaging device of the present invention comprises: a light source device; a light guide and illumination lens, provided in an insertion section that can be inserted into a body cavity, for constituting an illumination light path for guiding an illumination light from the light source device to a subject; an objective lens for receiving return lights from the subject; an image capturing section for acquiring a visible light band image from the return light; an excitation light cut filter and image capturing section for acquiring a fluorescent image from the return lights; and an illumination light filter, provided on the illumination light path, for decreasing light in a band overlapping with the band of light of which image is captured by the image capturing section from the illumination light incident on.
US08169459B2
The disclosure discloses a compensation method in a radial direction on a label side of an optical disc. An optical disc is inserted into an optical disk drive. The data side of the optical disc is divided into at least one compensation area. An optical pick-up head (OPU) is moved from inner to outer rings by simulating a writing process. The OPU is moved to some pre-determined points and radial-directional compensation is performed to obtain radial-directional voltage gains at the pre-determined points. The voltage gains are recorded. The label side of an optical disc is inserted into the optical disk drive. The simulated track number is calculated on the basis of the required moving distance for the OPU to write pattern on the label side. The OPU is moved to write the label side by a radial-directional lens driving voltage compensated with a gain obtained from a compensation formula.
US08169449B2
A system for compositing images using a multilayer graphics controller includes first and second applications. The first application defines masked display regions to a layer of the multilayer graphics controller using masking criterion. The second application provides an image to a further layer of the multilayer graphics controller for display in the masked region. The image may be a still image, streaming video, Internet image, or any other image type.
US08169446B2
A display device includes: a reflection property control layer which is disposed in the front face of a display screen, whereby reflection properties are switched for each predetermined region; and a control unit configured to switch the reflection properties of the reflection property control layer depending on an input image, with the control means detecting a gloss region from the input image, and switching the reflection properties of a predetermined region according to the relevant detection result.
US08169440B2
A method of processing data relating to geometrical primitives is disclosed. Each of the primitives has a plurality of vertices. The method uses a plurality of processing elements in parallel with one another, and comprises assigning respective vertex data to the processing elements, on each processing element, and in parallel with one another, performing at least one processing step on vertex data to produce processed vertex data, and transferring processed vertex data between processing elements so as to assemble primitive data.
US08169429B2
The object of the present invention is reducing power consumption of a driving power supply circuit. In the case where the driving voltage Vi is higher than the reference voltage ViH, The signal S3P, S3N of the differential amplifier 30P, 30N become level “L” concurrently, and the signal S4P, S4N of the output circuit 40P, 40N become level “H”. Subsequently, the NMOS 62 becomes on-state and decreases the driving voltage Vi of the node N6. At the above stage, the control signal CP becomes level “L”, then the operation of the constant current circuit 20P is halted.
US08169424B2
A display device includes a dynamic ratioless shift register which is operated in a stable manner and can expand the degree of freedom of design. In the dynamic ratioless shift register which is provided with thin film transistors having semiconductor layers made of p-Si on a substrate surface, a node which becomes the floating state is connected to a fixed potential through a capacitance element.
US08169423B2
The electronic writing instrument is provided with: a writing unit that writes down on a medium where a code indicating identity information and location information of the medium is formed; an emitting unit that emits light to the medium; a photoelectric conversion unit that includes photoelectric conversion element receiving a reflected light from the medium by the light emitted by the emitting unit and outputting an electronic signal after converting the reflected light by photoelectric conversion; a receiving unit that receives a user operation; and a condition changing unit that changes at least any one of an emitting condition of the emitting unit to the medium and an output condition of the photoelectric conversion unit when the receiving unit receives an operation.
US08169419B2
Capacitive detection systems, modules, and methods. In one embodiment, a power saving mode is implemented when deemed appropriate, based on an analysis of previous detection or non-detection of the presence and/or position of an object near a capacitive sensing area.
US08169417B2
A signal transfer assembly of a touch panel has a conductive film arranged on a surface of a substrate; an edge of the conductive film being connected to a silver conductive circuit; signals triggered on the conductive film being transferred to the silver conductive circuit and then to the signal output ends at two sides of the silver conductive circuit; an edge of the conductive film having a plurality of resistors near the silver conductive circuit; an area between two slots being formed as a transfer channel so that the resistors and the transfer channels are alternatively arranged. The resistors are hollowed slots penetrating through the conductive film. Each resistor has an oblong shape and lengths of the resistors are longer at a middle portion and are shorter at two sides. Widths of the transfer channels are wider at a middle section and are narrower at two sides.
US08169415B2
Provided is a touch sensor device including: at least one terminal connected to at least one contact pad; at least one common terminal; at least one light emitter connected between the common terminal and the terminal; and a touch sensor and light-emission controller unit connected to the common terminal and the terminal, and when a touch is sensed by the contact pad, controlling a corresponding light emitter to emit light.
US08169414B2
A high dimensional touchpad (HDTP) controls a variety of game aspects by detecting a user's finger movement in the left-right, forward-backward, roll, pitch, yaw, and downward pressure directions. One or more of the detected finger movements are used to control games on game devices, computers, and mobile devices.
US08169410B2
An application such as a web browser running on a portable display device is responsive to gestures to a touch-sensitive surface of the portable display device. The gestures are supplied by touching and then sliding on the touch-sensitive surface. Various operations of the application may be controlled based on the gestures.
US08169406B2
A wireless input device for playing an interactive motion-sensitive game using a wireless-compatible game console in which a virtual play environment is represented through one or more computer-animated visual, aural or tactile effects is provided wherein game play is conducted by moving, shaking, twisting, waiving or pointing the input device in a particular manner. The input device can include motion-sensitive circuitry and/or command circuitry for generating control signals and/or an effects generator and associated control circuitry to enable the input device to selectively generate at least one visual, aural or tactile effect comprising sound, lighting or vibration. The input device can include a wireless transceiver for providing two-way wireless communication with the wireless-compatible game console.
US08169400B2
A drive apparatus for a bistable displayer and a method thereof are provided for driving a bistable displayer with a plurality of pixels. The drive apparatus includes an initialization unit, a receiving unit and a display drive unit. The initialization unit is for generating at least one initial potential level to all pixels to perform initialization. The receiving unit is for receiving a plurality of gray levels. The display drive unit generates a waveform signal based on every gray level. The pulse width of the waveform signal relates to the value of the gray level. The waveform signal is then transmitted to a corresponding pixel to drive the pixel to be displayed.
US08169394B2
An image output apparatus includes: a display device having a light modulation section which is divided into a plurality of channels; a level adjusting unit that is provided to each of the channels, adjusts a level of input signal, and outputs adjusted output signal to corresponding channel; a signal switching unit that switches between a video input signal and a first reference signal as the input signal of the level adjusting unit, for a predetermined period; an adjustment amount correcting unit that compares an output signal from each of the level adjusting units with a second reference signal for the predetermined period and corrects the adjustment amounts of the corresponding level adjusting units on the basis of the comparison results; and a connection state switching unit that outputs a control instruction to the display device to change a state of the channels to an open state for the predetermined period.
US08169391B2
A display apparatus includes a plurality of pixels. Each pixel includes a main pixel, a sub-pixel, and a boosting capacitor. The main pixel receives a data signal in response to a first gate signal and is charged with a main pixel voltage. The sub-pixel receives the data signal in response to a second gate signal, and is charged with a sub-pixel voltage. The boosting capacitor is provided between the main pixel and the sub-pixel to increase the main pixel voltage when the sub-pixel is charged with the sub-pixel voltage in response to the second gate signal.
US08169387B2
An LED driver includes an embedded non-volatile memory (NVM) capable of being programmed and storing control data for setting a variety of features of the LED driver, such as the maximum current for driving the LEDs, analog parameters such as the resistance of the internal resistor for setting the reference current for the LEDs, and the operation modes of the charge pump of the LED driver. This enables implementation of multiple LED driver product options without the need for different metallization steps during the fabrication process for the LED driver.
US08169376B2
The present invention relates to base station transmitting and receiving antennas and control methods thereof. For this purpose, the present invention provides a control method of a base station transmitting antenna. The control method includes collecting positional information and transmission level values of all terminals in a cell; analyzing statistics of cell traffic using the positional information and transmission level values, and generating antenna radiation patterns on the basis of the analyzed statistics result; optimizing the antenna radiation patterns by synthesizing beam patterns; and changing antenna beam patterns according to the optimized antenna radiation patterns. According to embodiments of the present invention, it is possible to increase a channel capacity in a cell, ensure the QoS in all terminals in the cell, and reduce installation and operation costs of a base station system.
US08169375B1
A stabilizing mechanism and method for a reflector antenna, in a mobile satellite system on a transport, such as a vehicle, for substantially minimizing damage to the reflector antenna when stowed. The stabilizing mechanism uses a stabilizing surface and a pair of stabilizing devices connected on opposite sides of the reflector antenna to provide a pre-load separation distance between a stabilizing surface and the reflector antenna when the reflector antenna is stowed. The pre-loaded separation minimizes any movement of the reflector antenna towards the stabilizing surface during movement of the transport or in adverse environmental conditions.
US08169356B2
A motion sensing method and apparatus includes a housing enclosing a microwave motion sensor including an antenna, and a security system. The antenna may be a patch antenna which includes microwave radiating elements for transmitting and receiving a microwave signal for sensing motion. A reflector is attached to the housing and positioned above the antenna for downward shaping of the microwave signal. The microwave radiating elements together with the reflector provide a radiation pattern where a main beam is transmitted in a direction orthogonal to a surface of the antenna and a sided lobe is transmitted downward in amplitude below the microwave motion sensor. An alarm circuit indicates when the microwave sensor detects motion in armed mode, and a masking circuit indicates when the microwave sensor detects motion in a mask zone when the security system is unarmed. A second sensor may be positioned beneath the microwave motion sensor.
US08169354B2
An apparatus, protocol and methods for reducing vehicle energy consumption and for precise electronic event control, by implementing full CPU off-loading, using pulse-width modulation (PWM) with analog feedback diagnosis enabling real-time operation. Accordingly, analog feedback is used for external integrated circuits (IC) controlled by a PWM output, for processes to be analyzed. The apparatus includes a microprocessor that integrates an autonomous PWM module and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) group manager, each including register modules for enabling analog-to-digital signal conversion comparisons of PWM feedback data, and generating of an interrupt commands when required.
US08169352B2
A sigma-delta modulator for forming a digital output signal representative of a voltage level of an input signal, the sigma delta modulator having a node arranged to receive a current flow that is representative of the voltage level of the input signal and on whose voltage the digital output signal is dependent, the sigma-delta modulator comprising a plurality of capacitive elements for smoothing the current flow, each capacitive element being connected at one end to the node and at its other end to a respective switch unit and a plurality of switch units, each switch unit being arranged to connect the respective one of the capacitive elements to either a first voltage level or a second voltage level in dependence on the voltage at the node so as to provide feedback that affects the voltage at the node.
US08169347B2
A parallel data output device includes a first latch circuit that latches and outputs one of at least two data signals input in parallel in accordance with a first clock signal; a second latch circuit that latches and outputs another of the at least two data signals in accordance with a second clock signal; and a phase set circuit that shifts at least one of a phase of the first clock signal and a phase of the second clock signal based on the phase of the first clock signal and the phase of the second clock signal.
US08169341B2
A park assist system for parking a vehicle in a target parking space includes a sensing system. The sensing system determines whether there is a sufficient slot length in a target parking space too small to complete a parking maneuver in a single maneuver, but large enough to complete a parking maneuver in more than one maneuver. During each of the more than one parking maneuvers, the driver is prompted to execute a calculated steering trajectory.
US08169330B2
A system and method for sampling air in a controlled environment that includes two or more air sampling devices at different locations within the controlled environment. A controller is provided at a location outside of the controlled environment and in separate air flow communication with each of the two or more air sampling devices via separate first vacuum tubes, the controller having a manifold configured to separately control a rate of air flow from the two or more air sampling devices to the controller via each of the separate first vacuum tubes and to selectively direct the air flow from each of the separate first vacuum tubes to one or more second vacuum tubes. A vacuum source is provided at a location outside the controlled environment and in air flow communication with the controller via the one or more second vacuum tubes, the vacuum source providing suction and being controlled by the controller to generate the air flow through each of the first vacuum tubes. And, a flow switch for each of the two or more air sampling devices is provided at a location between a corresponding air sampling device and the vacuum source, each of the flow switches being configured to separately measure and control the rate of air flow through a corresponding first vacuum tube. An alarm is automatically activated at a location inside the controlled environment by one or more of the flow switches when the rate of air flow measured at one or more of the flow switches deviates from a desired value by a predetermined amount.
US08169323B2
A noncontact IC tag label includes: a band-shaped label base material inclusive of a release surface formed at least at one end of the base material and releasably treated in advance, and a non-release surface; an electroconductive layer formed on the non-release surface of the band-shaped label base material and including a required antenna pattern; and an IC chip mounted on one face of the electroconductive layer. The electroconductive layer and the IC chip are shrouded by a surface protection sheet via a pressure-sensitive adhesive layer. A thermoadhesive resin layer bonded onto the non-release surface of the band-shaped label base material is provided on an opposite face of the electroconductive layer including the antenna pattern, with respect to the surface protection sheet. Also, the pressure-sensitive adhesive layer is bonded onto the non-release surface and release surface of the band-shaped label base material.
US08169322B1
A passive RFID tag suitable for attachment to an electrically conductive surface is provided. The passive RFID tag includes a dielectric substrate, an RFID chip for storing data, and an RFID antenna structure operatively connected to the RFID chip wherein the RFID antenna structure comprises a slotted inverted L-shape. A method of manufacturing a passive RFID tag includes forming an antenna structure on a conductive layer, the antenna structure comprising a slotted inverted L-shape. The method further includes operatively connecting an RFID chip with the antenna structure. A method associated with a passive RFID tag includes providing a passive RFID tag. The passive RFID tag includes a dielectric substrate, an RFID chip for storing data, and an RFID antenna structure operatively connected to the RFID chip wherein the RFID antenna structure comprises a slotted inverted L-shape. The method further includes operatively connecting the passive RFID tag to a conductive surface.
US08169314B2
A drain pan system for activating a pump when detecting a predetermined water level in a drain pan is provided. The drain pan system includes the drain pan, the pump, a water sensor, first and second inputs, a control section and a switching device. The water sensor is coupled to the drain pan for detecting a level of water in the drain pan, the water sensor generating a drain pan water level detection signal in response to detection of the level of the water in the drain pan equal to or greater than a predetermined water level. The pump is coupled to the drain pan and, when activated, pumps the water from the drain pan. The first input couples a source line to a first power potential. The second input couples a neutral line to a second power potential, the second power potential being a neutral potential. The control section is coupled to the water sensor for receiving the drain pan water level detection signal therefrom. The control section is also connected to the first and second inputs and generates a switching signal in response to the drain pan water level detection signal. In addition, the switching device is coupled to the control section for connecting the first input to the pump in response to the switching signal, thereby activating the pump to pump the water from the drain pan.
US08169307B2
To provide a vehicle rear-view mirror equipped with a display device, configured so that: a warning indication is easy to see from the driver and is hard to see from following vehicles and vehicles on the adjacent lanes; and when no warning is indicated, no discontinuities occur in the rear-area image reflected in the mirror and the warning symbol is unnoticeable. A mirror element 18 is configured by forming a semi-transmissive reflective film 24 or 56 formed of a dielectric multilayer film on the back or front surface of a transparent glass substrate 22. A dark color mask member 26 is arranged on the back surface of the mirror element 18. An opening 26a is formed on the mask member 26. A light-orienting tube 28 is arranged in such a manner that it protrudes in the backward direction of the mask member 26 so as to surround the opening 26a. The tube axis 28a of the light-orienting tube 28 is inclined in the direction toward the driver's viewpoint. An indication mask 32, a light diffusion plate 34 and an LED 36 are arranged as an indication light-emitting portion 30 by depositing them in this order on a rear end-side opening 28b of the light-orienting tube 28.
US08169301B2
This disclosure discloses an RFID tag information communicating apparatus, comprising an apparatus antenna device; a command transmission portion that generates and transmits a command signal for reading information from an RFID circuit element; an information acquisition portion that attempts a reception of a reply signal transmitted from said RFID circuit element in response to said command signal; and an electrostatic-safe communication control portion that controls at least said command transmission portion and repeatedly transmit a plurality of times said command signal to said RFID circuit element so that information substantially unaffected by static electricity is acquired by said information acquisition portion.
US08169296B1
A switch matrix module (600) includes programmable stub breakers (508-512, 514-518) which can break off the bus and isolate unused portion of the switch matrix. Using three-way stub breakers (508-512, 514-518) at the matrix front-ends that can either completely isolate a middle matrix or cut off stubs left or right of the destination and source matrices, allows for the formation of very large matrices which have improved operational performance.
US08169290B2
Methods and apparatus for electromagnetic components comprise a core and a winding. The core and winding are configured to provide smaller and more effective electromagnetic components.
US08169279B2
A notched SAW image frequency rejection filter system includes a SAW filter having an input, an output and a ground output and an impedance matching network including a first matching inductance connected to the SAW filter output and a second matching inductance connected to the ground output of the SAW filter; the SAW filter having an inherent internal capacitance that produces a predetermined capacitive leakage current at the image frequency; an inherent internal inductance that produces an inductance leakage current at the image frequency; and a boosted inherent parasitic ground inductance at the ground output of the SAW filter for generating a voltage across the second matching inductance to produce a compensation current which is substantially opposite in phase and substantially matched in magnitude with the capacitive leakage current for reducing the capacitive leakage current and increasing the image frequency rejection.
US08169275B2
A circuit board with jumper structure is disclosed. The circuit board includes a substrate, a ground layer, a first signal transmission line, and a second signal transmission line. The ground layer is formed on a second plane of the substrate. The first signal transmission line is formed on a first plane of the substrate, and coupled to a first signal end and a second signal end. A first signal transmitted on the first signal transmission line in a combination method of a microstrip line to co-planar waveguide transition and a co-planar waveguide to microstrip line transition. The second signal transmission line is formed on the second plane of the substrate, and coupled to a third signal end and a fourth signal end. A second signal is transmitted on the second signal transmission line in the co-planar waveguide transmission.
US08169270B2
A VCO (for example, in an FM receiver) includes an LC resonant tank. The LC resonant tank includes a coarse tuning capacitor bank and a fine tuning capacitor bank. The coarse tuning capacitor bank contains a plurality of digitally controlled coarse tuning capacitor elements, each providing a first capacitance value when active. The fine tuning capacitor bank contains a plurality of digitally controlled fine tuning capacitor elements, each providing a second capacitance value when active. To address the practical problem of capacitor mismatch, capacitance overlap throughout the VCO tuning range is created by selecting the first and second capacitance values such that the capacitance value of the fine capacitor bank is greater than the first capacitance value when all of the digitally controlled fine tuning capacitor elements of the fine capacitor bank are active.
US08169269B2
In a Hartley voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) circuit comprising two inductors (Ld, Lg), a transistor (Q1) and a varactor (C), the two inductors (Ld, Lg) are arranged as a coupled inductor pair to enable positive mutual inductance (M) between them and reduce the size of the VCO.
US08169265B2
A phase lock loop circuit is provided. A phase frequency detector detects a phase difference between a feedback signal and a reference signal, and generates a phase error signal in response to the detected phase difference. A charge pump consists of at least one core device and outputs a current signal based on the phase error signal. An active loop filter receives and transfers the current signal into a control signal. Operating voltage of the active loop filter is higher than operating voltage of the charge pump. A controlled oscillator receives the control signal and generates an output signal in response to the control signal. A feedback divider receives the output signal to generate the feedback signal.
US08169261B2
A radio frequency amplification stage comprising: an amplifier for receiving an input signal to be amplified and a power supply voltage; and a power supply voltage stage for supplying said power supply voltage, comprising: means for providing a reference signal representing the envelope of the input signal; means for selecting one of a plurality of supply voltage levels in dependence on the reference signal; and means for generating an adjusted selected power supply voltage, comprising an ac amplifier for amplifying a difference between the reference signal and one of the selected supply voltage level or the adjusted selected supply voltage level, and a summer for summing the amplified difference with the selected supply voltage to thereby generate the adjusted supply voltage.
US08169259B2
An active filter includes a first filter and a second filter. The first filter receives an input signal, and generates a first output signal by filtering the input signal. The second filter receives the first output signal during a time period adjusted based on a variation of a time constant of the first filter, and generates a second output signal by filtering the first output signal received during the time period. Therefore, a variation of a time constant is compensated by using post integration time control.
US08169252B2
A low voltage drop unidirectional electronic valve constituted of: a first terminal; a second terminal; a first electronically controlled switch coupled between the first terminal and the second terminal; and a first charge pump arranged to close the first electronically controlled switch when the voltage potential at the first terminal is greater than the voltage potential at the second terminal by a first value. The first charge pump is arranged in a closed loop with the first electronically controlled switch so as to continuously maintain the voltage potential at the first terminal greater than the voltage potential at the second terminal by the first value.
US08169250B2
A signal level conversion circuit includes three or more level shift circuits to output internal output signals upon receiving input signals, respectively. Each of the level shift circuits is formed of a common electrical element and an electrical element connected to the common electrical element. A voltage higher than that supplied to the common electrical element is supplied to the electrical element. A buffer circuit having an input tolerant function is provided in each of the common electrical elements. The internal output signals are set at lower level than the input signals by the buffer circuits, and the internal output signal outputted from one of the level shift circuits is further outputted via other level shift circuits.
US08169244B2
The invention relates to a pulse width modulator, more particularly to a cross-coupled pulse width modulator. A crossing input signal modulator according to the present invention comprises: a positive path block which includes a first integrator for performing the first-order integration of feedback signals in first input and output signals and then transmitting the first-order integrated signals to a second integrator, and a second integrator for performing the second-order integration of a signal from the first integrator and a second input signal and then transmitting the second-order integrated signals; and a negative path block which includes a third integrator for performing the first-order integration of feedback signals in the second input and output signals and integration of a signal from the third integrator and the first input signal and then transmitting the second-order integrated signals. This configuration allows cross-coupling of the inputs from two integrators to generate an accurate differential pulse width modulation (PWM) single, and enables optimization of the IC implementation by adopting a feedback system that features a simplified implementation and minimal application area.
US08169239B2
A driver circuit includes a mode control unit and a plurality of source drivers to drive a display panel including N pixel cells on each scan line. Each source driver has M driving channels, and a first subset of the driving channels and a second subset of the driving channels are respectively in a first mode and a second mode according to a preset mode sequence, wherein M≧N. The 1st through Nth driving channels of a first source driver and the Mth through (M−N+1)th driving channels of a second source driver respectively drive the 1st through Nth pixel cells during a first scan period and a second scan period. The modes of the Mth through 1st driving channels of the second source driver are respectively altered to match the modes of the 1st through Mth driving channels of the first source driver by the mode control unit.
US08169232B2
A resistance calibration code generating apparatus includes a code calibration unit configured to calibrate and output code values of a resistance calibration code during predetermined cycles of a calibration clock, which are determined by a code calibration time control command, and a calibration clock generating unit configured to output the calibration clock using a code calibration command.
US08169230B2
A semiconductor device is formed on a semiconductor wafer. The semiconductor device has: an output buffer configured to externally output an output signal received from an internal circuit; an input buffer configured to output an input signal externally received to the internal circuit; a switch configured to control electrical connection between an output terminal of the output buffer and an input terminal of the input buffer; a first transmission path provided in a scribe region of the semiconductor wafer and connecting between the output terminal and the switch; and a second transmission path provided in the scribe region and connecting between the input terminal and the switch.
US08169227B2
A probing apparatus for testing semiconductor devices comprises a housing configured to define a testing chamber, a device carrier positioned in the housing and configured to receive the semiconductor device, a platen positioned on the housing, an alignment module positioned on the platen, a planarity-adjusting module positioned on the alignment module, an angular adjusting module positioned on the planarity-adjusting module, and a card holder positioned on the angular adjusting module and configured to receive a probe card having a plurality of probes.
US08169223B2
An ionization vacuum gauge includes a cathode, an anode and an ion collector. The anode is surrounding the cathode. The ion collector is surrounding the anode. The cathode, the anode and the ion collector are concentrically aligned and arranged in that order. The anode comprises a carbon nanotube structure including a plurality of carbon nanotubes.
US08169221B2
Devices, systems, methods, and other embodiments associated with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are described. In one embodiment, an apparatus includes an RF coil for use in multi-nuclear excitation in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The RF coil includes a set of two or more L-C coils. Members of the set of two or more L-C coils have individual resonance frequencies. An RF amplifier is placed near the RF coil. The RF amplifier is controllable to selectively produce the individual resonance frequency of a member of the set of two or more L-C coils based, at least in part, on a digital input provided to the RF amplifier.
US08169217B2
Systems methods, and other embodiments associated with acquiring intersecting TrueFISP images using grouped reverse centric phase encoding are described. One example method includes controlling an MRI apparatus to produce a TrueFISP sequence that delays acquisition of the center of k-space to reduce saturation banding artifacts. The example method also includes controlling the MRI apparatus to produce a TrueFISP sequence that reduces eddy current artifacts by grouping (e.g., pairing) lines in k-space. The method concludes by acquiring NMR signal in response to the TrueFISP sequence.
US08169209B2
An output driving circuit capable of reducing EMI effect includes a non-overlapping signal generation unit for generating a first non-overlapping signal and a second non-overlapping signal according to an input signal, a pre-driver for generating a first pre-driving signal and a second pre-driving signal according to the first non-overlapping signal and the second non-overlapping signal, a high-side switch, a low-side switch, and a control unit for controlling the high-side switch or the low-side switch to be switched into a weak on state to reduce load inductive current effect for a load.
US08169204B2
The present invention mainly relates to a current limiting circuit, also known as over-current protection circuit, and a power regulator using the same. The purpose for the circuit is to protect the power device and the loading circuit for the power regulator. The conventional current limiting circuit takes advantage of a resistor and a MOS to convert the detected over current into a voltage and then turn on a P-typed MOS to clamp the gate voltage of a power transistor so as to achieve the goal of current limiting. However, the process variation for the resistor and said MOS and their temperature variation lead to a significant error to the limiting current. The present invention, therefore, takes advantage of the current comparison to enhance the accuracy for the current limiting circuit.
US08169203B1
A low-drop out (LDO) regulator circuit is provided having a gate of a pass transistor coupled to an output of an operational transconductance amplifier, the LDO regulator exhibiting a non-dominant pole at an output of the LDO. A dynamic zero-compensation circuit is coupled in parallel to the pass transistor. A compensation control circuit is coupled and configured to adjust a frequency, at which a zero is generated, and cause the generated zero to track with the non-dominant pole.
US08169198B2
The phase node voltage or the PWM signal in an asynchronous boost converter is monitored to detect a phase node voltage ringing. When a phase node voltage ringing is detected, a detection signal is asserted to establish a bypass path to bypass the inductor of the converter. A charge bypass circuit is shunt to the inductor, and controlled by the detection signal to establish the bypass path. Due to the bypass path, the phase node voltage is maintained at a constant, and the phase node voltage radiation and input/output noise are eliminated.
US08169197B2
A device for damping control of mechanical torsional oscillations of an electrical alternating current generator connected to a multi-phase power supply system, includes a controllable converter of an HVDC installation connected to the power supply system, a measurement and filter device for detection of a frequency-dependent signal in a frequency range of the torsional oscillations of the alternating current generator and a correction apparatus for correction of a control signal for the converter for the HVDC installation. The correction apparatus includes a single phase correction filter for correction of a phase frequency response of the frequency-dependent signal. The control signal is formed by a current nominal value of a current regulator of the converter or a triggering angle of the nominal valve and with the phase correction filter is configured to take a transfer function of the current regulator into account.
US08169194B2
A method of applying pulsation energy to an online battery backup system including the steps of (1) sampling at least one voltage sampling circuit to monitor a float voltage drop across the terminals of each battery unit within a plurality of battery units; (2) selecting from among the plurality of battery units the unit having the greatest float voltage drop; (3) operating a pulse generation circuit to apply pulsation energy across the terminals of only the selected battery unit; and (4) ceasing to operate the pulse generation circuit in response to a predetermined trigger. A generally corresponding method may be performed on each battery cell within the plurality of battery units. Also, battery pulsation systems for an online battery backup system including means for applying pulsation energy across the terminals of only a selected battery unit or a selected battery cell.
US08169193B2
A circuit for dissipating injected parasitic charge includes a circuit stage, a pulse generating circuit and a switch. The circuit stage has an input node and an output node that injects a parasitic charge when switched OFF to the output node. The pulse generating circuit can generate a pulsed signal having an input for receiving a control signal. The control signal indicates the circuit stage is switching OFF, and has an output for outputting a pulsed signal in response to the control signal at the input. The pulsed signal can have a predetermined duration. The switch can be configured to be actuated by the pulsed signal output by the pulse generating circuit, and has a terminal connected to the output node of the circuit stage and a terminal connected to circuit to substantially dissipate the injected parasitic charge.
US08169190B2
Lower order control devices control plural battery cells configuring plural battery modules. An input terminal of the low order control device in the highest potential, an output terminal of the low order control device in the lowest potential, and a high order control device are connected by isolating units, photocouplers. Diodes which prevent a discharge current of the battery cells in the battery modules are disposed between the output terminal of the low order control device and the battery cells in the battery module on the low potential side. Terminals related to input/output of a signal are electrically connected without isolating among the plural low order control devices.
US08169178B2
A method of detecting an angular position of a rotor of a motor includes detecting switching ripple peaks and armature current disturbance peaks using a peak detector configured to generate a square wave having edges coinciding with detected peaks. The method further includes filtering the square wave in a time domain by generating an integration ramp, toward a set value, of an estimated ripple frequency for an interval of time based on the estimated ripple frequency. An enablement range is established to reset the integration ramp by setting a threshold below and above the set value and a time window centered on an end time of each period of the estimated ripple frequency. The method further includes resetting the integration ramp, and updating the estimated ripple frequency based upon a period determined by a time of the resetting, if an edge of the square wave is within the time window.
US08169174B2
In a steering control unit, a U-phase feed line branches into paired branch feed lines, phase-open MOSFETs are provided in middle portions of the branch feed lines, phase-open MOSFETs are provided in middle portions of a V-phase feed line and a W-phase feed line, and the phase-open MOSFETs are arranged in such a manner that parasitic diodes are in the same orientation with respect to a motor. When an abnormality occurs, all the phase-open MOSFETs are turned off. Then, a closed circuit, which includes phase coils and through which electric currents flow, is no longer present.
US08169173B2
A method for controlling a vehicle drive unit, the vehicle drive unit having at least two individual motors. A total actual torque is continuously compared with an allowable total torque, the total actual torque being calculated from individual actual torque values of the at least two individual motors, and the allowable total torque being calculated from the allowable individual torque values of the at least two individual motors, and an error response being initiated if the comparison establishes that the total actual torque is greater than the allowable total torque.
US08169167B2
Methods are described wherein the signals from various sensors that monitor parameters such as beam position, beam intensity at each turn, number of turns, extracted current, extracted beam profile in space and energy are used to determine the effect of the variation of different parameters that control the operation of an accelerator. The diagnostic measurements and adjustments may be based upon measuring and evaluating parameters as a function of turn, and are part of an automated feedback loop for achieving the proper automated operation. The methods can be used to establish proper operating values for the accelerator parameters for optimum beam operation. By the use of feedback the operation of the accelerator can be automatically controlled in real time.
US08169165B2
A portable lighting device, such as a flashlight, with a mechanical power switch and multiple operating modes is provided. The mechanical power switch is disposed in series with the controller for the lighting device and acts as the user interface to the controller to change modes of operation. Because the mechanical power switch is in series with the controller, the portable lighting device does not consume battery power when the mechanical switch is open. A state machine coupled to the controller is polled by the controller each time it is powered up to determine the operational mode of the lighting device.
US08169152B2
An electrodeless plasma lamp is described comprising a lamp body including a solid dielectric material. The lamp includes a bulb received at least partially within an opening in the solid dielectric material and a radio frequency (RF) feed configured to provide power to the solid dielectric material. A conductive material is provided adjacent to the bulb to concentrate the power proximate the bulb. The conductive material may be located below an upper surface of the solid dielectric material. The conductive material may modify at least a portion of an electric field proximate the bulb so that the portion of the electric field is oriented substantially parallel to an upper surface of the lamp body.
US08169138B2
The present invention relates to an OLED display and a manufacturing method thereof, including a gate line, a data line intersecting the gate line, a switching thin film transistor connected to the gate line and the data line, a driving thin film transistor connected to the switching thin film transistor, a first driving voltage line connected to the driving thin film transistor and overlapping the gate line and the data line, a first electrode connected to the driving thin film transistor, a second electrode facing the first electrode, and an light emitting member disposed between the first electrode and the second electrode.
US08169135B2
A semiconductor lighting device includes a semiconductor light emitter packaged on a reflective substrate to emit a first light and a remote wavelength conversion layer on a back-transferred light path to convert the back-transferred first light into a forward second light. A filter is disposed on a light emitting forward path with a space to the semiconductor light emitter to reflect back at least a portion of the first light. A diffusive member may be positioned outside of the filter to diffuse the forward passing light before it exits from the semiconductor lighting device. As a second aspect of this invention, a solid state lighting device includes a short wavelength semiconductor emitter; a long wavelength semiconductor emitter with wavelength in reddish orange range; a filter on a light emitting forward path to reflect back a portion of short wavelength first light; and a wavelength conversion component on a back-transferred light path. The device produces a mixture of warm white light in a correlated color temperature from 2700˜3500 K and color rendering index at least 85 for any indoor lighting application.
US08169132B2
An organic light emitting diode (OLED) display device and a method of manufacturing the same is disclosed. In one embodiment, the OLED device includes a substrate; a display unit formed on a display area of the substrate; and an encapsulating film covering i) the display unit and ii) a non-display area surrounding the display area, wherein the density and thickness of the encapsulating film increase in a direction from a center portion of the encapsulating film to an edge portion of the encapsulating film.
US08169126B2
A low frequency oscillator includes a plurality of drum-shaped oscillators. Each of the drum-shaped oscillators is constructed so that a pair of disk-shaped flexural vibrators is attached on both open ends of a conductive cylinder so as to be arranged face to face. And a conductive elongated coupling member is fixed to adjacent the drum-shaped oscillators at a central portion thereof so as to electrically connect between adjacent the disk-shaped flexural vibrators and thereby coupling the drum-shaped oscillators along a central axis thereof.
US08169109B2
A switched reluctance machine has an array of poles attached to a stationary holding member to form a stator. The stator has no back-iron. The machine has two arrays of rotor poles, positioned on either side of the stator poles, and circumferentially aligned with each other. When a pair of rotor poles is aligned with a stator pole, a small airgap is formed at each end of the stator pole, across which flux can be driven to produce torque in a rotary arrangement or force in a linear arrangement. When the poles are in the unaligned position, the phase inductance is very low.
US08169105B2
Embodiments of a system, topology, and methods for providing electrical power to electronic devices from various power sources are described generally herein. Other embodiments may be described and claimed.
US08169097B2
A method for the operation of a wind power plant (10), wherein in particular the wind power plant (10) will be or is switched off after a shutdown signal is triggered by a safety shutdown device (20) that is logically superordinate to an operating control system. The wind power plant (10) is released for operation by means of an operating device (41) that is spatially separated from the wind power plant (10) after a safety shutdown. An energy supply system with at least one wind power plant (10) and safety chain on a wind power plant are also described.
US08169095B2
A wind energy plant with a rotor, which is connected to a gearbox and/or a generator via a rotor shaft, wherein the rotor shaft is bearing mounted on a carrier unit via two taper roller bearings in an O arrangement, characterized in that each taper roller bearing has an inner and an outer race, wherein the inner races and the outer races are secured in their distance to each other in the axial direction with respect to the rotational axis of the rotor shaft via an adjustment device.
US08169085B2
A semiconductor device according to one embodiment includes: a substrate; a wiring provided above the substrate and including a graphene nanoribbon layer comprising a plurality of laminated graphene nanoribbon sheets; and a wiring connecting member penetrating at least one of the plurality of graphene nanoribbon sheets for connecting the wiring and a conductive member above or below the wiring.
US08169083B2
A semiconductor device includes a wiring substrate having a mounting surface on which a semiconductor element is mounted. A portion of the mounting surface exposed from the semiconductor element is covered by a solder-resist layer, and an extension portion of the solder-resist layer extends from a dropping-commencing point of a liquid-state under-filling agent on the portion of the mounting surface exposed from the semiconductor element and into an area of the wiring substrate covered by the semiconductor element. A gap between the semiconductor element and the extension portion of the solder-resist layer is formed to be narrower than the gap between the semiconductor element and the mounting surface of the wiring substrate so that liquid drops of the under-filling agent dropped at the dropping-commencing point are sucked into the gap by a capillary phenomenon.
US08169082B2
A semiconductor device includes: a sensor including a sensor structure on a first side of the sensor and a periphery element surrounding the sensor structure; and a cap covering the sensor structure and having a second side bonded to the first side of the sensor. The cap includes a first wiring layer on the second side of the cap. The first wiring layer steps over the periphery element. The sensor further includes a sensor side connection portion, and the cap further includes a cap side connection portion. The sensor side connection portion is bonded to the cap side connection portion. At least one of the sensor side connection portion and the cap side connection portion provides an eutectic alloy so that the sensor side connection portion and the cap side connection portion are bonded to each other.
US08169081B1
An integrated circuit structure includes a first conductive layer and an under bump metallization layer over the first conductive layer. The first conductive layer has a first conductive region and a second conductive region electrically isolated from the first conductive region. The under bump metallization layer has a first conductive area and a second conductive area electrically isolated from the first conductive area, the first conductive area substantially located over the first conductive region and the second conductive area substantially located over the second conductive region. At least one of the first conductive area or the first conductive region includes a first protrusion extending toward the second conductive area or second conductive region, respectively. Conductive vias connect the first conductive region to the second conductive area and connect the second conductive region to the first conductive area, and the vias include at least one via connected to the first protrusion.
US08169074B2
Provided are a semiconductor device and a method of fabricating the same. The semiconductor device includes a first interconnection disposed on a substrate. The interconnection includes a first silicon interconnection region and a first metal interconnection region sequentially stacked on the substrate. A second interconnection includes a second silicon interconnection region and a second metal interconnection region that are stacked sequentially. The second silicon interconnection region has a lower resistivity than the first silicon interconnection region.
US08169072B2
A disclosed semiconductor device includes a reinforcing board having first and second faces, an electronic part accommodating portion penetrating the reinforcing board, a through hole, an electronic part having a front face on which an electrode pad is formed and a back face, a through electrode installed inside the through hole, a first sealing resin filling a gap between the through electrode and an inner wall of the through hole, a second sealing resin filled into the electronic part accommodating portion while causing the bonding face of the electrode pad of the electronic part accommodating portion to be exposed to an outside, and a multi-layered wiring structure configured to include insulating layers laminated on the first face of the reinforcing board and an interconnection pattern, wherein the interconnection pattern is directly connected to the electrode pad of the electronic part and the through electrode.
US08169070B2
The semiconductor device comprises a semiconductor chip defining a first face and a second face opposite to the first face, the semiconductor chip comprising at least one contact element on the first face of the semiconductor chip, an encapsulating body encapsulating the semiconductor chip, the encapsulating body having a first face and a second face opposite to the first face, a redistribution layer extending over the semiconductor chip and the first face of the encapsulating body and containing a metallization layer comprising contact areas connected with the contact elements of the semiconductor chip, and an array of external contact elements located on the second phase of the encapsulating body.
US08169067B2
Methods and apparatuses for improved thermal, electrical and/or mechanical performance in integrated circuit (IC) packages are described. An IC circuit package comprises a substrate having a central opening. An IC die, resides within the opening in the substrate. Wirebonds couples a plurality of bond pads on a top surface of the IC die to a plurality of bond fingers on a top surface the substrate. An encapsulating material encapsulates at least the IC die and the wirebonds such that at least a bottom surface of the IC die is left exposed. The encapsulating material suspends the die such that at least a portion of the die is held within the opening in the substrate.
US08169060B2
Some embodiments herein relate to a transmitter. The transmitter includes an integrated circuit (IC) package including a first antenna configured to radiate a first electromagnetic signal therefrom. A printed circuit board (PCB) substrate includes a waveguide configured to receive the first electromagnetic signal and to generate a waveguide signal based thereon. A second antenna can be electrically coupled to the waveguide and can radiate a second electromagnetic signal that corresponds to the waveguide signal. Other devices and methods are also disclosed.
US08169053B2
Provided are resistive random access memories (RRAMs) and methods of manufacturing the same. A RRAM includes a storage node including a variable resistance layer, a switching device connected to the storage node, and a protective layer covering an exposed part of the variable resistance layer. The protective layer includes at least one of aluminum oxide and titanium oxide. The variable resistance layer is a metal oxide layer.
US08169051B2
A semiconductor device includes a substrate, an insulating film formed over the substrate, first and second conductive plugs formed in the insulating film, a capacitor element, and a wiring. The capacitor element includes a lower electrode, a dielectric film, and an upper electrode. The lower electrode is connected to an end of the first plug and formed on the insulating film, and includes a first barrier film. The dielectric film is formed on upper and side surfaces of the lower electrode. The upper electrode is formed on the dielectric film, and includes a second barrier metal film being wider than the lower electrode. The wiring is connected to an end of the second plug and formed on the insulating film, and includes a first layer and a second layer formed on the first layer. The first and second layers include the first and second barrier metal films, respectively.
US08169043B2
An optical sensor package structure includes a substrate, a metal plate, an optical sensing chip, a plurality of bonding wires and a lens module. The substrate includes a top surface, a bottom surface and a hole penetrating the top surface and the bottom surface. The metal plate covers the hole from the bottom surface of the substrate. The optical sensing chip is received in the hole and mounted on the metal plate. The bonding wires interconnect the optical sensing chip and the top surface of substrate. The lens module is covering on the hole and mounting on the top surface of the substrate to enclose the optical sensing chip and the bonding wires. Because the optical sensing chip is received in the hole of the substrate, the height of the optical sensor package structure can be reduced to adapt to a compact size electrical device.
US08169041B2
A micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) package is described herein. The package includes a carrier substrate having a top side, a MEMS chip mounted on the top side of the carrier substrate, and at least one chip component on or above the top side of the carrier substrate or embedded in the carrier substrate. The package also includes a thin metallic shielding layer covering the MEMS chip and the chip component and forming a seal with the top side of the carrier substrate.
US08169040B2
A semiconductor device includes: an n-channel MIS transistor and a p-channel MIS transistor. An n-channel MIS transistor includes: a first gate insulating film having an amorphous layer or an epitaxial layer formed on a p-type semiconductor region between a first source/drain regions; and a first gate electrode having a stack structure formed with a first metal layer and a first compound layer. The first metal layer is formed on the first gate insulating film and made of a first metal having a work function of 4.3 eV or smaller, and the first compound layer is formed on the first metal layer and contains a compound of a second metal and a IV-group semiconductor. The second metal is different from the first metal. A p-channel MIS transistor includes a second gate electrode having a second compound layer containing a compound of the same composition as the first compound layer.
US08169037B2
A MISFET includes a drain diffusion layer of a first conductivity type, a source diffusion layer of the first conductivity type, a gate electrode, and a substrate/well of a second conductivity type. In the MISFET, first diffusion layers of the first conductivity type are provided at two or more positions at predetermined intervals with an isolation therebetween respectively. The two or more positions are facing at least two sides of the element isolation insulation around the drain diffusion layer. A second diffusion layer of the second conductivity type is provided so as to be close to or to come in contact with the source diffusion layer.
US08169036B2
A semiconductor integrated circuit device having a control signal system for avoiding failure to check an indefinite signal propagation prevention circuit, for facilitating a check included in an automated tool, and for facilitating a power shutdown control inside a chip. In the semiconductor integrated circuit device, power shutdown priorities are provided by independent power domains (Area A to Area I). A method for preventing a power domain having a lower priority from being turned OFF when a circuit having a high priority is turned ON is also provided.
US08169033B2
Methods of forming transistors and structures thereof are disclosed. A preferred embodiment comprises a semiconductor device including a workpiece, a gate dielectric disposed over the workpiece, and a thin layer of conductive material disposed over the gate dielectric. A layer of semiconductive material is disposed over the thin layer of conductive material. The layer of semiconductive material and the thin layer of conductive material comprise a gate electrode of a transistor. A source region and a drain region are formed in the workpiece proximate the gate dielectric. The thin layer of conductive material comprises a thickness of about 50 Angstroms or less.
US08169031B2
A contact structure is disclosed in which a continuous metal semiconductor alloy is located within a via contained within a dielectric material. The continuous semiconductor metal alloy is in direct contact with an upper metal line of a first metal level located atop the continuous semiconductor metal alloy and at least a surface of each source and drain diffusion region located beneath the continuous metal semiconductor alloy. The continuous metal semiconductor alloy can be derived from either a semiconductor nanowire or an epitaxial grown semiconductor material. The continuous metal semiconductor alloy includes a lower portion that is contained within an upper surface of each source and drain region, and a vertical pillar portion extending upward from the lower portion. The lower portion of the continuous metal semiconductor alloy and the vertical pillar portion are not separated by a material interface. Instead, the two portions of the continuous metal semiconductor alloy are of unitary construction, i.e., a single piece.
US08169026B2
A semiconductor device including: a silicon dioxide layer; an n-type field effect transistor (NFET) including at least one recessed source/drain trench and located over a portion of the silicon dioxide layer; a p-type field effect transistor (PFET) including at least one recessed source/drain trench and located over a portion of the silicon dioxide layer; a nitride stress liner over the NFET and the PFET, the nitride stress liner filling the at least one recessed source/drain trench of the NFET and the at least one recessed source/drain trench of the PFET; and a first contact formed in the silicon dioxide layer, the first contact abutting one of the NFET or the PFET.
