US09271435B2

A method of manufacturing a protection frame used in a miniature microphone is provided. In one embodiment, the method comprises the steps of: (1) preparing a substrate made of an insulating material with a prescribed thickness and a prescribed area; (2) forming a plurality of holes at prescribed intervals on the substrate; (3) forming a first metal shielding layer on the inner surface of each of the plurality of holes formed on the substrate; (4) filling an insulating material in the plurality of holes; (5) forming a plurality of extended portions on the surfaces of both sides of the substrate, each extended portion covering a part of the end face of the insulating material and the whole end face of the first metal shielding layer of a hole; (6) forming a cavity in each insulating material-filled hole, the caliber of each cavity being slightly smaller than the inner caliber of the corresponding extended portion formed in the above mentioned step (5); and (7) cutting the plurality of holes from the substrate to produce a collection of protection frames.
US09271426B2

A radiator includes a header including a supply chamber for a coolant to cool an electronic part mounted on a circuit board and a discharge chamber partitioned from the supply chamber, and a plurality of tubes stacked in a heightwise direction of the header, one end of each of the plurality of tubes being connected to the supply chamber and the other end of each of the plurality of tubes being connected to the discharge chamber, and the coolant flowing from the one end to the other end. The plurality of tubes include a first tube at least including a lowermost tube, and a second tube provided over the first tube and having a surface area greater than that of the first tube.
US09271424B2

A base or a mounting frame for an electrical enclosure or a rack, includes mounting pieces which are arranged, as corner pieces, in the corner regions of a rectangle or square that extends in an x-y plane. The mounting pieces are produced in a respective shaping process and include first and second mounting faces which lie outside with respect to the rectangle or square, which extend in the x direction and in the y direction at a right angle thereto and which extend in a space direction z at a right angle to the x-y plane. Sections of a system of covers are brought into contact with the mounting faces, where the covers having lateral covers with cover walls that are flat on the exterior and that have reinforcing ribs extending longitudinally on the interior, and are fastened to receiving structures of the mounting pieces by connecting structure.
US09271419B1

A modular power device is used for mounting on a main plate. The modular power device includes a first substrate, a driving module, and a converting module. The first substrate having a first axial direction and a second axial direction perpendicular to the first axial direction is inserted into the main plate to make the second axial direction be perpendicular to the main plate. The driving module is located on one side of the first substrate, and the converting module is located on the other side of the first substrate and includes a second substrate, wherein the second substrate is inserted into the main plate. A length of the converting module is substantially equal to that of the first substrate in the first axial direction, and a width of the converting module is smaller than a length of the first substrate in the first axial direction.
US09271416B2

A system and method are provided for the shielding of outdoor electrical equipment from inclement weather, the system comprising: a plurality of support brackets affixed to the outdoor electrical equipment; a support frame disposed in the support brackets; a waterproof cover disposed over the frame; an apron depending from the cover, configured to cover electrical connections on a side of the outdoor electrical equipment.
US09271415B2

An apparatus and method unlock a shaft (42, 142) of a unit (24, 124) for rotation in response to a mechanical reaction between the unit (24, 124) and an enclosure (22, 122) receiving the unit (24, 124) when the unit (24, 124) has been sufficiently inserted into the enclosure (22, 122), whereby rotation of the shaft (42, 142) linearly translates a component of the unit (24, 124) into connection with a component of the enclosure (22, 122).
US09271414B2

The present invention relates to a housing (100) for receiving an electric component, comprising a hollow housing body (110) with an opening (OS) on one side, which is characterized by a bottom (B) underneath the opening (OS), a lid (D) above the opening (OS), and two side walls (AS1, AS2) adjacent to the opening (OS), and at least two electric contacts (120a to 120f) provided on the bottom (B) of the housing body (110) on opposite housing sides, wherein a first contact (120a) of the electric contacts (120a to 120f) is situated in the region of the opening (OS).
US09271408B2

A power supply device includes a circuit board that has an arrangement surface and a rear surface opposite to the arrangement surface and that has a through hole. An insertion mounted circuit component, a connector and a surface mounted light emitting component that is provided for confirming an operation of the power supply device are assembled on the arrangement surface. A chassis holds the circuit board from the sides and the rear surface of the circuit board and has an opening to expose the connector. The surface mounted light emitting component is surface mounted on the rear surface of the circuit board. The through hole is provided near the surface mounted light emitting component so as to guide light emitted from the surface mounted light emitting component toward the opening of the chassis.
US09271407B2

A display module having an improved assembly structure is provided. The display module includes a frame, a display panel, and a glue. The frame has a side wall and a supporting part, wherein the supporting part has a supporting surface and the side wall is formed on the periphery of the supporting surface. A groove is formed on the supporting surface adjacent to the side wall and is distributed along the side wall. The display panel is disposed within the frame and has a bottom face and a side face. The bottom face is supported by the supporting surface of the supporting part. The side face faces the side wall and forms a gap with the side wall. The glue is filled in the gap and adheres the side wall to the side face.
US09271392B2

A rigid-flexible circuit board includes at least one flexible circuit board and at least one rigid circuit board. The flexible circuit board includes a flexible-board substrate, a plurality of flexible circuit board differential mode signal lines, at least one flexible circuit board grounding line, a flexible circuit board insulation layer formed on the upper surface of the flexible-board substrate and covering the flexible circuit board differential mode signal lines and the flexible circuit board grounding line. The rigid circuit board is stacked on the stacking section of the flexible circuit board. A shielding layer is formed on the flexible circuit board insulation layer of the flexible circuit board and corresponds to the extension section of the flexible circuit board. The shielding layer further extends from the extension section to the stacking section. An impedance control structure is formed on the shielding layer to control the impedance of the flexible circuit board differential mode signal lines.
US09271391B2

A multilayer wiring board includes a first dielectric layer, a high-frequency signal line formed on a first surface of the first dielectric layer, a ground layer formed on a second surface of the first dielectric layer, and a second dielectric layer covering part of the ground layer. The high-frequency signal line is electrically connectable to a center conductor of a coaxial structure. The second dielectric layer is spaced from an edge of the first dielectric layer to which the coaxial structure is to be connected, so that a ground exposure portion of the ground layer is exposed on the edge of the first dielectric layer. The ground layer is electrically connectable directly to an outer conductor of the coaxial structure at the ground exposure portion.
US09271384B2

The present invention provides a plasma processing apparatus. The apparatus includes a vacuum chamber, a plasma reactor arranged in the vacuum chamber for plasma processing, an RF power source for providing RF signals to the plasma reactor and an RF power transmission unit for transmitting RF signals from the RF power source to the plasma reactor inside the vacuum chamber. The RF power transmission unit includes a transmission line for transmitting RF signals and an outer conductor for shielding the electromagnetic field around the transmission line. The invention can effectively avoid the problem of electric discharge when RF signals transmit in a vacuum chamber, resulting in more security and less transmission power loss.
US09271376B2

There is provided an image display apparatus including: a light source unit; at least one light modulation device configured to modulate light from the light source unit, and to emit a modulated light beam; and a sensor configured to receive diffracted light of the modulated light beam emitted from the at least one light modulation device, and to measure intensity of the modulated light.
US09271367B2

In one aspect of an embodiment for controlling operation of a light source, a method of associating a light source with an area for which the light source is positioned to provide lighting comprises: identifying, based on a determined physical position of a light source, one of a plurality of areas as the area for which the light source is positioned to provide lighting; identifying at least one desired lighting condition for the identified area; and controlling, using a processor, operation of the light source based on the identified at least one desired lighting condition for the identified area.
US09271361B2

A backlight driving circuit includes a light emitting diode (LED) lightbar, a power supply driving the LED lightbar, a constant current driving chip controlling the power supply and the LED lightbar, and a control unit monitoring a voltage of a cathode of the LED lightbar. The constant current driving chip includes a main control unit that drives the power supply, and an adjusting unit that adjusts brightness of the LED lightbar. An input end of the adjusting unit is coupled to the cathode of the LED lightbar, and an output end of the adjusting unit is coupled to a load unit, a resistance value of the load unit may be adjusted. When the voltage of the cathode of the LED lightbar is greater than or equal to a preset threshold, the control unit controls the load unit to reduce the resistance value of the load unit.
US09271359B2

A three-terminal LED and drive circuit thereof. The three-terminal LED (1) has an anode, a cathode and a gate. The three-terminal LED (1) includes a LED group (3) formed by connecting at least one LED in series and a gate circuit (2), the first end (21) of the gate circuit (2) and the anode of the LED group (3) are connected with the anode of the three-terminal LED (1), the second end (22) of the gate circuit (2) and the cathode of the LED group (3) are connected with the cathode of the three-terminal LED (1), the third end (23) of the gate circuit (2) is connected with the gate of the three-terminal LED (1).
US09271356B2

A backlight module and a driving circuit are provided. The driving circuit includes a plurality of current sources and a current switching unit. The current sources provide a plurality of driving currents. The current switching unit is coupled between a plurality of light emitting element strings and the current sources for transmitting the driving currents to the light emitting element strings, and switching the driving currents received by the light emitting element strings by timing. Therefore, the brightness of the light emitting element strings can be equalized.
US09271353B2

A dimmer circuit for at least one LED is disclosed. The LED is controlled by a TRIAC dimmer. A leakage current flows through the TRIAC dimmer if the TRIAC dimmer is off. The dimmer circuit include inputs for receiving a source of incoming AC power, a rectifier for receiving the source of incoming AC power and producing a DC voltage, a controller for receiving the DC voltage from the rectifier and providing a switching signal, a first circuit, and a loading circuit. The first circuit receives the switching signal from the controller. The first circuit includes a first switching element that is selectively activated based on the switching signal. The loading circuit receives the switching signal from the controller. The loading circuit includes a second switching element that is activated if the first switching element is deactivated. The loading circuit selectively provides a minimum loading current.
US09271352B2

A power converter controller includes an oscillator, a drive circuit, and a frequency modulator. The drive circuit receives a clock signal from the oscillator and generates a drive signal in response thereto to control switching of a switch of the power converter. The frequency modulator controls the frequency of the clock signal in response to an inductor voltage across an inductor of the energy transfer element to reduce a peak-to-peak ripple value in an output current of the power converter. The frequency modulator controls the frequency of the clock signal during each line half cycle to be a fixed frequency when the inductor voltage is less than or equal to a threshold voltage. When the inductor voltage is greater than the threshold voltage the frequency modulator varies the frequency to be less than the fixed frequency to adjust a shape of an input current of the power converter.
US09271350B2

A lighting control circuit includes a rectifier connected to an electric ballast to which a commercial AC power is supplied, and configured to convert an AC to a DC, a series light emitter a plurality of solid-state light-emitting elements is connected in series, a smoothing capacitor provided in parallel with the series light emitter in a current supply line between the rectifier and the series light emitter, and configured to eliminate an AC component included in the DC from an output side of the rectifier, and a switching control circuit configured to generate an output voltage equal to an output voltage from the electric ballast when a fluorescent lamp starts up upon the connection of the fluorescent lamp to the electric ballast as a startup voltage in the startup of the series light emitter.
US09271341B2

Provided is a heat treatment apparatus that even when annealing SiC at high temperature, can exhibit a low heat capacity and perform uniform heating. The heat treatment apparatus includes a pair of parallel plate electrodes, high-frequency power supply that applies a high-frequency voltage to the pair of parallel plate electrodes so as to discharge between the pair of parallel plate electrodes, a temperature measurement instrument that measures the temperature of a sample to be heated which is disposed in the pair of parallel plate electrodes, a gas introduction unit that introduces a gas to the pair of parallel plate electrodes, reflection mirrors that surround the pair of parallel plate electrodes, and a control unit that controls the output of the high-frequency power supply. Heating of a gas due to discharge between the pair of parallel plate electrodes is used to thermally treat the sample to be heated.
US09271335B1

The inventive device object of the present application is a Snow Blanket or Snow Pad which will melts away this unwanted snow off cars and from around cars as well as from stairs and walkways around homes and businesses.
US09271319B2

A method and an arrangement for providing a wire-free mesh network are provided. An approval procedure is carried out in situations in which a subscriber who is registering on the mesh network transmits an MAC address which already exists in the mesh network, such that two different subscribers within the mesh network never have identical MAC addresses.
US09271315B2

A data transferring method, a system and a related network device based on proxy mobile (PM) IPv6, which are used for solving the problem that the existing data transferring scheme based on proxy mobile (PM) IPv6 can't distinguishes and controls the mobile node (MN) data packages according to service flow. The data transferring method includes: after the mobile node (MN) initiates the service flow, a mobile access gateway (MAG) and local mobility anchor (LMA) establishes a bidirectional tunnel by information interaction based on service flow binding; in which, in the process of the bidirectional tunnel establishing, the service is distributed the downlink GRE Key and uplink GRE Key, and the local mobility anchor (LMA) adds service flow identifier of the service flow and the binding relationship of the address information of the mobile node (MN); the mobile access gateway (MAG) and local mobility anchor (LMA) transfers the data packages of the service flow initiated by the mobile node (MN) on the bidirectional tunnel between the mobile access gateway (MAG) and local mobility anchor (LMA) according to the service flow identifier and the binding relationship and the uplink, downlink GRE Key.
US09271312B2

A communication apparatus detects one or a plurality of apparatuses which have been instructed to start communication-parameter setting processing using identification information and, moreover, in which this identification information has already been set, outputs terminal identification information, and executes the communication-parameter setting processing with an apparatus, which is other than an apparatus detected before the terminal identification information is output, from among detected apparatuses.
US09271309B2

A method and apparatus of requesting a channel access in a wireless local area network is provided. A transmitter transmits a plurality of Request To Send (RTS) frames over a plurality of requesting channels and receives at least one Clear To Send (CTS) frame over at least one responding channel as a response for the plurality of RTS frames. Each of the plurality of RTS frames indicates a bandwidth for the plurality of requesting channels, and the at least one CTS frame indicates a bandwidth for the at least one responding channel.
US09271306B2

Methods, systems, and devices are described for control information processing and utilization in a wireless communications system that utilizes one or more flexible bandwidth carriers. The methods may include receiving control information over a first channel of one of the one or more flexible bandwidth carriers, determining a processing time for the received control information over the first channel of the one of the one or more flexible bandwidth carriers based on a processing time of control information for another bandwidth carrier, and utilizing the received control information over the first channel of the one of the one or more flexible bandwidth carriers during a first transmission time interval of the first channel of the one of the one or more flexible bandwidth carriers subsequent to the processing time for the received control information over the first channel of the one of the one or more flexible bandwidth carriers.
US09271300B2

According to one embodiment, a wireless communication apparatus includes a determination unit, a first setting unit, a second setting unit and a wireless unit. The determination unit determines whether a signal degradation degree is higher than a threshold value. The first setting unit sets first parameters relating to a first data rate and a first communication robustness. The second setting unit sets second parameters relating to a second data rate and a second communication robustness if an instruction signal is received and if the signal degradation degree is higher than the threshold value. The wireless unit communicates with a communication partner using one of the first parameters and the second parameters.
US09271298B1

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for dynamically configuring femtocell pilot beacon based on macro-network load. An embodiment takes the form of a method of operating a wireless network system that includes a first base station operating on a first frequency and one or more second base stations operating on a plurality of second frequencies. The method includes transmitting a frequency-hopping pilot beacon among the plurality of second frequencies. The method further includes determining loading on each of the second frequencies and in particular that a given one of the second frequencies is more heavily loaded than at least one other, and responsively prioritizing transmission of the frequency-hopping pilot beacon on the given frequency as compared to the at least one other frequency.
US09271280B2

A method and apparatus are disclosed to manage the enhanced medium access control-e (MAC-e) and enhanced MAC-es resources and respective variables for the enhanced dedicated channel (E-DCH) in the enhanced Cell_FACH state. Due to the nature of the E-DCH transmission in the uplink (UL) in the Cell_FACH state and the fact that a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) might set up and release the E-DCH resources more frequently, methods to deal with the TSN numbering are described.
US09271273B2

A base station includes a control signal generator that generates a control signal which includes resource information identified by a group identifier assigned to a plurality of radio terminals, and also includes a transmitter that transmits the control signal generated by the control signal generating section.
US09271264B2

When a scheduling executing section allocates a use downlink radio resource including in a frequency direction a frequency band, in which a known signal is not received by an uplink radio resource for known signal, from a downlink radio resource associated with the uplink radio resource for known signal to a communication terminal, a communication section generates a known signal to be received from the communication terminal in a frequency band of the use downlink radio resource in a pseudo manner when performing downlink communication with the communication terminal using the use downlink radio resource. The communication section controls transmission directivity in a plurality of antennas based on a new reception signal obtained by adding the pseudo known signal as a desired wave component to a reception signal that is received in the frequency band of the use downlink radio resource in the uplink radio resource for known signal.
US09271254B2

Methods, systems, and devices are described for network directed system selection. A wireless device may identify a trigger associated with system selection by a network device for the wireless device. The wireless device may identify system selection data for use by the network device in performing a network directed system selection decision for the wireless device. The system selection data may include an indication of one or more networks through which the wireless device has verified that data access is available to the wireless device. The system selection data may be transmitted from the wireless device to a first network for use by the network device. The system selection data may be transmitted in response to the identified trigger.
US09271253B2

A method and apparatus are described for managing a mass registration scenario in a two-way radio system. A site controller in a trunked radio system detects a mass registration condition in which registration requests by subscriber units are likely to collide on an inbound control channel. During the mass registration condition, the site controller initiates a restriction period by instructing subscriber units that are members of particular talkgroups to temporarily cease registration requests. Those talkgroup members are permitted to resume their registration requests when a predetermined delay time has passed since the members were instructed to cease registration, or when a particular silence time has passed without registration activity over the control channel.
US09271250B2

A method, apparatus and communication system for registering address information of a network anchor point to a network server are disclosed. A network apparatus, such as a mobility management entity, determines whether to register address information of a network anchor point to a network server, and registers the address information of the network anchor point to the network server when determining to do so.
US09271248B2

Techniques are provided for frequency and timing synchronization of a femto access point (FAP). In one example, the FAP may be configured to establish an out-of-band (OOB) link with at least user equipment (UE), and receive aiding parameters from the at least one UE via the OOB link. The FAP may be configured to extract frequency and timing information from at least one uplink packet of the at least one UE based at least in part on the aiding parameters. Extracting the frequency and timing information may involve sniffing the at least one uplink packet to a macro base station (e.g., eNB).
US09271230B2

A cloud-enabled low power Wi-Fi device is provided that includes a transceiver, a programmable processor, and executable control software stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium. The transceiver can be in a low power sleep mode until the programmable processor and the executable control software detect a first condition. When the programmable processor and the executable control software detect the first condition, the transceiver can exit the low power sleep mode and the programmable processor and the executable software can construct and transmit a message, via the transceiver, to a remote device. When the programmable processor and the executable control software detect a second condition, the transceiver can reenter the low power sleep mode.
US09271226B2

An example method for network selection involves discovering network capabilities by performing an Access Network Query Protocol (ANQP) query at a wireless terminal, and receiving a subsequent ANQP response from an access point of a wireless local area network. The network capabilities are indicated in the subsequent ANQP response. The example method also involves comparing the network capabilities with configured capabilities, finding a match between at least a portion of the network capabilities and at least a portion of the configured capabilities, and joining the wireless terminal with the access point based on the at least the portion of the network capabilities matching the at least the portion of the configured capabilities.
US09271221B2

Systems and methods for closed loop MIMO (multiple input and multiple output) wireless communication are provided. Various transmit formats including spatial multiplexing and STTD are defined in which vector or matrix weighting is employed using information fed back from receivers. The feedback information may include channel matrix or SVD-based feedback.
US09271217B2

A system and method of enabling a mobile device to communicate with a local IP network host and an external IP network host using a femto cellular access point on a femto cellular access network. A local gateway is coupled to the femto cellular access network for receiving data packets transmitted on the femto cellular access network and for routing the data packets to one of a local IP network and an external IP network, based on a destination address associated with the data packets. The femto cellular access network includes an LTE network, an EVDO network connected to an EPC, or a WiMax 802.16e/m network connected to the EPC.
US09271216B2

A method and apparatus for sending user plane traffic via a node located between a base station and a Serving Gateway in a mobile telecommunications network. The base station receives a message containing tunneling protocol information identifying the Serving Gateway. It sends a second message towards the node, the second message including tunneling protocol information identifying the base station and the Serving Gateway. The base station receives a third message from the node, the third message including tunneling protocol information for the base station to use towards the node, and tunneling protocol information for the Serving Gateway to use towards the node. A fourth message is sent, which includes tunneling protocol information for the Serving Gateway to use towards the node. User plane traffic can then be sent between the base station and the Serving Gateway via the node.
US09271215B2

It is checked if a first CRE from a first cell is larger than 0 and if a second CRE from a second cell is larger than 0. If both the first and the second CRE are larger than 0, a first modified CRE is set based on the first CRE and a second modified CRE is set based on the second CRE. If the first CRE and/or the second CRE is equal to 0, the first modified CRE is set the first CRE and the second modified CRE is set to the second CRE. One of the first and second cell is selected for cell selection and/or handover based on a comparison of a sum of a signal strength indicator from the first cell and the first modified CRE and a sum of a signal strength indicator from the second cell and the second modified CRE.
US09271211B2

Systems, methods and apparatus described herein include features that enable dual radio access. In one embodiment, the access point directs an access terminal through sequential measurements, which are selected by the access point based on the radio access capability of the access terminal, service preferences of the user and measurement reports. In a complementary method, an access terminal obtains the sequential measurements chosen by the access point. In another embodiment, the access point directs an access terminal through a set of measurements, which are selected by the access point based on the radio access capability of the access terminal and service preferences of the user. In another embodiment, an access terminal selects which subset of measurements to obtain based on the radio access capability of the access terminal and optionally service preferences of the user.
US09271203B2

Post-hard handover processing in a Time Division—Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) network may be improved to allow operation of High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) in hard handover. For example, uplink synchronization may be completed concurrent with HSPA to quickly resume HSPA operation in hard handovers. User Equipment (UE) may receive downlink data while completing uplink synchronization. In another example, a unique SYNC_UL code may be assigned to a UE for hard handover. The unique SYNC_UL code allows Node Bs of the TD-SCDMA network to know which UE is performing hard handover. When a Node B is receiving the unique SYNC_UL, the Node B may begin to allocate UL data grants. After receiving UL data from the UE, the Node B may resume High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA).
US09271195B2

The radio communication system of the present invention includes a base station (10), a mobility management node (20), and a gateway (30). The base station (10) transmits to the mobility management node (20) information of the origination addresses of neighboring base stations of the base station (10). The mobility management node (20) receives information of the origination addresses of the neighboring base stations from the base station (10) and transmits the information of the origination addresses of the neighboring base stations to the gateway (30). The gateway (30) receives information of the origination addresses of the neighboring base stations from the mobility management node (20).
US09271193B2

Representative implementations of devices and techniques provide care-of-address handover. In one implementation, a message is sent to a server in a point-to-point communication session. The message includes a care-of-address of a first network interface (e.g., wireless network interface) and a care-of-address of a second network interface (e.g., wireline network interface). The care-of-address of the first network interface is a current care-of-address being used in the communication session and the care-of-address of the second network interface is a new care-of-address that a device (e.g., a mobile node) is going to transition to (e.g., handover). The message may also include the server's IP address and TCP (Transfer Control Protocol) port. Furthermore, the message may include the mobile node's TCP port.
US09271190B2

Systems and methods for remotely managed data radios in accordance with embodiments of the invention are illustrated. In one embodiment of the invention, a remotely managed data radio includes first and second data radio modules, wherein the first data radio module configured to communicate on a first network including an amount of bandwidth and a latency for a given frequency channel, wherein the second data radio module is configured to communicate on a second network, and wherein the remotely managed data radio is configured to communicate mission-critical data utilizing the first data radio module, measure the performance of the first network using the first data radio module, generate non-mission-critical data using the second data radio module, where the non-mission-critical data includes the measured performance data, and communicate the non-mission-critical data utilizing the second data radio module, thereby preserving the bandwidth and latency of the primary network for communicating mission-critical data.
US09271188B2

A method, computer readable medium and apparatus for transmitting signaling information within payload traffic. For example, the method parses a certificate received from a service provider to obtain service imprint information associated with a mobile service, inserts a service control parameter derived from the service imprint information into a packet header, and forwards the packet header within payload traffic to a policy charging and enforcing function.
US09271181B2

A new deployment model enables a seamless migration to LTE (long term evolution)/EPC (Evolved packet core). In addition, an intelligent edge gateway (IEG) supports future distributed architecture and a converged network for service providers. Specifically, the model supports existing data services (e.g. UMTS) and the delivery of LTE services does not affect the existing data services. Moreover, a distributed architecture is employed, such that, local traffic is optimally routed at the edge and backhaul is minimized. The system can also provide support for enhanced Femto cell 3GPP access to a home network.
US09271172B2

The present invention relates to a wireless communication system, and more particularly, to a method and an apparatus for processing a NAS signaling request. A method for performing a non-access stratum (NAS) signaling process by means of a terminal in a wireless communication system according to one embodiment of the present invention comprises: a step of receiving a first message that includes information indicating a network failure from a network node of a first network; a step of starting a timer relating to a network selection; and a step of selecting a second network from among network candidates excluding the first network during the operation of the timer relating to a network selection.
US09271166B2

A method in a Multi-Standard Radio (MSR) network node, a MSR network node, a method in a network node, and a network node facilitate handling of MSR network node information in a wireless communications system/network. Mechanisms for network operation of a wireless communications system/network include one or more MSR Base Stations (BSs). The MSR network node is configured to handle multiple Radio Access Technologies (RATs), generate a message comprising an MSR identifier identifying the MSR network node and/or MSR network node configuration data, and send the generated message to another network node for use in network operation. The generated message may be generated and sent upon detecting an initiating event.
US09271164B2

In a wireless network system which adopts a multi-layer data transmission structure, a wireless channel is established between a user equipment and a base station. A wireless transmission channel is established between the user equipment and the base station. An MTU/fragmentation size adopted in the wireless transmission channel is set and dynamically adjusted according to the current transmission status of the wireless transmission channel.
US09271160B2

A first device periodically transmits a first audio signal that encodes a first code over an audio channel that is shared between the first device and a second device, and the second device periodically transmits a second audio signal that encodes a second code over the audio channel. When the first device receives the second audio signal over the audio channel, the first device extracts the second code from the second audio signal and sends the second code to a server. When the second device receives the first audio signal over the audio channel, the second device extracts the first code from the first audio signal and sends the first code to the server. If the server receives the first code from the second device and/or the second code from the first device, the server can conclude that the first device is in proximity to the second device.
US09271152B2

Provided is a micro base station to be used in a heterogeneous cellular network. The micro base station has resources including frequency bands and time slots and being available for a user to use. The heterogeneous cellular network includes a plurality of base stations including a macro base station and the micro base station. The micro base station includes: an information acquiring part configured to acquire configuration information and load information of the micro base station, and to acquire configuration information and load information of a neighboring base station adjacent to the micro base station from the neighboring base station; and a resource selection part configured to select a part of the resources from the resources to provide the selected part of the resources to the user based on the configuration information and the load information of the micro base station and the neighboring base station.
US09271150B2

A mobile terminal including a wireless communication unit configured to provide wireless communication; a display unit; and a controller configured to receive a fingerprint input on the display unit matching at least one of a first user's fingerprint and a second user's fingerprint, said first user being a main user of the mobile terminal and being different than the second user, and control at least one of the mobile terminal of the first user and a terminal of the second user based on the received fingerprint input.
US09271142B1

Rule-based mobile device management delegation is disclosed. A set of rules are applied to attributes associated with a mobile device to assign the mobile device to one of a plurality of management partitions. The mobile device is managed according to a policy associated with the assigned management partition.
US09271138B2

An improved User Plane location based service (LBS) architecture and message flow, enabling seamless User Plane location based services even when a mobile or wireless device has roamed among different carrier networks. The present invention overcomes constraints inherent in the current protocol for roaming support defined by the Secure User Plane Location Service specification. A location system is enabled to automatically fall back to a message tunneling mechanism to ensure the security of a communication path between the location service system and the target wireless device, ensuring that the communication path is uninterrupted as the wireless device travels.
US09271134B2

Embodiments of the present invention disclose a method for data transmission, which is used to increase resource utilization. The method according to the embodiments of the present invention includes: receiving, by a media processing device, a service request sent by a user equipment, where the media processing device is located at a radio access network where the user equipment is located; obtaining, by the media processing device, service data corresponding to the service request; obtaining, by the media processing device, air interface resource information of a cell where the user equipment is located and transmission resource information; and performing, by the media processing device, content adaptation and bit rate selection on the service data according to the obtained air interface resource information and transmission resource information. The embodiments of the present invention further disclose a system and a relevant device for data transmission.
US09271126B2

A network device, method, and mobile device are directed towards enabling a mobile device user to archive a text message threaded conversation with another conversation participant. text messages sent from the mobile device may be replicated by a server component, whether the text message is a reply message or an incoming message. The replicated text message may then be sent to an identified personal computing device's network-based messaging archive. In one embodiment, the messaging archive may be an outbox archive for text messages. As described, a text message being sent to the mobile device from the other conversation participant may also be replicated and archived in a network-based inbox archive for text messages on the identified personal computing device. In one embodiment, the archived text messages may be displayed to the user on the personal computing devices as threaded conversations.
US09271119B2

Improved location estimates for transceivers is described. The location estimate of transceivers can be improved for sector transceivers that are co-located at a sectored cell site. The location estimate for each individual co-located sector transceiver can be updated as a centroid of all of the co-located sector transceivers. The location information of the transceivers can be used to provide network location estimation to mobile devices which do not have accurate positioning estimates.
US09271112B2

A geolocation system enables law enforcement officers to geolocate a mobile phone, or target device, during the course of police business. In a consented geolocation request, an officer requests, via the geolocation system, that the user of a target device be prompted to grant the officer permission to geolocate the target device. If the user allows the request, the officer may, in turn, geolocate the target device with the geolocation system. In a surreptitious geolocation request, the officer circumvents any request for user permission to grant the officer permission to geolocate the target device. Instead, the officer utilizes the geolocation system to generate a surreptitious request package which contains the necessary legal and situational information required to geolocate the target device without the user's consent. Once a submitted request is registered, the officer may geolocate the target device.
US09271110B1

A location aware session token generation and validation system is provided. The system comprises a server system comprising at least one processor. The server system also comprises at least one non-transitory memory. The system further comprises a token component stored on the at least one non-transitory memory that, when executed by the server system, receives a request to initiate an application level session from a mobile device, wherein the request includes an identification of the mobile device and a location of the mobile device, generates a token for the application level session wherein the token is time limited and location limited such that the application level session will expire at the end of a specified period of time or when the mobile device moves from the location.
US09271108B2

An embodiment provides a method, including: detecting two devices are proximate to one another utilizing a device component; comparing received device motion information to a predetermined motion; and after matching the received device motion information to a predetermined motion, transferring an object between the two devices. Other aspects are described and claimed.
US09271105B2

The present invention provides systems and methods for acquiring content (e.g., a ring tone or a ring view) for a communication device.
US09271099B1

Techniques for providing power and communicating data via an audio interface to a peripheral device are described herein. In one embodiment, a peripheral device is communicatively coupled to a host device via an audio interface of the host device, where the audio interface includes a first stereo output channel, a second stereo output channel, an audio input channel, and a ground pin. The peripheral device receives from the host device a first audio signal via the first stereo output channel and a second audio signal via the second stereo output channel. In response, the peripheral device harvests energy from both the first audio signal and the second audio signal to generate direct current (DC) power to power one or more hardware components of the peripheral device including a processor of the peripheral device.
US09271090B2

This invention concerns a method, and a device, for feedback cancellation. This invention also concerns a computer program product comprising computer program code means to make a computer execute a procedure for feedback cancellation. The method comprises providing an adaptive feedback cancellation filter which adapts under the control of a control module, and filtering at least one input of the control module to suppress correlated signals from the input prior to the control module operating upon the input. The device comprises an adaptive feedback cancellation filter, a control module and at least one filter. The control module controls adaptation of the adaptive feedback cancellation filter. The filter suppresses correlated signals from an input to the control module prior to the control module operating upon the input.
US09271087B1

A MEMS microphone package device includes a MEMS microphone chip as an integrated circuit chip. An acoustic sensing structure is embedded in the integrated circuit chip. An adhesive structure adheres on outer sidewall of the microphone chip. A bottom portion of the adhesive structure protrudes out from first surface of the microphone chip and adheres on a surface of a substrate, having interconnection structure, to form a first seal ring. A space between the acoustic sensing structure and the substrate and sealed by the first seal ring forms a second chamber. A cover adheres to top portion of the adhesive structure, covering over the cavity on the second surface of the microphone chip. The top portion of the adhesive structure forms as a second seal ring. A space between the cover and the second surface of the microphone chip and sealed by the second seal ring forms a first chamber.
US09271086B2

A flat-type speaker having a damper-lead plate of a PCB voice coil plate includes a pair of magnetic bodies having a magnet and a yoke formed side-by-side, separated at a predetermined interval; a voice coil plate inserted between the magnetic bodies, and having printed thereon a voice coil with a spiral pattern; a first damper-lead plate physically separated from a second damper-lead plate, each having +, − terminals formed on the front ends thereof, the first and the second damper-lead plates each equipped with a coil plate spline, which adheres to the upper end of the voice coil plate, and at least one wing spline having one end thereof connected to the coil plate spline and the other end connected to the terminals; and a vibration plate, which vibrates from the vibration received from the voice coil plate, while being contacted to the upper end portion of the damper-lead plate.
US09271084B2

A speaker driver including a frame and a magnet assembly positioned within the frame. A sound radiating surface may be suspended over the magnet assembly. The sound radiating surface may include a top face and a bottom face, and the bottom face may face the magnet assembly. A suspension member may suspend the sound radiating surface over the magnet assembly. The suspension member may include a top side connected to the bottom face of the sound radiating surface and a bottom side connected to the magnet assembly. A voice coil extends from the bottom face of the sound radiating surface.
US09271075B2

A signal processing apparatus includes an adder that acquires a plurality of input signals from a plurality of microphones and calculates an added value obtained by adding the input signals together, a subtracter that acquires a plurality of input signals from the plurality of microphones and calculates a subtracted value obtained by subtracting one input signal from the other input signal, and a determination unit that determines whether noise is included in the input signals based on the added value and the subtracted value.
US09271061B1

A personal detachable multipurpose wireless armband loudspeaker system, having an armband assembly with at least one strap and a speaker dock that receives a loudspeaker therein. The armband assembly further has a device holder that receives a device, whereby the device is a computer, multimedia device, or smart phone. The speaker dock has at least one speaker dock anchor to secure the loudspeaker within the speaker dock. The speaker dock further has at least one disengage switch to unlock the loudspeaker from within the speaker dock. The speaker dock has a speaker base. The loudspeaker has at least one anchor lock receiver slot. The at least one anchor lock receiver slot receives the at least one speaker dock anchor to secure the loudspeaker within the speaker dock.
US09271059B2

To verify the integrity of optical paths through and among optical switches, optical signals are provided with co-propagating supplemental signals. The supplemental signals preferably have at least one characteristic which allows distinguishing one supplemental signal from another. Associated with a port of a switch, means are provided for detecting a supplemental signal and determining if the supplemental signal indicates that a desired optical signal is passing through the port as expected and desired. Means for imparting or changing the distinguishing characteristic of a supplemental signal may also be employed to facilitate verifying the passage of optical signals.
US09271057B2

Methods and apparatus for time synchronization and measurement of power distribution systems. A method includes receiving a synchronized wireless communication signal, synchronizing to the synchronized wireless communication signal to produce synchronized time, performing one or more power distribution measurements based on the synchronized time to produce synchronized power distribution measurements, and transmitting the synchronized power distribution measurements to a power control center. An apparatus includes a receiver configured to receive a synchronized wireless communication signal and to synchronize to the synchronized wireless communication signal to produce synchronized time, a measurement module configured to perform one or more power distribution measurements based on the synchronized time to produce synchronized power distribution measurements, and a transmitter configured to transmit the synchronized power distribution measurements to a power control center.
US09271056B2

Embodiments disclosed herein relate to a system and method for validating adcopy instructions. A user selection of an advertising client may be received. One or more advertising orders associated with the advertising client are identified in an order management system. A selection of an advertising order is received from the user. A set of adcopy instructions to be associated with the selected advertising contract is received from the user. The set of adcopy instructions are validated based on one or more rules associated with each of the order management system and a traffic and billing system. When the adcopy instructions are validated, the adcopy instructions are stored in a database associated with the traffic and billing system.
US09271044B2

A system and method for providing information of selectable objects in a television program as shown in and/or described in connection with at least one of the figures, as set forth more completely in the claims.
US09271028B2

A method for decoding a data stream containing audio/video substreams and control substreams comprises buffering nodes having the possibility to buffer multiple data packets in the same buffer. This may be achieved by having separate parameters for the allocated buffer size and any stored packet. Thus, not only multiple packets may be stored in the buffering node, but also such node may exist while its buffer is empty, so that the node may be reused later. This is particularly useful for buffering and selectively accessing multiple audio packets in MPEG-4 audio nodes or sound nodes.
US09271019B1

In one aspect, the invention provides an interactive, multi-platform video network. In another aspect, the invention provides a dynamic scheduling method.
US09271015B2

A system for loading videos includes an interactive video player is with a loader. A product configuration file in operation configures files for a user in creation of a custom video. External assets are configured for a design of an interactive layer of the video. The interactive video player in operation creates in real-time a custom video that includes a plurality of video segments.
US09271013B2

Disclosed herein are representative embodiments of processing digital image data. In one exemplary embodiment disclosed herein, for a current block of a first frame of digital image data, a list of motion vector prediction information for the current block is populated with candidate motion vector prediction data that includes default motion vector prediction data. In another exemplary embodiment disclosed herein, at least a portion of a coded video bitstream is received and a merge flag for a current block in a current frame is decoded. After the merge flag is decoded, at least one merge candidate for the current block is determined.
US09271005B2

A multi-pass video encoder includes a video encoding module that encodes a video signal based on an initial configuration data set to generate an initial processed video signal and an initial output data set. An application coding control module generates the initial configuration data set and generates a first updated configuration data set based on both the initial processed video signal and the initial output data set. The video encoding module further encodes the video signal based on the first updated configuration data set to generate a first updated processed video signal and a first updated output data set.
US09270988B2

A system is provided for creating level parameter updating codewords for transform coefficients used for relating transform units (TUs) that divide up coding units (CUs) in a High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) system. The system provides binarization of the codewords and removes unnecessary operations to reduce system complexity and increase compression performance. The system generates transform coefficients that relate the TUs and begins by providing a parameter variable (cRiceParam) set to an initial value of zero. The parameter variable is then converted into a binary codeword based on the current value of the parameter variable and the value of a symbol and then updated with a new current value after each symbol has been converted. Updating can be provided with reference to table values or the values can be provided from combination logic.
US09270982B2

A system control unit 11 includes a first step of causing a stereoscopic image to be displayed in an enlarged scale according to an instruction on a display device 23, and a second step of determining, when the stereoscopic image is enlarged at a magnification according to the instruction, whether or not a parallax amount of the enlarged stereoscopic image displayed on the display device 23 is greater than a threshold value, in which in the first step, when the instruction for enlarging the stereoscopic image at the magnification at which the parallax amount is greater than the threshold value is made, the enlarged stereoscopic image to be displayed on the display device 23 after the instruction is finished becomes the enlarged stereoscopic image in the enlarged scale at the magnification at which the parallax amount is not greater than the threshold value.
US09270973B2

A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may, for example, receive a request for a telepresence seat at an event, obtain media content comprising event images of the event that are captured by an event camera system, receive images that are captured by a camera system at a user location, and provide the media content and video content representative of the images to a processor for presentation at a display device utilizing a telepresence configuration that simulates the first and second users being present at the event, where the providing of the first and second video content establishes a communication session between the first and second users. Other embodiments are disclosed.
US09270972B2

A method for 3DTV multiplexing according to the present invention comprises, deriving a delay value in units of frames for the left and right image based on a left image PES (Packetized Elementary Stream) corresponding to a left image and a right image PES corresponding to a right image, carrying out synchronization of the left image PES and the right image PES based on the delay value in units of frames, and generating 3DTV transport streams (TSs) by carrying out multiplexing of the synchronized left image PES and the synchronized right image PES. According to the present invention, efficiency of video services can be improved.
US09270971B1

Systems and methods can facilitate identifying 2D content in media that is suitable for conversion into 3D content, and converting the suitable 2D content into 3D content. The identifying can be based on quality criteria applied to the 2D content. For 2D content converted into 3D content, a user can be offered a choice between viewing the content in its original 2D form, or viewing the content in its converted, 3D form. The systems and methods can thereby provide users with greater choice of content and an enhanced viewing experience.
US09270970B2

A 3D image interpolation device performs frame interpolation on 3D video. The 3D image interpolation device includes: a range image interpolation unit that generates at least one interpolation range image to be interpolated between a first range image indicating a depth of a first image included in the 3D video and a second range image indicating a depth of a second image included in the 3D video; an image interpolation unit that generates at least one interpolation image to be interpolated between the first image and the second image; and an interpolation parallax image generation unit generates, based on interpolation image, at least one pair of interpolation parallax images having parallax according to a depth indicated by the interpolation range image.
US09270967B2

A display control apparatus comprises a recording unit which records a still image and a moving image associated with the still image on a recording medium; a setting unit which sets whether to set the associated moving image as a start image to be displayed first at a start of image reproduction; and a control unit which controls to, when the associated moving image has been set as the start image, display the associated moving image from images recorded on the recording medium at the start of image reproduction, and controls to, when the associated moving image has not been set as the start image, display an image based on another condition irrelevant to whether the image is the associated moving image, from images recorded on the recording medium at the start of image reproduction.
US09270964B1

Systems and methods for extracting audio components of a portion of a video to facilitate editing the audio portion are presented. In one or more aspects, a system is provided that includes a receiving component configured to receive a video as an upload from a client device over a network and an identification component configured to identify two or more different audio components of an audio track of the video. The system further comprises an extraction component configured to extract and separate the two or more different audio components, and an editing component configured to generate an editing interface that receives input via the editing interface regarding editing the two or more different audio components separately.
US09270952B2

According to some implementations, an estimate of a target's location can be calculated by correlating Wi-Fi and video location measurements. This spatio-temporal correlation combines the Wi-Fi and video measurements to determine an identity and location of an object. The accuracy of the video localization and the identity from the Wi-Fi network provide an accurate location of the Wi-Fi identified object.
US09270949B2

Disclosed herein is an image monitoring system including: a camera connected to a network; display means for displaying an image captured by the camera; and display control means for controlling display such that, in displaying images by the display means, an image is displayed in a window having a predetermined layout; wherein, the display control means presets an allocation database containing a correlation between the window having a predetermined layout and a camera identification code and, when the camera is connected to the network, automatically sets a correlation between the camera identification code in the allocation database and the camera, thereby controlling image display into the window on the basis of the allocation database.
US09270944B2

Apparatus and methods for handling situations where requested services require more network capacity than presently available, and notifying network users of an delay in providing such services. In one embodiment, the invention comprises apparatus and methods for the detection of capacity (e.g., bandwidth) shortage, determination of a delayed delivery mode and schedule for the delivery of the requested content, and notification of the availability of the content to the user via, e.g., on-screen display, e-mail, text message, or other mode. The user can also specify their own notification preferences and delivery time. Requests for and delivery of the content may be performed from/to different locations as well. Network server apparatus, consumer premises equipment (CPE), and a software architecture adapted to implement the foregoing functionality, are also disclosed.
US09270938B1

A method and computing system for receiving, on a computing device, a plurality of individual audio/video streams from a plurality of client electronic devices used by a plurality of users. The plurality of individual audio/video streams are processed, on the computing device, to generate a synchronous communication session for the plurality of users. A broadcast request is received, on the computing device, from one of the plurality of users to provide the synchronous communication session to a media interface device. A session audio/video stream of the synchronous communication session is provided, via the computing device, to the media interface device, wherein the session audio/video stream includes at least a portion of the plurality of individual audio/video streams.
US09270937B2

There is disclosed a system and a method of real time stream provisioning. The method includes dynamically allocating one of a plurality of servers in a server cluster for use in a chat, the chat including an audio component for each of n chat participants and encoding the audio component for each of the n chat participants, using at least one graphical processing unit, into n audio streams, where the n audio streams each include audio components for n−1 of the n chat participants where each of the n audio streams does not include the audio component for a different one of the n chat participants. The method further comprises transmitting one of the n audio streams to the n chat participants such that a chat participant of each of the n chat participants receives an audio stream excluding the audio component associated with the chat participant.
US09270936B2

A communication system is described herein which provides an indicator that helps hub participants of a meeting (or other environmental setting) determine a direction of attention of a satellite participant (who is not physically present at the meeting). The indicator can be implemented as a mechanical pointer, a solid-state display mechanism, a rotating display mechanism, a display mechanism which presents visual information that reflects directionality, and so on. The communication system can assess the directionality of the satellite participant based on any combination of control inputs from explicit input mechanism(s) and/or implicit input mechanism(s). The communication system can also choose between explicit and/or implicit control of the indicator based on at least one selection criterion.
US09270929B2

Techniques and mechanisms for formatting digital audio-video (“AV”) information. In an embodiment, interface logic includes circuitry to receive digital AV information which, in one or more respects, is according to or otherwise compatible with a first interface specification. The interface logic changes a format of the digital AV information to allow for subsequent physical layer processing which is according to a second interface specification. In another embodiment, conversion logic receives analog signals according to the second interface specification and, based on such analog signals, performs digital information processing for subsequent generation of other analog signals to be transmitted according to the first interface specification.
US09270922B2

Provided is a system for supplying a power from a sink device to a source device. Not only the source device but also a cable or a repeater device to be connected thereto has compatibility in power supply. A physical address obtained from information of an EDID memory forms a base of CEC message exchange, but a physical address of the cable or repeater device is overlapped with the source device or unknown. The cable or a repeater device uses changes the type of a message while using the same physical address as the source device or use such a message having the physical address information of the source device is described in a parameter of the message using the unknown physical address. The message having a supply or reception current for each device described therein is exchanged with the sink device or the source device to adjust current reception.
US09270919B2

A medical imaging system having a processor with software executing thereon is provided for processing and display of multiple bandwidths of video in multiple display areas. The system receives a video signal with a plurality of portions and generates at least two signals there from. Each of the two signals has a bandwidth for display in a different display area. The two signals are updated so that each component displays a different portion of the input video signal, and the two signals may be combined for display on a single display device having two display areas.
US09270914B2

A solid-state imaging apparatus wherein pixels have same color filter in a same row, and have different color filters in different rows; and a color selecting unit selects and outputs, in an order of colors, the signals held by the plurality of holding units, to meet: y=ax+(b/c−d)x, wherein the pixels are arranged at a pitch “x” in a same row direction, and arranged at a pitch “y” in a same column direction, the “a” is a first coefficient equal to or larger than 1, the “b” is a shift of a charge accumulation period of the pixels in one row from a charge accumulation period of the pixels in a row adjacent to the one row, the “c” is a period of outputting the signals from the selecting unit, the signals generated by the plurality of pixels and the “d” is a second coefficient that is equal to or larger than 0 and equal to or less than 0.15.
US09270912B2

A solid state imaging device with (a) an amplifier transistor; an input node for the amplifier transistor; or both the amplifier transistor and the input node for the amplifier transistor; (b) a plurality of photoelectric conversion elements; (c) a like plurality of storage transistors, each configured to act as a photo-charge storage node to store charges generated by a respective photoelectric conversion element; and (d) a like plurality of transfer transistors, each configured to transfer charges from a respective photoelectric conversion element to a common output, the common output being either the amplifier transistor or the input node for the amplifier transistor.
US09270903B2

An imaging apparatus includes: a plurality of pixels each of which includes a conversion element and a first transistor of which one of a source and a drain is connected to the conversion element; and a second transistor which is shared by the plurality of pixels and has a gate connected respectively to the other of the source and the drain of the first transistor of each of the plurality of pixels. At least one among the gate, a source, a drain and a channel portion of the second transistor is formed to be extended over the plurality of pixels, and the conversion element is arranged over the first and second transistors.
US09270902B2

Conventionally, on a subject in which range, refocus can be performed at the time of image capturing or at the time of editing an image is not specified clearly, and therefore, it is difficult for a user to capture an image or to edit an image in a manner the user intends. An image processing apparatus has an acquisition unit configured to acquire an image including a plurality of subject areas and distance information corresponding to the plurality of subject areas and a generation unit configured to generate a shifted image in which positions of the plurality of subject areas are shifted in the image based on the distance information.
US09270889B2

An electronic device and a camera switching method thereon are provided. The electronic device includes a first camera module, a second camera module, a touch screen and a processor. The touch screen is configured to detect a touch event, wherein the touch event is triggered as the touch screen is touched and dragged from a first position to a second position. The processor is configured to switch between the first camera module and the second camera module in response to the touch event. The camera switching method is applied to the electronic device to implement the operations.
US09270883B2

An image processing apparatus includes a calculator configured to calculate coordinate conversion information for associating a position of a first image with a position of a second image, a region setting portion configured to set a first region in the first image and set a second region associated with the first region in the second image based on the coordinate conversion information, and an evaluation value obtaining portion configured to compare the first region with the second region to obtain an evaluation value.
US09270881B2

An image acquisition unit 52 acquires images consecutively captured while an image capture range is moved in a predetermined direction. A face detection unit 53 detects same subject images from the images acquired. A facial expression determination unit 55 calculates evaluation values of each of the same subject images detected. A facial expression decision unit 56 decides, as a combination target, a specific subject image from the same subject images, based on the evaluation values calculated. A combination unit 58 generates a wide-range image by combining the subject image decided as the combination target with the images sequentially acquired by the image acquisition unit 52.
US09270878B2

An aspect of the present invention is an imaging method using a multifocal lens having a plurality of regions, the plurality of regions having different focal lengths, and the imaging method includes a focusing state control step of controlling a focusing state of the multifocal lens, and an imaging step of obtaining an image of a subject in the controlled focusing state. In the focusing state control step, the focusing state is controlled so that a main subject is focused via a region with a shortest required focusing time among the plurality of regions in response to a picture taking instruction.
US09270861B2

The present invention relates to a method for printing inks on a substrate, and also to a substrate obtained by using such a method, which method comprises the following steps: i) creating a digital file of an original image, ii) processing said digital file to obtain a processed digital file, which processed digital file is made up of a number of compositions of the original image, iii) presenting the processed digital file to a printing unit, iv) printing the substrate by means of said printing unit, wherein the processed file is printed on the substrate by the printing unit as a processed image of the original image, using inks, wherein the original dimension of the original image used in step i) is smaller than the dimension of the processed image being printed on the substrate by the printing unit.
US09270860B2

An object of this invention is to improve user friendliness of the box function. In a system having a storage means capable of storing data in a plurality of data storage boxes including first and second boxes, when the first job data transmitted without performing any predetermined operation by the user in the data generation apparatus is stored in the storage means, acceptance of a process request for the first job data from the first user via the first display associated with the first box on a user interface is permitted. When the second job data transmitted after performing the predetermined operation by the user is stored in the storage means, acceptance of a process request for the second job data from the first user via the first display associated with the first box on the user interface is permitted. In addition, acceptance of a process request for the second job data from the second user via the second display associated with the second box on the user interface is permitted.
US09270857B2

An image capture unit and computer readable medium used in combination therewith is disclosed. In a preferred embodiment, the image capture unit includes an image capturing sensor, a visual display, an instance of the computer readable medium, and circuitry for integrating functionalities thereof. The computer readable medium causes sensor data received from the image capturing sensor to be processed. The sensor data includes a plurality of image tiles and position indicating data defining a respective relative position of each one of each image tiles. Each one of each image tiles includes data representing a discrete portion of visual content. The computer readable medium causes a feedback image be displayed on the visual display. Displaying the feedback image includes correlate the relative position of each one of each image tiles with at least one other image tile that has been previously generated and displayed.
US09270855B2

An embodiment of an integrated scanner apparatus, includes a support surface for objects to be scanned, a scanner unit to perform a scanning movement relative to the support surface to capture images of portions of objects to be scanned, and a printer unit carried by a carriage mobile with respect to said support surface, wherein said scanner unit is carried by said carriage carrying said printer unit to be imparted said scanning movement by said carriage.
US09270853B2

An information processing apparatus determines whether information indicating a creator of environment setting information described in the environment setting information is the same as information indicating a user of an application, and if it is determined that the information indicating a creator of the environment setting information is not the same as the information indicating a user of the application, imports the environment setting information in a state where a path to a folder to be used by the creator included in the environment setting information is unusable.
US09270841B2

Automated systems and methods for capturing digital images of a customer with multiple high-definition video cameras mounted in a venue such as a stadium, interactively communicating with venue customers to receive customer requests for images and information regarding customer locations in the venue and in response identify camera images containing the requested images and pixel groups therein containing images requested by customers, processing the requests to generate preview and send to customers for approval and ordering, and generating and sending final images in response to purchase requests and calculating and automatically applying charges to customers and third parties for promotional material sent to customers and making payments to third parties having rights in image content sent to customers. Variations of embodiments are suitable for venues such as a museum, a garden, a zoo, a religious institution, a theme park, or any other venue where imaging is possible and practical, or in a defined time period, such as a trip or vacation. The systems and methods can be essentially fully automated, using automated cameras and essentially only electronic communications between a customer and a computerized central facility, or can include a human representative or contractor for some of the operations. The souvenir can include other customer-related elements, such as “stock” images, composited images that include the customer or customer-related people or objects, and text and sound.
US09270839B2

An image processing apparatus which is capable of improving ease of operation for users and also improving security when destinations are made public. The image processing apparatus is shared by a plurality of users and capable of selecting a destination from a plurality of address books and carrying out file transmission to the destination. It is determined whether or not a user has logged in, and when it is determined that the user has logged in, only personal addresses for the logged-in user are displayed on a display unit. The personal destinations displayed on the display unit are switched to destinations other than the personal destinations according to selection by the user. When it is determined that the user has not logged in, all destinations which are registered in the plurality of address books are displayed on the display unit.
US09270836B2

A color measuring device includes a housing; a sensor unit configured to capture an image of a region, the sensor unit being held to the housing; an illumination light source configured to illuminate the region, the illumination light source being held to the housing; a detecting unit configured to detect a distance between predetermined two points from image data of the region obtained by the sensor unit; a correcting unit configured to correct the image data including a subject whose color is to be measured according to a ratio of the detected distance to a reference distance; and a calculating unit configured to calculate a colorimetric value of the subject based on the corrected image data.
US09270835B1

One embodiment takes the form of a method carried out by a gateway. The method includes the gateway receiving a message that was originated by a wireless communication device (WCD) being served by an access network. Next, the gateway may identify a given air-interface resource on which the access network is serving the WCD. After receiving the message, the gateway may use the given air-interface resource to determine one or more rules for decrementing an account balance associated with the WCD. The gateway may then decrement the account balance associated with the WCD in accordance with the determined one or more rules.
US09270832B2

A method, system, and program for billing for service provided to destination device according to the calling plan of the individual receiving the call. An authenticated identity for a callee answering a call placed to a destination device is received at an intermediary device. The intermediary device then accesses a billing plan for the authenticated identity of the callee and loads the billing plan for specifying charges for the call, such that telephone service billed to the callee is accessible at multiple destination devices.
US09270831B2

Methods, apparatuses (e.g., DSL system hardware, DSL systems, vectoring control entities), techniques, systems, etc. are used for initializing one or more DSL lines joining a vectored DSL line group operating in Showtime. A super-periodic orthogonal pilot sequence from a set of super-periodic orthogonal pilot sequences is assigned to each joining DSL line, wherein each such super-periodic orthogonal pilot sequence in the set has length L and is orthogonal to other sequences in the set over length T. These super-periodic orthogonal pilot sequences are used on the joining DSL lines to generate at least T sync-symbols worth of initialization data, which is processed to generate initialization data and FEXT mitigation coefficients for use when the joining DSL lines become part of the vectored DSL line group.
US09270823B2

An emergency notification system includes a first server for receiving a communication from a telecommunications network and for transmitting a message to a subscriber of the notification system. The system also includes a second server in communication with the first server, the second server for supplying the first server with information associated with a subscriber.
US09270822B2

A method, apparatus and computer program product for protecting privacy of a customer and an agent using face recognition in a video contact center environment is presented. A video call is initiated by a customer to a contact center. The customer video is muted while audio of the customer is provided to an agent of the contact center. A determination is made regarding whether a face is present in a video image of the customer. When a presence of a face is determined in the video image of the customer, then video of the customer is enabled. When a presence of a face is not present in the video image of the customer then the customer is notified so the customer can take appropriate action.
US09270819B2

The invention is an algorithm that allows a service provider to differentiate dialer traffic from conversational traffic and to divert the dialer traffic and/or to block or release it, enabling the routing of dialer calls only to those carriers that offer favorable rate conditions for dialer traffic and conversational calls to another larger superset of least cost routing carriers. Additionally, the invention allows the service provider to block the dialer type traffic, in which case the algorithm returns a “release-back” code.
US09270817B2

A system and method is provided for detecting a hold status in a transaction between a waiting party and a queuing party. The system is adapted to use a preexisting cue profile database containing cue profile for a queuing party. A preexisting cue profile may be used for detecting a hold status in a call between a waiting party and a queuing party. The cue profile of the queuing party may include audio cues, text cues, and cue metadata. The transaction may be a telephone based, mobile-phone based, or internet based.
US09270813B2

A system and method for testing lines to determine service-affecting conditions on a line, such as telephone wiring. Conditions may be identified from low frequency variations in a frequency spectrum measured on the line. The line may be stimulated with a broad spectrum signal, such as may be generated by a DSL modem operating in the L0 state or may be the result of noise on the line. Analysis of the low frequency variations may yield information about the nature of service-affecting conditions allowing conditions, such as un-terminated or poorly-terminated extensions to be identified. The method may be performed by a test device attached to premises wiring in a telephone network and used to determine whether the premises wiring will support VDSL2 or other high speed data services without modification or may indicate changes at the premises to enable the wiring to support high speed data services.
US09270803B2

A method and a mobile device are adapted to transmit data through short-range communication based on movement of the mobile device. External mobile devices near the mobile device are searched. Location information for each external mobile device found near the mobile device is acquired. Data to be transmitted is set. The movement of the mobile device is recognized. At least one target mobile device is set to receive data, based on the movement of the mobile device and the acquired location information of the found external mobile devices. And the data is transmitted to the at least one target mobile device.
US09270793B2

In a message replication environment, instances of a message volume are hosted by message systems. Each message system exchanges condition information with the other message systems indicative of the health of the volume instance hosted by the message system. Each message system then determines independently from the other message systems whether or not the message volume is sufficiently protected. In the event that the message volume is insufficiently protected, a protection action can be initiated.
US09270791B2

A method includes discovering a network device that has connected to a data link layer of a network based on a discovery packet broadcast by the network device via the data link layer. The method further includes configuring the network device based on a response packet transmitted to the network device via the data link layer in response to discovering the network device.
US09270787B2

An electronic apparatus including: a display unit; a communication unit which communicates with a server to which at least one emulating device is connected locally, through a network; a storage unit which stores therein a predetermined application; and a controller which is connected to the server and transmits the application stored in the storage unit to the emulating device, and receives from the emulating device an execution image of the application processed and executed by the emulating device and displays the execution image on the display unit.
US09270778B1

Observation-based user profiling and profile matching are provided. The network behavior of users of a computer-implemented social network are observed and used for user profiling. By observing network behavior instead of necessarily relying on user self-reported data, accurate and objective user profiles can be formed; user profiling is accomplished based on the observed network behaviors with or without the knowledge of the user being profiled. The observed network behaviors can include the customization of a visual graphic, a media preference, a communication preference, or a selection of words from a wordlist. The user profiles can be with respect to a domain and two or more users can be matched based on their profiles with respect to the same domain. User ratings and profile updating based on the ratings are also provided.
US09270774B2

The processing of data packets sent over a communication session between a host and a server by a service gateway includes processing a data packet using a current hybrid-stateful or hybrid-stateless processing method. The processing then checks whether a hybrid-stateless or hybrid-stateful condition is satisfied. When one of the sets of conditions is satisfied, the process includes changing from a hybrid-stateful to a hybrid-stateless processing method, or vice versa, for a subsequently received data packet. If the conditions are not satisfied, the process continues as originally structured.
US09270770B2

A system and method for optimizing publication operating states includes sending a first publication message to provide an operating state of a mobile unit. The operating state of the mobile unit is stored in a data session slot associated with the mobile unit. A second publication message is sent to update the operating state of the mobile unit. An entity tag value is derived from identifiers in accounting information of the second publication message to identify data in the data session slot associated with the mobile unit.
US09270763B2

Disclosed is a method and system for sharing content between a plurality of electronic devices including identifying an event and detecting one or more electronic devices based on the identified event. Electronic content is obtained from one or more of the electronic devices related to the event and provided to one or more output devices based on a comparison.
US09270757B1

A system, method, and computer readable medium for providing application isolation to one or more applications. The system may include an isolated environment including application files and executables, and an interception layer intercepting access to system resources and interfaces. The system may further include an interception database maintaining mapping between the system resources inside the isolated environment and outside, and a host operating system, wherein the isolated environments are saved on at least one of a local and remote storage.
US09270756B2

Methods and systems are provided for enhanced link utilization in attached SCSI (SAS) topologies. A SAS expander may be configured to monitor link utilization within a SAS topology, and may manage connection requests received thereby based on the monitoring of link utilization. The monitoring may comprise determining availability of links for at least one node within the SAS topology with respect to other nodes in the SAS topology. This may be done based on pending connection requests, and/or responses thereto received by the SAS expander. It may also be done based on shared link utilization data. The managing may comprise determining for each received connection request when link unavailability in other nodes within the SAS topology prevents connectivity to a destination node corresponding to the connection request. When this situation occurs, the SAS expander may handle the connection request directly.
US09270753B2

A cloud service system includes at least one user device, a plurality of clouds for providing different cloud services, and a gateway connected between the user device and the clouds. The gateway selects at least one of the clouds according to predefined Service Level Agreement (SLA) information, and stores content provided from the user device to the selected cloud.
US09270736B2

Technologies are described for semantic cache for connected devices (semantic cache) as a set of next generation cloud services to primarily support the Internet of things scenario: a massive network of devices and device application services inter-communicating, facilitated by cloud-based semantic cache services. The semantic cache may be an instrumented caching reverse proxy with auto-detection of semantic web traffic, public, shadow and private namespace management and control, and real time semantic object temporal versioning, geospatial versioning, semantic contextual versioning and groupings and semantic object transformations.
US09270723B2

A communication method for implementing a real-time streaming using hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) in a network is provided. Chunked encoding of HTTP is applied so that information can be exchanged between a server and a client while an HTTP request is being progressed. Therefore, bidirectional communication between the client and the server using HTTP is possible without modifying an existing HTTP protocol, and real-time transmission can be implemented.
US09270720B2

Systems and methods for automatically generating top level index files for use in adaptive bitrate streaming in accordance with embodiments of the invention are disclosed. One embodiment of the method of the invention includes receiving a request from a playback device at a playback server, where the request identifies a piece of content, retrieving a list of assets associated with the identified piece of content using the playback server, filtering the list of assets using at least one predetermined criterion using the playback server, generating a top level index file describing each asset in the filtered list of assets using the playback server, and sending the top level index file to the playback device using the playback server.
US09270717B1

A wireless multimedia content brokerage service can provide for real time selective content extraction in a manner that allows users to easily obtain, at a mobile device, one or more portions of a real time multimedia composite content presentation. The brokerage service ensures that the experience is transparent from the point of view of the user, and additionally does not require any specific interaction between the user and the display, or interaction between the user and the content service provider (or providers). Instead, the brokerage service handles the transactional details involved in subscribing to content and in obtaining, formatting, and forwarding content to the mobile device. Additionally, since the content of interest is not forwarded from the display itself and since some embodiments of the system do not rely on any interactivity at the display to identify the display device or content, relatively unsophisticated display devices can be used.
US09270714B2

Disclosed is a system and method for generating a preview of a digital content item using social network analysis. Members of a social network who acquire the digital content item may identify interesting portions of the digital content. When a member of the social network requests a preview of the digital content item, typically in anticipation of an acquisition of the digital content item, the interesting portions of the digital content item identified by fellow social network members are considered in the generation of the preview. Selection of the interesting content for preview may include more identified content, as well as social network relationship and role magnitudes. The digital content item may include: text, such as books or articles; multimedia such as audio/video; and interactive, such as games or virtual worlds.
US09270707B2

A method and system for enforcing the user of a proxy server within an enterprise communication system. The system includes an enterprise voice application server configured to act as a SIP proxy to client devices, and a private branch exchange configured to act as a SIP registrar. The client devices are configured to evaluate incoming SIP requests to determine whether they were received via the enterprise voice application server and, if not, to respond with a SIP 305 Use Proxy message referencing the enterprise voice application server in a Contact field. The 305 Use Proxy message forces the PBX or other intermediate SIP server to reroute the SIP request and any subsequent SIP requests in the dialog through the enterprise voice application server.
US09270699B2

A method scans a second web page linked to a first web page being displayed by a browser in a browser window. The method identifies, in the first web page, a target link to the second web page. Prior to receiving a user selection of the target link, the method prefetches content from the second web page and loads it into a safe cache before receiving the user selection of the target link and before the content of the second web page is opened by an application configured to provide access to the content of the second web page. The method scans the prefetched content from the second web page for a security threat, within the safe cache, which is configured to prevent the prefetched content from altering a memory location or storage location external to the safe cache.
US09270695B2

Techniques for ranking a set of vulnerabilities of a computing asset and set of remediations for a computing asset, and determining a risk score for one or more computing assets are provided. In one technique, vulnerabilities of computing assets in a customer network are received at a vulnerability intelligence platform. Breach data indicating set of breaches that occurred outside customer network is also received. A subset of the set of vulnerabilities that are most vulnerable to a breach is identified based on the breach data. In another technique, multiple vulnerabilities of a computing asset are determined. A risk score is generated for the computing asset based on the vulnerabilities. In another technique, multiple remediations associated with a risk score and multiple vulnerabilities are identified. The remediations are ordered based on the remediations that would reduce the risk score the most if those remediations were applied to remove the corresponding vulnerabilities.
US09270693B2

A system and method for detecting Fast-Flux malware are presented. Domain name system (DNS) lookup requests to DNS servers from a local area network (LAN) to a wide area network (WAN) are monitored. The DNS lookup requests comprise requests to resolve uniform resource locators (URLs) to network addresses. The network addresses (IP) received from the DNS servers for the DNS lookup requests are monitored provide a URL-to-IP associations list. The DNS servers used for the DNS lookup requests for the URLs are monitored to provide a DNS Domain-to-DNS server associations list. A suspicious URL log based on the URL-to-IP associations list, and a suspicious DNS log based on the DNS Domain-to-DNS server associations list are generated.
US09270686B1

Packets in an intrusion prevention system are inspected by a deep packet inspection engine. A packet may be queued for transmission onto an output queue and transmitted over a network while deep packet inspection is still being performed on the packet. Such simultaneous inspection processing and transmission may be implemented using two ownership bits for the packet, one to indicate “ownership to process” and one to indicate “ownership to send,” instead of the single ownership bit that is used in conventional systems. Furthermore, the packet may be inspected, queued onto the output queue, and transmitted without making a copy of the packet within the deep packet inspection engine. These techniques enable the inspection latency, and therefore the overall transmission latency, of packets to decrease, thereby improving the overall performance of the intrusion prevent system.
US09270684B2

An approach is provided to verify a network address. In the approach, a network address is received from a domain name service (DNS) based on a requested uniform resource locator (URL) that corresponds to a requested domain. A set of one or more network addresses previously established as corresponding to the requested domain is retrieved from a data store accessible from the information handling system. The information handling system is automatically connected to the network address in response to the received network address matching one of the set of one or more retrieved network addresses.
US09270673B2

The terminal device 600 comprises: a read unit configured to read encrypted content and a content signature from a regular region of a recording medium device 700, and to read a converted title key from an authorized region of the recording medium device 700, the converted title key having been converted from a title key with use of a content signature generated by an authorized signature device 500; a title key reconstruction unit configured to generate a reconstructed title key by reversely converting the converted title key with use of the content signature read by the read unit; and a playback unit configured to decrypt the encrypted content with use of the reconstructed title key to obtain decrypted content, and to play back the decrypted content.
US09270672B2

Provided are a method, a corresponding apparatus and a computer program product for performing a group authentication and key agreement procedure. A method comprises initiating, by a master device in a group of devices, a group authentication and key agreement procedure towards an authentication entity, wherein a shared group key is defined for use in the group authentication and key agreement procedure; performing mutual authentication between the master device and the authentication entity based upon the shared group key; and performing mutual authentication between the authenticated master device and other devices in the group based upon the shared group key for completion of the group authentication and key agreement procedure. With the claimed invention, the impact of the signaling overhead on a network can be significantly decreased without substantive modification to the existing architecture of the network.
US09270665B2

A work machine provided with a device configured to execute processing, the work machine includes: a communication terminal device configured to, when the communication terminal device has received a request command for causing the device to execute processing from a command source outside the work machine, return notification of reception completion to the command source, and output the request command to the device that executes processing corresponding to the request command, and transmit processing completion notification indicating the processing has been completed to the command source when the device that executes processing corresponding to the request command executed the processing.
US09270663B2

A central server configured with an Attribute Authority (“AA”) acting as a Trusted Third Party mediating service provider and using X.509-compatible PKI and PMI, VPN technology, device-side thin client applications, security hardware (HSM, Network), cloud hosting, authentication, Active Directory and other solutions. This ecosystem results in real time management of credentials, identity profiles, communication lines, and keys. It is not centrally managed, rather distributes rights to users. Using its Inviter-Invitee protocol suite, Inviters vouch for the identity of Invitees who successfully complete the protocol establishing communication lines. Users establish and respond to authorization requests and other real-time verifications pertaining to accessing each communication line (not end point) and sharing encrypted digital files. These are auditable, brokered, trusted-relationships where such relationships/digital agreements can each stand-alone (for privacy) or can leverage build-up of identity confidence levels across relationships. The service is agnostic to how encrypted user content is transported or stored.
US09270646B2

The present solution provides systems and methods for generating DNS queries that are more resistant to being compromised by attackers. To generate the transaction identifier, the DNS resolver uses a cryptographic hash function. The inputs to the hash function may include a predetermined random number, the destination IP address of the name server to be queried, and the domain name to be queried. Because of the inclusion of the name server's IP address in the formula, queries for the same domain name to different name servers may have different transaction identifiers, preventing an attacker from observing a query and predicting the identifiers for other queries. Additional entropy may be provided for generating transaction identifiers by including the port number of the name server and/or a portion of the domain name as inputs to the hash function. If it is determined that the responding server may preserve capitalization in its responses, the upper and lower case characters may be salted within the domain name to provide additional entropy in generating transaction identifiers.
US09270629B2

Companies provide a set of default personalized dynamic email addresses for both individuals and groups. The embodiments may be implemented as an extension to existing email servers, which are coupled to an existing enterprise information system. When receiving an email sent to a personalized dynamic email address, an address resolver component is used to access the definition of the email address, query for the respective recipient(s), and replace the recipient(s) in the email message. Users have the possibility to define further personalized dynamic email addresses using, for example, a web interface. The embodiments may be smoothly integrated into an existing communication infrastructure of companies without the need to change existing systems.
US09270627B1

Provided are, among other things, systems, methods and techniques for light-based communication. One representative embodiment includes: messaging units disposed at different locations within a space, each including at least one light source (e.g., light-emitting diode or LED); at least one messaging/modulation controller coupled to the light sources and configured to turn the light sources on and off so as to broadcast input digital messages; a central server coupled to the messaging/modulation controller(s) and configured to selectively provide messages to the messaging/modulation controller(s) for broadcast by different messaging units; and an associate device coupled to the central server and configured to: (a) display a user interface for manually inputting information about individuals within the space and (b) provide such information to the central server, where the central server selects messages to be broadcast by the messaging units based on the information received from the associate device.
US09270625B2

In general, a two or more stage spam filtering system is used to filter spam in an e-mail system. One stage includes a global e-mail classifier that classifies e-mail as it enters the e-mail system. The parameters of the global e-mail classifier generally may be determined by the policies of e-mail system owner and generally are set to only classify as spam those e-mails that are likely to be considered spam by a significant number of users of the e-mail system. Another stage includes personal e-mail classifiers at the individual mailboxes of the e-mail system users. The parameters of the personal e-mail classifiers generally are set by the users through retraining, such that the personal e-mail classifiers are refined to track the subjective perceptions of their respective user as to what e-mails are spam e-mails. Retraining data for the personal e-mail classifiers may be aggregated and a subset of the aggregate may be chosen for use in retraining the global e-mail classifier.
US09270622B2

A method comprising: providing a first client of an instant messaging service, the first client enabling a data service; receiving a request for the data service from a second client of the instant messaging service; and rendering client-controlled information regarding the first client available for persistent conveyance to the second client, the client-controlled information regarding the first client including data related to the data service. This allows a user associated with the second client to become aware of the data in a non-intrusive manner.
US09270621B1

Securely providing messages from a cloud server to an enterprise is disclosed. In one aspect, a message is received at a first server that provides a cloud service to a plurality of tenants. The message complies with a protocol other than HTTP. The message is put on a message queue for a first tenant of the plurality of tenants. An HTTP connection is established in response to a request from a second server to establish the HTTP connection between the second server and the first server. The first server receives an HTTP request from the second serve over the HTTP connection for a message for the first tenant. The message is provided to the second server over the HTTP connection in response to determining that the second server is authorized to receive messages for the first tenant.
US09270619B2

Configuring third party solutions to operate with virtual machines and virtual switches in a distributed network environment. The method includes receiving information at a logical switch about third party solutions in a distributed network. The method further includes receiving information at the logical switch about requirements for virtual components of the distributed network. The method further includes the logical switch automatically configuring third party solutions in the distributed network to meet the requirements for the virtual components of the distributed network.
US09270612B2

Embodiments relate to a software-defined networking (SDN) interface between multiple platform managers. An aspect is a computer-implemented method for receiving, at an SDN controller of a network, provisioning data from a first network provisioning application associated with a first platform manager of a first computing platform. Provisioning data are received at the SDN controller from a second network provisioning application associated with a second platform manager of a second computing platform. The SDN controller compares the provisioning data from the first network provisioning application to the provisioning data from the second network provisioning application to identify provisioning issues. The SDN controller determines a modified provisioning that resolves the provisioning issues. The SDN controller configures the network to comply with the modified provisioning. The modified provisioning is reported to the first and second network provisioning applications.
US09270604B2

In an NoC bus system, data is transmitted between first and second nodes through a router. The data includes performance-ensuring data which guarantees throughput and/or a permitted time delay. The first node generates packets, each including the data to be transmitted and classification information that indicates the class of that data to be determined according to its required performance, and controls transmission of the packets. The router includes a buffer section configured to store the received packets separately after having classified the packets according to their required performance by reference to the classification information, and a relay controller configured to control transmission of the packets stored in the buffer section at a transmission rate which is equal to or higher than the sum of transmission rates to be guaranteed for every first node associated with the classification information by reference to each piece of the classification information.
US09270601B2

Network devices perform multiple stage path resolution. The path resolution may be ECMP resolution. Any particular stage of the multiple stage path resolution may be skipped under certain conditions. Further, the network device facilitate redistribution of traffic when a next hop goes down in a fast, efficient manner, and without reassigning traffic that was going to other unaffected next hops, using multiple stage ECMP resolution.
US09270597B2

Disclosed is a network element (NE) comprising a receiver configured to receive a path computation request, a path computation element (PCE) coupled to the receiver and configured to compute a group of network paths through a network of NEs operating in a network stratum in response to the path computation request, wherein each network path comprises one or more physical links, and compute at least one constraint for each physical link, and an abstraction module coupled to the PCE and configured to receive the computed network path set and constraints, compute one or more abstract links that describe the network path group, and compute a constraint for each abstract link based on the physical link constraints.
US09270590B2

The embodiments of the present disclosure provide a method for transmitting packet in a Virtual Network. In the method, an access switch receives a Layer 3 packet carrying a VNID (Virtual Network IDentifier) from a VM in a remote Data Center. The access switch determines a DN (Designated Node) corresponding to the VNID and generates a Layer 2 frame according to the Layer 3 packet, where the Layer 2 frame includes the MAC (Media Access Control) address of the DN. The access switch to the DN transmits the Layer 2 frame according to the MAC address of the DN such that the DN determines a Layer 3 destination address according to the Layer 2 frame. This avoids packet flooding in Data Center when VM was migrated.
US09270588B2

In an example embodiment, a method is provided that assigns a sequence value to a host. The host is identified by a host network layer address. After the assignment, the host network layer address and the sequence value are included in an advertisement for transmission. In another example embodiment, another method is provided. Here, a first sequence value associated with the host network layer address is received from a network device. In addition, a second sequence value associated with the same host network layer address is received from a different network device. The first sequence value is ranked relative to the second sequence value and data is transmitted to the network device based on the ranking.
US09270585B2

A Distributed Routing Table (DRT) mesh can comprise two or more nodes, each of which maintains its own routing table that represents some or all of the overall routing knowledge of the DRT mesh. Each node can be comprised of modular components that can perform various defined functions such that the features and abilities of the node can be customized by an application based on which modular components are instantiated. A routing table management module can maintain individual routing tables at each node, and can ensure that only entries that are close to the node, in a network topology sense, are maintained in the routing table. In addition, a security module can verify received messages based on an agreed-upon root certificate.
US09270581B2

Novel tools and techniques are described for mitigating data loss during failover in a VPLS multi-homed network. In one aspect, a primary link might be established between a lowest numbered provider edge (“PE”) router in the service provider network and a lowest numbered physical site at customer premises outside the service provider network. A stability site might be established within the service provider network, communicatively coupled to at least the lowest numbered PE router via a primary virtual circuit. The stability site might be designated as the lowest numbered virtual site, which might have a site ID number lower than the lowest numbered physical site. In response to the primary link failing or becoming broken, one or more backup virtual circuits might be established between a plurality of ingress PE routers and a plurality of egress PE routers in the service provider network, without destroying the primary virtual circuit.
US09270559B2

A method performed by a network system communicatively coupled to a device over a wireless access network, the method comprising transmitting a traffic flow to, or receiving the traffic flow from, a software application on the device, the traffic flow comprising one or more related data transfers over the wireless access network, the traffic flow being routed between the software application and the network system through an assisting element comprising a control application or a proxy agent on the device, wherein the traffic flow has a characteristic associating the traffic flow with the first software application, the characteristic preserving the association between the traffic flow and the software application when the traffic flow is routed by the one or more assisting elements; identifying the characteristic; and implementing at least a portion of a control, accounting, or notification service policy based on the identified characteristic.
US09270553B1

A service oriented architecture (SOA) provides on-demand service call debugging and call stack tracing. The service call (e.g., an API) includes a new field and optional signature value. The field is a ‘debug-requested’ field, and the optional field is a unique call-id signature. The service provider can enable debugging in accordance with the debug-requested field for this service call, and tag all debugged data with the unique call-id. If it is necessary to call other services to fulfill the request, then the service can pass the ‘debug-requested’ field and the ‘unique id’ in the call to that service. Using this mechanism, detailed debugging can be supported across an entire stack for only those requests that need it and the performance/latency impact of having debugging enabled only applies to the subset of calls which need debugging.
US09270545B2

Aspects of the disclosure relate to signal monitoring at edge of a network domain in a network. A monitoring device can evaluate communication quality of information streams in downstream frequency channels, and operation conditions in a telecommunication network. In one aspect, communication quality can be evaluated at the physical layer level or at a higher-layer level containing payload data. In response to an operation issue, the monitoring device can transmit a notification to a node of a distribution platform of the telecommunication network.
US09270541B2

At least one defined service policy to be enforced by a policy enforcement point (PEP) is obtained. The obtained at least one defined service policy is parsed to identify at least one set of enforceable policy provisions and the at least one set of enforceable policy provisions is identified. Each set of enforceable policy provisions includes a policy subject, a policy domain, and at least one assertion as the enforceable policy provisions within the at least one defined service policy. At least one runtime processing rule including at least one processing action usable by the PEP is created to enforce the policy subject, the policy domain, and the at least one assertion of each identified at least one set of enforceable policy provisions.
US09270539B2

Provided are a computer program product, system, and method for provisioning resources of a computing environment using predictive time analysis. In certain computing environments, such as a highly utilized cloud computing environment, a predictive provisioning analysis engine can determine how long a resource provisioning request can take to complete. By learning from a window of previously completed provisioning requests that is kept current, the predictive provisioning analysis engine can accurately predict when the resource provisioning request can complete.
US09270538B2

A network design apparatus includes: a memory; and a processor coupled to the memory. The processor executes a process including: calculating an allocation pattern not requiring cancellation of a connection request from among a plurality of allocation candidates, when the connection request transmitted/received between nodes on a network is to be allocated to a slot that constructs a link on the network; determining a change procedure of the connection request in order to change an allocation pattern provided before the network is re-optimized to the allocation pattern calculated at the calculating; and outputting the allocation pattern calculated at the calculating as an allocation pattern after the network is re-optimized, along with the change procedure determined at the determining.
US09270536B2

In one embodiment, a router selects a particular peer from an original update group used with an Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). The original update group includes a plurality of peers of the router that share a same outbound policy and that receive common update messages, from the router, of routing table information. The router determines that the particular peer is a potential slow peer based on a first type of indicia, wherein a slow peer is a peer that cannot keep up with a rate at which the router generates update messages over a prolonged period of time. The router confirms that one or more second types of indicia are consistent with the particular peer being a slow peer. In response to the confirmation, the router determines that the particular peer is a slow peer.
US09270525B2

An approach is provided in which a local module receives a discovery message from a virtual network endpoint that is devoid of a corresponding virtual IP address. The local module sends one or more unicast network configuration messages to a dynamic configuration service and, in turn, the local module receives one or more unicast network configuration responses from the dynamic configuration service. One of the unicast network configuration responses includes one or more network configuration parameters. The local module configures the virtual network endpoint according to one or more of the network configuration parameters.
US09270508B2

A frame format used in a wireless communication system, more particularly an OFDMA TDD wireless communication system, of the kind that includes a base station and a plurality of fixed or mobile subscriber stations, the base station maintaining connections with each of the subscriber stations by performing wireless communication in units of frames having the frame format, and within each frame, allocating resources for data transmission and signalling. Each frame has a plurality of downlink subframes and a plurality of uplink subframes including, in time order, a first downlink subframe, a first uplink subframe, a final downlink subframe and a final uplink subframe. One or more further downlink subframe/uplink subframe pairs may be interposed between the first and final subframes as desired, and the configuration can be changed dynamically.
US09270506B2

Apparatus are disclosed, such as those involving a 3-D integrated circuit. One such apparatus includes a first die including a plurality of vertical connectors formed therethrough. The apparatus also includes a first circuit configured to encode multiple data bits into a multi-bit symbol, and provide the multi-bit symbol to two or more of the vertical connectors. The apparatus further includes a second circuit configured to receive the multi-bit symbol from at least one of the two or more vertical connectors, and decode the multi-bit symbol into the multiple data bits. The apparatus provides enhanced repairability with no or less redundant vertical connectors, thus avoiding the need for “on the fly” or field repair of defective vertical connectors.
US09270502B2

Embodiments provide a digital RF receiver including a signal converting unit which converts an RF signal received from an external device into a digital signal, a plurality of functional modules which processes the digital signal in accordance with a predetermined algorithm when the digital signal is input, and a signal processing controller which selects at least one of the plurality of functional modules to control the digital signal to be processed in consideration of whether an IF signal component is included in the digital signal or a sampling rate related with sampling information of the digital signal.
US09270497B2

Systems and methods are disclosed herein to provide improved channel estimation in a wireless data communication system, including but not limited to Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) communication systems. In accordance with one or more embodiments and aspects thereof, a channel estimation system is disclosed that utilizes data payload portions of received wireless packets to calculate estimates of the radio frequency (RF) channel traversed by these packets, and iteratively refines and improves these estimates by selectively utilizing successive received packets according to the application of certain metrics. Such a system may offer improved capabilities such as: more accurate signal reception, reduced bit error ratio, and better reception of short data packets.
US09270493B2

Systems and methods are disclosed for estimating impulse responses of multiple channels, e.g., multiple antenna sub-array paths of a base station, in a distributed manner. In one embodiment, a method of operation of a Scalable Estimation Ring (SER) processing component in a SER that operates to estimate impulse responses of corresponding channels is provided. In one embodiment, the method includes, during a first iteration of the SER, receiving a feedback signal for the SER processing component and computing an initial estimate of an impulse response of a corresponding channel based on the feedback signal, removing a contribution of the corresponding channel from the feedback signal based on the initial estimate of the impulse response of the corresponding channel to thereby provide a feedback signal for a next SER processing component in the SER, and outputting the feedback signal for the next SER processing component in the SER.
US09270486B2

One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch that facilitates name services in a virtual cluster switch. The switch includes a name service database indicating at least one media access control (MAC) address learned at a second switch. The switch also includes a control mechanism. During operation, the control mechanism distributes information on a locally learned MAC address to the second switch. In addition, the control mechanism receives information on a MAC address learned at the second switch.
US09270483B2

A communication management apparatus includes a token-circulation-order-information storing unit that stores token circulation order, a token-frame processing unit that determines whether transmission right acquiring apparatus information of the token frame indicates the own apparatus and transmits a token frame in which first transmission right acquisition determination information indicating a sequence number of a communication apparatus that can acquire a transmission right in the token circulation order, second transmission right acquisition determination information indicating the number of frames that can be transmitted during one token frame circulation, and transmission right acquiring apparatus information indicating the next transmission destination of the token frame after the own apparatus acquired from the token circulation order are set, and a data-frame-communication processing unit that transmits and receives the data frame, thereby to reduce time required until a communication node that acquired the token frame transmits data.
US09270477B2

Network data gap is determined and reported to enable a user to validate that all the traffic that was intended to be monitored is being monitored in monitoring and/or troubleshooting tools for observation of network traffic and network installation and maintenance. Span port oversubscription, incomplete span configuration, incorrectly placed network taps and monitoring device packet drop may thereby be detected and reported as data gap.
US09270472B2

A system and method for assigning a service flow classifier to a device. A MAC address of a device is extracted from a DHCP discover message. A DHCP server constructs a key from the device MAC address and an IP address assigned by the DHCP server. The key identifies a record of attributes of the device. A configuration server uses the key to access the attribute record and to generate a boot file for the device. The boot file includes one or more service flow classifiers that determine a service flow for packets destined for the device.
US09270466B2

The invention discloses system and method of temporary secure boot process of an electronic device. The method comprises: generating a first token according to an identification data of the electronic device; sending a request along with the first token to a service provider, the request corresponding to a boot package; receiving a second token and a boot package from the service provider; verifying the second token and the boot package; and executing the boot package according to verification result.
US09270461B2

System and method embodiments are provided herein for efficient representation and use of initialization vectors (IVs) for encrypted segments using template mode representation in Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (DASH). An embodiment method includes sending in a media presentation description (MPD), from a network server to a client, a template for generating a universal resource locator (URL) to obtain an IV that is used for encrypting a segment, in absence of an IV value in the MPD, receiving from the client a URL configured according to the template, and upon receiving the URL, returning an IV corresponding to the URL to the client. Another embodiment method includes receiving in a MPD, at a client from a network server, a template for generating a URL to obtain an IV that is used for encrypting a segment, upon detecting an absence of an IV value or IV base value in the MPD, configuring a URL for the IV using the template, sending the URL for the IV, and receiving an IV.
US09270447B2

Systems and methods providing a key management platform that generates and distributes demand-based encryption and decryption keys are described.
US09270445B2

Disclosed is a solid state disk including a storage unit configured to store data, and a control part configured to control enciphering and writing operation for the data using a key value and an initialization vector. The initialization vector is generated by processing an address corresponding to the data.
US09270442B2

Disclosed herein are a variety of systems and methods for correcting for propagation delay in time signals used in connection with an electric power generation and delivery system. According to various embodiments, a device consistent with the present disclosure may determine an estimated propagation delay between an accurate time source and a receiving device. The propagation delay may be determined based on a variety of transmission parameters including, for example, communication channel type and/or length. A corrected time signal may be generated by advancing a reference incitation such as an “on-time” reference and/or “start-of-second” reference included in the time signal by an amount associated with the propagation delay. The corrected time signal may then be transmitted to the receiving device.
US09270441B2

Systems, method and devices utilized in wireless communication may include creating, scheduling and/or using a transmission having at least one quasi-ABS which includes at least one macro set corresponding to a designated sector of a plurality of sectors in a macro node. Such subframes may be formed and partitioned to provide for a partition which may be used by a range expansion resource, such as a pico node or user entity.
US09270437B2

Provided are a communication system, a base station apparatus, a mobile station apparatus, and a communication method for reducing interference between uncoordinated adjacent cells. The communication system of the present invention comprises a base station apparatus and a mobile station apparatus. The base station apparatus notifies the mobile station apparatus of a downlink control information format, the downlink control information format including resource allocation information that dictates switching of resource allocation of an uplink demodulation reference signal localized resource allocation and distributed resource allocation, and a frequency offset of the distributed resource allocation of the uplink demodulation reference signal specific to the mobile station apparatus. The mobile station apparatus determines the resource allocation of the uplink demodulation reference signal in accordance with the frequency offset of the mobile station apparatus when information comprised in the downlink control information format dictates the distributed resource allocation in the resource allocation information, and transmits the uplink demodulation reference signal to the base station apparatus.
US09270436B2

The disclosure provides a method and an apparatus for configuring a Cell-Specific Reference Signal (CRS). The method includes: a cell is divided into a central area and a marginal area; a CRS is divided into a central CRS, a marginal CRS and a common CRS; a value that is obtained by adding a fixed first power value to a preset reference Energy Per Resource Element (EPRE) is configured as an EPRE value of the marginal CRS; a value that is obtained by subtracting a fixed second power value from the preset reference EPRE is configured as an EPRE value of the central CRS; and the reference EPRE is configured as the EPRE value of the common CRS. The disclosure can improve an SINR of a marginal area of a cell and enhance downlink performance of a UE in the marginal area of the cell, without affecting downlink performance of a UE in a central area of the cell.
US09270431B2

Systems, apparatuses, and techniques relating to wireless local area network devices are described. A described technique includes transmitting a sounding packet to wireless communication devices; receiving, in response to the sounding packet, feedback packets from the wireless communication devices, wherein the feedback packets are indicative of beamforming matrices, the beamforming matrices being derived from received versions of the sounding packet; determining steering matrices based on the beamforming matrices; generating spatially steered data packets for the wireless communication devices based respectively on the steering matrices and data streams intended respectively for the wireless communication devices; and transmitting, within a frame, the spatially steered data packets to the wireless communications devices, wherein the spatially steered data packets concurrently provide the data streams respectively within the frame to the wireless communication devices via different spatial wireless channels.
US09270430B2

A method for performing Power Headroom Reporting (PHR) in a user equipment (UE) of a wireless communication system is disclosed. The wireless communication system supports Carrier Aggregation (CA), which enables the UE to perform transmission through multiple carriers. The method includes steps of configuring a plurality of uplink carriers, and generating at least one PHR values, each corresponding to one of the plurality of uplink carriers.
US09270429B2

Methods and systems for communicating in a wireless network may distinguish different types of packet structures by modifying the phase of a modulation constellation, such as a binary phase shift keying (BPSK) constellation, in a signal field. Receiving devices may identify the type of packet structure associated with a transmission or whether the signal field is present by the phase of the modulation constellation used for mapping for the signal field. In one embodiment, the phase of the modulation constellation may be determined by examining the energy of the I and Q components after Fast Fourier Transform. Various specific embodiments and variations are also disclosed.
US09270428B2

In a method for operating a secondary station in a network, the secondary station: controlling a transceiver configured for simultaneously receiving transmissions from a first primary station controlling a first cell and at least one second primary station controlling a second cell; selecting a first precoding matrix for the first cell out of a first set of precoding matrices for the first cell; selecting, depending on the first precoding matrix, in accordance with a precoding scheme, a subset out of a second set of precoding matrices for the second cell, the subset comprising at least one precoding matrix for the second cell; selecting a second precoding matrix for the at least one second cell out of the selected subset of precoding matrices; transmitting a first and second indicator representative of the respective first and second precoding matrix; wherein the second precoding matrix is based on the value of the first indicator, so that the amount of data used for transmitting the second indicator is less than the amount of data used for transmitting the first indicator.
US09270418B1

In some aspects, techniques for wireless signal decoding are described. In some instances, a number of superposition codes are computed based on a set of orthogonal binary codes. The set of orthogonal binary codes includes multiple subsets; each superposition code corresponds to one of the subsets and includes a combination of the binary codes in the corresponding subset. One of the subsets is selected based on a correlation between a wireless signal and the superposition code that corresponds to the subset. One of the binary codes is then selected from the selected subset based on a correlation between the wireless signal and the binary code. The wireless signal is decoded based on the selected binary code.
US09270415B2

Methods and systems for encoding frames while maintaining bounded running disparity, including: encoding the headers of the frames utilizing a first line-code; selecting the first line-code and a second line code for encoding first and second payloads of first and second frames, respectively, based on first and second data types of first and second data comprised in the first and second payloads, respectively; encoding the first and second payloads utilizing the first and second line-codes, respectively; and transmitting the first and second frames over a communication channel characterized by first and second channel conditions, respectively. The second line-code has a minimal Hamming distance lower than that of the first line-code, and the differences between the first and second channel conditions are not enough for selecting the second line-code instead of the first line-code for encoding the second payload.
US09270413B2

A method is performed by a device in a wireless network. The method includes receiving a transmission that includes a wideband channel quality indicator, determining a received signal power estimate for each frequency band of a frequency domain, and determining an average interference-plus-noise based on the wideband channel quality indicator and the received signal power estimate. The method further includes determining a signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio estimate for each frequency band based on the average interference-plus-noise and the received signal power estimate, and performing a communicative operation based on the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio estimate.
US09270409B2

Systems and methods for handling of an uplink transmission collision with an ACK/NACK signal are provided. The scheduled uplink transmission is refrained due to the collision. Subsequent non-adaptive retransmission for the scheduled uplink transmission may be refrained by delivering an ACK for the scheduled uplink transmission to high layers. Alternatively, subsequent non-adaptive retransmission for the scheduled uplink transmission may be refrained by setting the HARQ feedback for the scheduled transmission to ACK. In some implementations, a subsequent non-adaptive retransmission for the scheduled uplink transmission may be transmitted. If a subsequent non-adaptive retransmission is to be transmitted, the HARQ redundancy version for the subsequent non-adaptive retransmission is refrained from incrementing from the original redundancy version for the scheduled uplink transmission.
US09270402B2

Both a wireless terminal apparatus and wireless base station apparatus are provided that can, in an operation of encoding the control signals of the upstream link transmitted from the multiple terminal stations while encoding with regard to each of the terminal stations, increase a number of the terminal stations to which different codes are respectively assigned. A wireless terminal apparatus includes: an encoding information receiving portion receiving encoding information which is used at the wireless terminal apparatus from the base station; a phase-shifting unit which conducts a phase-shifting operation on a predetermined first code based on the encoding information; a code selection unit which, based on the received encoding information, selects a second code from multiple codes orthogonally crossing each other; and a control signal encoding portion which conducts an encoding operation on the control signal that is going to be transmitted to the base station by using both the first code on which the phase-shifting operation has been conducted and the second code.
US09270396B2

A network device such as a router or switch, in one embodiment, includes a timing analyzer which is capable of providing timing analysis over one or more network circuits. The timing analyzer, in one aspect, receives a data packet traveling across a circuit emulation service (“CES”) circuit such as T1 or E1 circuit. Upon obtaining an arrival timestamp associated with the data packet, the arrival timestamp is stored in a timestamp buffer in accordance with a first-in first-out (“FIFO”) storage sequence. After identifying the oldest arrival timestamp in the timestamp buffer, an offset is generated based on the result of comparison between the arrival timestamp and the oldest timestamp. The timing analyzer can also be configured to generate timing reports on-demand based on generated offset(s).
US09270394B2

The present invention relates to a transmission device that enables transmission and reception of connected transmission channels in a 13-segment format and a transmission method of the transmission device, and to a reception device.The transmission device transmits connected transmission information that indicates that connected transmission of a plurality of transmission channels is being performed, and includes a field indicating that a 13-segment format is at least one segment format among the transmission channels being subjected to the connected transmission. The reception device receives the connected transmission information transmitted by the transmission device. The present invention can be applied to transmission devices that transmit terrestrial digital broadcast signals, for example.
US09270388B2

A method and apparatus for impulse noise mitigation. In one embodiment, the method comprises identifying one or more impulse noise affected samples of a communication signal transmitted via power line communications; creating, based on the identified one or more impulse-noise affected samples, one or more erasures; and adaptively controlling a correlation threshold for packet preamble detection, wherein the correlation threshold is adaptively controlled based on the one or more erasure.
US09270383B2

An optical receiver may receive input signals carried by respective sub-carriers. The optical receiver may determine, based on the input signals, a compensation value to be used to modify an input signal. The optical receiver may use the compensation value to adjust the input signal to form a modified input signal. The compensation value may be used to modify a frequency or a phase of the input signal. The optical receiver may determine, based on the modified input signal, a phase estimate value that represents an estimated phase associated with the input signal. The optical receiver may combine the compensation value and the phase estimate value to form a phase adjustment signal, may combine the input signal and the phase adjustment signal to form an output signal, and may output the output signal.
US09270382B2

An optical communication apparatus includes a variable resistor unit, a measurement unit, and a control unit. The variable resistor unit is arranged at a pre-stage of an electrical/optical conversion unit, which converts an electrical signal obtained by converting an input packet to an optical signal having a waveform corresponding to a potential difference between a positive phase component and a negative phase component of the electrical signal by using the potential difference. The variable resistor unit provides a resistor that varies a midpoint of potential of the positive phase component or the negative phase component. The measurement unit measures a ratio of a presence period, which is a period where the input packet is present, to a sum of the presence period and a non-presence period. The control unit controls a value of the resistor provided to the positive phase component or the negative phase component based on the ratio.
US09270371B2

A radio frequency signal transceiving method and device thereof are proposed. The method is configured for a radio equipment controller (REC) of a radio frequency signal transceiving device to exchange radio signals between a plurality of Baseband Units (BBUs) and a plurality of Radio Equipments (REs) that respectively connected to a plurality of Remote Radio Units (RRUs), and the method includes but not limited to the step of: receiving a first radio downlink signal at least, generating a first downlink control signal, modulating the first radio downlink signal at least into a first analog downlink signal at a first frequency according to the first downlink control signal, multiplexing the first analog downlink signal and the first downlink control signal into an integrated analog downlink signal, converting the integrated analog downlink signal into an optical downlink signal, and transmitting the optical downlink signal.
US09270362B2

A single, large-scale satellite access communication network may be configured as infrastructure for many small-scale subnets, wherein each subnet may be configured to serve a different organization (e.g. an SME) as a private network. Each subnet may be configured as a small star and/or mesh satellite data access network from the end-user perspective, yet all subnets may be configured to be part of the total large-scale network and share satellite bandwidth resources. Such configuration may yield significantly higher bandwidth efficiency, lower operation and equipment costs, minimized latency and ease of network operations for each of the small organizations sharing the large-scale network.
US09270361B2

The present invention utilizes a relay station operable to receive, from a base station, a first signal to control transmitting operation of a mobile station and operable to receive a second signal transmitted from said mobile station in accordance with the first signal. The relay station comprises a control unit to generate a control signal affecting said first signal and control transmission of said control signal to said base station, and a reception processing part to receive a radio signal transmitted from said mobile station which transmits said radio signal in accordance with said first signal which is affected by said control signal.
US09270351B2

The present invention provides for an improved application of signal strength weightings in a SDMA sectorized cellular network. The improved signal strength weightings application is conducted through the improved selection of weightings from a new codebook subset or by the selection of weightings from a larger codebook subset. In a further embodiment, an antenna beam index or bit map can be used to select the best beam(s) in a SDMA sectorized cellular network. In another embodiment, a field or factor in an uplink or downlink transmission packet can designate which directional transmission beam is best suited for the transmission or when the directional transmission beam should be activated.
US09270347B2

A system and method of receiving a channel state information reference signal (CSI-RS) is presented. At a user equipment, a first CSI-RS transmitted from a base station is received. In some implementations, the first CSI-RS is transmitted at a first periodicity using a first set of antenna ports. At the user equipment, a second CSI-RS transmitted from the base station is received. In some implementations, the second CSI-RS is transmitted at a second periodicity using a second set of antenna ports. At least one of the first CSI-RS and the second CSI-RS is used to perform channel measurement.
US09270345B2

Information about a set of cells potentially taking part in coordinated multipoint transmission is obtained, information about at least one of reference signal configuration and data region size configuration for each of the set of cells is obtained, further an indication of which of the reference signals configuration and the data region size configuration should be assumed in resource mapping for data is obtained, and data according to the resource mapping is received. Information about at least one of reference signal configuration and data region size configuration for each cell of a set of cells potentially taking part in coordinated multipoint transmission is provided, and an indication of which of the reference signals configuration and the data region size configuration should be assumed in resource mapping for data is provided.
US09270344B2

A method for applying the application of reading multiple NFC tags. By examining the context of the reading, the identification of the NFC tags, and a direction, pattern and/or sequence of reading, a corresponding action is determined and requested.
US09270343B2

An apparatus (pad) and method for wirelessly charging a receiver are disclosed. The pad includes one or more NFC antennas which can receive an NFC signal from the receiver. The pad also contains one or more charging coils. Measurement of the signal strength at each charging NFC antenna helps determine which charging coil(s) should be utilized to effect the most efficient charging of the receiver.
US09270339B2

A device, method and system for recovering an operating system may comprise a near field communication module; a high speed wireless communication module; and a recovery manager. In some embodiments, the recovery manager may initiate a session between a portable communication device and another portable communication device through a near field communication connection established by the near field communication module; continue the session to receive an operating system image from the another portable communication device through a high speed wireless connection established by the high speed wireless communication module; and recover the operating system of the portable communication device with use of the operating system image.
US09270331B2

To assist with the detection of unfiltered device(s), a system observes how the received noise changes between two links as the transmit signal is changed. Harmful unfiltered nonlinear devices will generate significant noise that depends on the transmitted signals; therefore, this additional noise can be quantified to some extent by comparing the observed noise for two different transmit signals. The total noise can be determined from the SNR if the received signal is known. The received signal may be read directly in some non-standard systems, or it may be determined from the known transmit signal and channel attenuation, which is sometimes the case in standard-compliant links, but often with a relatively large error. To circumvent this problem, certain embodiments of this invention only consider the change in noise between two links with the same channel attenuation. This differential comparison makes it unnecessary to accurately know the channel attenuation.
US09270321B2

A transceiver used in a radio unit for wireless communication, comprises: a circuitry board including a transmitter and a receiver; a first connector on a first side of the circuitry board, wherein the first connector is configured to be connected to an interface card; a second connector on a second side of the circuitry board, wherein the second side is opposite the first side and the second connector is configured to be connected to a digital card via a flexible circuit; and a pair of transmit port and receive port located on the second side of the circuitry board, wherein the transmit port is coupled to the transmitter and the receive port coupled to the receiver, respectively. When the transceiver is part of a split-mount radio unit (SRU), the first connector is connected to the interface card and the second connector is not in use. When the transceiver is part of an all-outdoor radio unit (AOU), the second connector is connected to the digital card and the first connector is not in use.
US09270314B1

A single-MOS pole-zero lowpass filter for use in a single-ended-input current-reuse wideband receiver having a stacked RF-to-BB front end adapted to receive and process an RF signal to generate an N-phase BB signal, the lowpass filter being adapted to filter the N-phase BB signal, the lowpass filter having a lowpass input impedance for high stopband rejection at low voltage headroom consumption. The lowpass filter is arranged with one active MOS MLPF and one self-biased MOS ML; MLPF creates complex poles and two stopband zeros to boost the stopband rejection; ML provides BB current-to-voltage conversion and common-mode feedback to alleviate tradeoff between voltage headband and BB gain; and ML is diode-connected to enable the generated BB signal to be copied to a next HR stage.
US09270313B2

A wireless receiver includes a radio frequency (RF) receiving unit and a baseband receiving unit. A first path of the RF receiving includes a first filter, and is arranged for receiving an input RF signal and generating a first baseband input signal; a second path is arranged for receiving the input RF signal and generating a second baseband input signal. The baseband receiving unit is arranged for receiving the first baseband input signal and the second baseband input signal to generate a baseband decoded signal. One of the first path and the second path is an in-phase path, and the other is a quadrature-phase path. When the RF receiving unit operates in a first mode, the RF receiving unit only uses the first path to receive the input RF signal.
US09270308B2

The present invention provides an adaptive radio-interference cancelling device and method, a receiver, and a wireless full duplex communication system. The device includes an amplitude phase adjusting module, configured to adjust an amplitude and a phase of a radio-frequency reference signal and output a radio-frequency adjustment signal to enable the radio-frequency adjustment signal to converge to a self-interference signal in a radio-frequency received signal; a subtractor, configured to output a radio-frequency residual signal, where the radio-frequency residual signal is a difference signal between the radio-frequency received signal and the radio-frequency adjustment signal; and a baseband extracting and filtering module, configured to receive the radio-frequency reference signal and the radio-frequency residual signal output by the subtractor, extract baseband signals and perform least mean squares adaptive filtering processing on the baseband signals to obtain an amplitude phase control signal and output to the amplitude phase adjusting module.
US09270302B2

Front end circuitry includes at least three antenna nodes, a first duplexer, a second duplexer, a first diplexer, transceiver circuitry, and front end switching circuitry. The transceiver circuitry is coupled to the first duplexer, the second duplexer, and the first diplexer. The front end switching circuitry is coupled between the antenna nodes, the first duplexer, the second duplexer, and the first diplexer and configured to selectively couple the first duplexer to a first one of the antenna nodes, selectively couple the second duplexer to a second one of the antenna nodes, and selectively couple the first diplexer to a third one of the antenna nodes.
US09270290B2

A time-to-digital converter (TDC) comprises a TDC core and a masking circuit. The TDC core is configured to detect phase difference between a reference signal and a controlled signal. The masking circuit is configured to generate a mask signal based on the reference signal, the controlled signal, and a command signal including information of a predetermined value associated with the reference signal and the controlled signal. The mask signal is used to mask a portion of pulses of the controlled signal from entering the TDC core during detection of phase difference.
US09270281B1

Apparatuses and methods for tuning center frequencies are described herein. Examples of tuning described herein including tuning using feedback from the resonator. Variable gain feedback for tuning of acoustic wave resonators is provided in some examples. An example apparatus may include a resonator and a feedback loop. The resonator may be configured to receive a tuning signal and to provide a feedback signal. The feedback signal may be based on the tuning signal. The feedback loop may be configured to receive the feedback signal from the resonator. The feedback loop further may be configured to provide the tuning signal to actively tune a center frequency of the resonator. The tuning signal may be based on the feedback signal.
US09270280B1

A fractional-N frequency divider includes a half-integer frequency divider and a duty cycle adjustment circuit. The half-integer frequency divider includes a multi-modulus divider containing a cascaded chain of div2/3 cells, which is responsive to a multi-bit modulus control signal, and a phase control circuit configured support half-integer frequency division by the multi-modulus divider, by providing an input terminal of the multi-modulus divider with a periodically phase-flipped input signal having a first frequency. The duty-cycle adjustment circuit is configured to generate a divider output signal with a 50% duty cycle in response to a periodic signal generated by the half-integer frequency divider.
US09270278B2

Disclosed herein are semiconductor device arrays, such as, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and Complex Programmable Logic Arrays (CPLAs) that use high-density Spin Transfer Torque (STT)-based memory elements. STT-based memory elements can either be stand-alone FPGAs/CPLAs, or can be embedded in microprocessors and/or digital signal processing (DSP) system-on-chip (SoC) to provide design flexibility for implementing low power, scalable, secure and reconfigurable hardware architecture. Because the configuration is stored on the FPGA/CPLA die itself, the need for loading the configuration from external storage every time is eliminated when the device is powered on. In addition to instant startup, eliminating configuration I/O traffic results in power savings and possible pin count reduction. Security is greatly improved by eliminating the need to store configuration data in an external memory.
US09270275B2

A level shifter includes a level shifting unit suitable for changing a swing voltage level of an input signal from a first swing voltage level to a second swing voltage level based on a clock signal, a precharging unit suitable for precharging an output node of the level shifting unit based on the clock signal, and an output unit suitable for latching a signal of the output node having the second swing voltage level to output as an output signal.
US09270270B2

A clock-gating circuit is disclosed that may reduce unnecessary power consumption associated with clock distribution networks. For some embodiments, the clock-gating circuit includes a latch control circuit, a storage latch, and a logic gate. The control circuit has inputs to receive an input clock signal, a clock enable signal, and a clock gating control signal, and has an output terminal to generate a latch enable signal. The latch has a data terminal responsive to the clock enable signal, a latch enable terminal responsive to the latch enable signal, and an output to generate the clock gating control signal. The logic gate has inputs to receive the input clock signal and the clock gating control signal, and has an output terminal to generate an output clock signal. The clock-gating circuit may reduce power consumption during an enabled state by maintaining the latch enable signal at a constant logic state, thereby reducing dynamic power consumption by preventing internal logic gates from dynamically switching logic states while the input clock signal is gated.
US09270269B2

Electronic memory circuits, and more particularly, low power electronic memory circuits having low manufacturing costs are disclosed. The present invention is a circuit design that utilizes two transistor types—bipolar and MOS (but, not both NMOS and PMOS) one of which can be manufactured together with the memory cell's non-linear conductive elements (such as a diode) thereby reducing the number of processing steps and masks and resulting in lower cost.
US09270260B2

A distortion compensation device compensates a distortion component generated in a nonlinear circuit having a nonlinear input-output characteristic. The distortion compensation device includes a predistorter and an estimator. The predistorter converts an input signal into an inverse characteristic signal by using a compensation coefficient so that an estimation value of an inverse characteristic to the nonlinear input-output characteristic is given to the input signal. The estimator generates the compensation coefficient based on the input signal, the inverse characteristic signal and an output signal of the nonlinear circuit.
US09270257B2

In an embodiment of the invention, a dual-port positive level sensitive reset data retention latch contains a clocked inverter and a dual-port latch. Data is clocked through the clocked inverter when clock signal CKT goes high, CLKZ goes low, reset control signal REN is high and retention control signal RET is low. The dual-port latch is configured to receive the output of the clocked inverter, a second data bit D2, the clock signals CKT and CLN, the retain control signals RET, the reset control signal REN and the control signals SS and SSN. The signals CKT, CLKZ, RET, REN, SS and SSN determine whether the output of the clocked inverter or the second data bit D2 is latched in the dual-port latch. Control signal RET determines when data is stored in the dual-port latch during retention mode.
US09270249B2

A tunable impedance matching circuit is provided for matching a signal source to an impedance of an antenna. The tunable impedance matching circuit includes two terminals, a series path, and two shunt paths. The first terminal is coupled to the signal source, and the second terminal is coupled to the antenna. The series path is coupled between the first terminal and the second terminal and includes a first tunable capacitor and at least one tunable inductor. One of the two shunt paths is coupled between the first terminal and a ground end, and the other one of the two shunt paths is coupled between the second terminal and the ground end. Each of the shunt paths includes a second tunable capacitor.
US09270246B1

Embodiments provide a limiter circuit that includes a power splitter coupled with a plurality of antiparallel diode pairs. In some embodiments, the power splitter may be part of a first stage of the limiter circuit. Other embodiments may be described and claimed.
US09270243B2

A volume control system, that can easily check current volume values with respect to volume values settable in a plurality of audio output devices when a volume value representing the volume values of the audio output devices is displayed, is provided. A controller of the volume control system can be connected to the plurality of the audio output devices, and can control the audio output devices. The controller obtains the volume values of the audio output devices and predetermined upper limit volume values stored in the audio output devices, and displays percentages of the volume values with respect to the predetermined upper limit volume values as total volume values. Further, the controller displays values that are determined by multiplying the total volume values and percentages of the predetermined upper limit volume values with respect to prescribed values as the volume values of the audio output devices.
US09270236B2

A power amplifier is smaller in size and limits input noise having a differential frequency. A power amplifier has an input terminal, an amplifying transistor, a bias circuit, a filter circuit, and an impedance matching circuit. The bias circuit supplies a bias to the signal input side of the amplifying transistor. The filter circuit removes noise at the signal input side of the amplifying transistor. The filter circuit has a matching resistor, a chip inductor, and a chip capacitor. Each of the chip inductor and the chip capacitor is a surface mount device. The matching resistor is located on a semiconductor substrate, has a first end connected to a connection point of two MIM capacitors, and a second end connected to a connection point of one of the MIM capacitors and the signal input side of the amplifying transistor.
US09270232B2

An apparatus includes an operational amplifier circuit comprising at least one operational amplifier and a feedback circuit coupled between the output terminal and input terminal of the operational amplifier circuit and configured to apply a feedback gain to an output signal at the output of the first operational amplifier. The apparatus further includes a variable compensation capacitor coupled to the output terminal of the operational amplifier circuit and configured to vary a capacitance thereof responsive to the feedback gain.
US09270224B2

The present invention relates generally to the photovoltaic generation of electrical energy. The present invention relates more particularly to photovoltaic arrays for use in photovoltaically generating electrical energy. Aspects of the present invention provide a variety of photovoltaic roofing elements and systems that include, for example, interlocking geometries to provide for water handling and integration with conventional roofing materials; and wire management features that can protect wiring and associated electrical components from physical and/or environmental damage.
US09270222B2

A multi-level medium-voltage inverter that receives three-phase power and outputs a three-phase voltage to a three-phase motor, includes: a plurality of unit power cells connected in series to output a single phase voltage, individual unit power cells each having a phase voltage forming a single level to configure multiple levels; and a module-type phase shift transformer configured to convert the three-phase power and applying the converted power to three unit power cells constituting one level, wherein the module-type phase shift transformer includes a plurality of modules.
US09270219B2

Apparatus for controlling the excitation current of a variable frequency generator (VFG) including means to create a voltage-regulated DC link using PMG power and frequency information, the latter being the image of the VFG mechanical input speed. A step-down voltage-controlled chopper is inserted between the passive rectifier stage and the excitation current control chopper. The control law of this voltage-controlled source is such that when the mechanical input speed of the VFG increases, its output (controlled DC-link voltage) decreases non-linearly, leading to DC link voltage varying from V (engine at idle) to V/2 (engine at take-off speed). The DC voltage becomes inverse-proportional to input mechanical speed.
US09270217B2

A combined battery charger and motor driver circuit assembly includes a rechargeable battery, a traction motor configured to accept a pulse-width-modulated (PWM) drive, a PNP transistor array, a charging source of chopped and rectified DC, and a control circuit configured to apply a discrete PWM drive signal to the gate of each transistor in the PNP transistor array.
US09270208B2

A control device for a vehicular power system including an induction motor includes an electronic control unit configured to detect a locked state of the induction motor, calculate a lock-release slip frequency that causes an electric frequency to be outside a lock range, and control the induction motor so that a slip frequency of the induction motor becomes equal to the lock-release slip frequency when the locked state is detected.
US09270203B2

An electrostatic (ES) device is described with electrodes that improve its performance metrics. Devices include ES generators and ES motors, which are comprised of one or more stators (stationary members) and one or more rotors (rotatable members). The stator and rotors are configured as a pair of concentric cylindrical structures and aligned about a common axis. The stator and rotor are comprised of an ensemble of discrete, longitudinal electrodes, which are axially oriented in an annular arrangement. The shape of the electrodes described herein enables the ES device to function at voltages significantly greater than that of the existing art, resulting in devices with greater power-handling capability and overall efficiency. Electrode shapes include, but are not limited to, rods, corrugated sheets and emulations thereof.
US09270197B2

There are provided a power factor correction device and a method for controlling power factor correction using the same. The power factor correction device includes a power factor correction circuit and a control circuit. The power factor correction circuit includes first and second inductors connected to an input power source stage and first and second main switches performing a switching operation on the first and second inductors, respectively. The control circuit may provide control signals to the first and second main switches, respectively, and when phase currents flowing in the respective first and second inductors are unbalanced, the control circuit may change a phase of at least one of the first and second main switches to correct an imbalance of the phases.
US09270192B2

A variable-speed drive including: a DC power supply bus including a positive line and a negative line; a bus capacitor connected between the positive line and the negative line of the DC power supply bus; an inverter module supplied with power by the DC power supply bus and controlled to provide a variable voltage to an electrical load; a first switching branch connected between the positive line and the negative line of the bus and including at least one first electronic switch; and a first module including a braking resistor, or a second module including a mechanism for storing and regenerating electrical energy generated during braking of the electrical load, wherein the first module and the second module are removable and interchangeable.
US09270189B2

A power converter apparatus includes a primary bridge having a plurality of diagonally opposed primary power elements, and a secondary bridge having a plurality of diagonally opposed secondary power elements. The primary and secondary bridges are electrically coupled by a transformer. At least one control unit is configured to phase-shift switch the primary and secondary power elements, such that one or more of the primary and secondary power elements are switched off under near-zero current conditions to reduce voltage and current stresses and commutation losses within the power converter.
US09270188B2

Disclosed herein is a direct current to direct current (DC-DC) converter. The DC-DC converter includes a first bridge and a second bridge. The first bridge includes a first switch and a second switch, whereas the second bridge includes a third switch and a fourth switch. The second bridge is in parallel connection with the first bridge. The second switch is in series connection with the first switch, and the fourth switch is in series connection with the third switch. The DC-DC converter switches between a first mode and a second mode based on a detection signal. Further, a method for controlling the DC-DC converter is also disclosed herein.
US09270187B2

An electric power conversion system includes: a primary electric power conversion circuit including a primary coil connected to a connection point between a plurality of transistors; a secondary electric power conversion circuit configured similarly to the primary electric power conversion circuit and including a secondary coil corresponding to the primary coil; and a control circuit controlling transfer of electric power between the primary and secondary electric power conversion circuits. The control circuit executes feedforward control for setting one of an on/off ratio of a terminal voltage signal of the primary coil and an on/off ratio of a terminal voltage signal of the secondary coil, in response to at least one of fluctuations in voltage ratio between both waveforms and fluctuations in phase symmetry between both waveforms, when the terminal voltage waveform of the primary coil and the terminal voltage waveform of the secondary coil are different from each other.
US09270177B1

A switching power-supply device is configured to convert and output a first direct voltage to a second direct voltage by alternately turning on and off a first switching element and a second switching element, the switching power-supply device includes: a reference voltage generation unit; a comparison unit; and a driving signal generation unit, wherein the driving signal generation unit controls the period of supplying the driving signal to the driving unit, depending on an input-and-output condition, and wherein the reference voltage generation unit starts rising of the ramp signal during a period from a time point, at which the first switching element has been turned from on to off in response to the driving signal, to when the first switching element is turned on.
US09270175B2

A driving device is provided with: a power circuit in which it is possible to modify an output current value of an output terminal configured to have a load connected thereto; an output capacitor connected between the output terminal of the power circuit and a reference potential node; a switching element connected between the output terminal of the power circuit and the reference potential node; and a control unit that controls the output current value of the power circuit.The control unit turns the switching element ON and OFF and controls the output current value of the power circuit during a period in which the switching element is ON such that the voltage of the output terminal of the power circuit during this period is equal to or lower than the voltage applied to the load during a period when this load is OFF.
US09270174B2

An integrated circuit includes a set of electronic circuits, a voltage regulator, and a power management module. The power management module includes a set of dummy circuits connected to the set of electronic circuits, a control signal generator, a counter and a shift register. The control signal generator generates a control signal based on the current consumption of the set of electronic circuits dropping below a threshold value over a predefined period of time. The counter generates a count signal for a predetermined time period when the control signal is activated. The shift register receives the count signal, enables the dummy circuits when the count signal is received, and disables the dummy circuits in a daisy chain fashion during the predetermined time period.
US09270170B2

A sag corrector apparatus for providing voltages temporarily (ride-through) to a load during momentary electrical disturbances in the power supply line. In one embodiment, the disclosed apparatus compensates for voltage sags by using a variable duty cycle boost converter to boost the sagged line voltage to resemble desired voltage levels during occurrence of voltage sags. The boosted voltage available to a connected load during a sag depends on a sequence of operation of various control pulses. Duty cycle of the boost converter is controlled by changing the width (duration) of the control pulses. To prevent voltage shoot-throughs from over-boosting, an energy clamp circuit is provided to dissipate excess energy. Embodiments of the sag corrector circuit can be additionally integrated with power protection functions.
US09270164B2

The present invention provides methods, systems, computer program products, and devices for renewable energy site power limit control that address conditions of plant saturation and loop delay. In an exemplary embodiment, power limit control of the present invention is broken into two levels of control: a site-wide real power limit control that produces a single site-wide command, SitePlimCom, for all inverters, and inverter-level power limit control that outputs a command, Inv[x].PlimCom[k], for individual inverters. In some embodiments, the invention has one or more of the following features: an integrator with nonlinear gains, limit based anti-windup, a power limit control term based on the sum of both integrator and feed-forward terms, and an inverter-level controller designed to meet slew rate and site power overshoot constraints. The invention can be used at any renewable energy site employing inverters wherein improved dynamic control performance is needed, including solar, wind, and tidal energy sites.
US09270162B2

There is provided a switching regulator including an overcurrent protection circuit which is able to automatically return from an overcurrent state. The switching regulator includes an error amplification circuit which amplifies a difference between a feedback voltage and a reference voltage based on an output voltage and outputs the amplified difference; a PWM comparator which compares an output of the error amplification circuit with an output of a triangular wave oscillation circuit, and controls an output transistor; an overcurrent detection circuit which monitors a load current flowing through a load connected to an output terminal, detects that the load current is an overcurrent, and outputs an overcurrent detection signal causing a switching operation to stop; and a negative feedback control circuit which receives the overcurrent detection signal, and controls the load current to a predetermined current value.
US09270148B2

The present invention relates to a coil form (100) for mounting on a magnet core (118) for a rotating electrical machine or a resolver and to a corresponding magnet core. The present invention further relates to a magneto-electric angle sensor, in particular a reluctance resolver, the stator of which is constructed by the principles according to the invention. The coil form has a winding form (102) for applying a winding, the winding form (102) comprising a recess (124) for receiving a tooth (116) of the magnet core (118), at least one holding rib (114) being integrally formed and in cooperation with a holding structure (120) of the magnet core (118) fixing the coil form to the tooth. The magnet core comprises a plurality of lamellae (136) manufactured from sheet metal, which are layered on top of one another in a plane-parallel manner and interconnected, every two lamellae which lie on top of one another being rotated through an offset angle relative to one another to form the holding structure (120).
US09270146B2

A brushless motor includes a stator core having 3M teeth, with M being an integer not less than 2, a rotor received in the stator core, 3M coils respectively wound around the 3M teeth, and a printed circuit board (PCB) fixed to the stator core and electrically connected to the 3M coils such that the 3M coils are connected in delta and correspond to three phase windings. Each phase includes at least two coils connected in parallel.
US09270135B2

A power supply apparatus includes a plurality of power storage modules that are connected in parallel and a backup power storage module that is connected in parallel with the plurality of power storage modules. When charging or discharging of at least one of the power storage modules is disabled, charging of the other power storage modules is inhibited, discharging of the backup power storage module is permitted, states of charge of the backup power storage module and the other power storage modules are detected, and charging of the backup power storage module and the other power storage modules is permitted in accordance with the detected states of charge.
US09270121B2

A control circuit for booting a number of devices in a certain order includes two delay circuits and three switch circuits, the first switch circuit and the first delay circuit receiving a power good signal and a voltage signal from a power supply unit and thus allowing a first device to boot and the first delay circuit outputting a first delay signal after a set time, to the second switch circuit and the second delay circuit, which repeat the process of the first delay circuit and switch circuit, to boot the remaining devices.
US09270120B2

Methods, systems, and computer readable media for adaptive out of step protection for power generators with load resynchronization capability are disclosed. According to one method, when a fault condition occurs in a load being supplied by a power generator, a number of pole slips expected to occur in the generator due to the fault before resynchronization is estimated. It is determined whether the estimated number of pole slips exceeds a threshold. An offline or online status of the generator is controlled based on the determination as to whether the estimated number of pole slips exceeds the threshold.
US09270118B2

Techniques for controlling energy generation and/or storage systems. In one embodiment, a method is provided that can comprise receiving from a control server a plurality of schedules for controlling the charging and discharging of an energy storage device, where each schedule corresponds to a function that takes as input one or more input parameters and returns as output an output parameter corresponding to a power level for the energy storage device. The method can further comprise determining relative priorities for the plurality of schedules and controlling charging/discharging of the energy storage device based on the plurality of schedules and their relative priorities.
US09270112B2

A driving circuit includes several first electrostatic current limiting resistors and several digital to analog converter (DAC) units. First ends of these first electrostatic current limiting resistors common coupled to a global path to receive a reference voltage. These DAC units respectively coupled to second ends of the first electrostatic current limiting resistors one-on-one to receive the reference voltage through the first electrostatic current limiting resistors.
US09270103B2

An insulation covered bus bar includes a bus bar formed of a conductive material for transmission of electric power. An insulation tube wraps the bus bar and formed of an insulation material having a characteristic of electric insulation. A fixing unit is formed so as to wrap around an outer circumferential surface of the bus bar, connected to an end of the insulation tube, installed to be fixedly disposed to the bus bar so that the insulation tube is fixed within the bus bar.
US09270102B2

An example multilayered bus bar includes, among other things, a first conductive layer, a second conductive layer, and a third conductive layer. The second conductive layer is sandwiched between the first and third conductive layers. A polarity of the second conductive layer is different than a polarity of the first and third conductive layers.
US09270100B2

A fastening clip comprises a base body and at least one holding portion which is integrally but flexibly connected to the base body, the base body as well as the holding portion comprising at least one receptacle for an elongated member. The holding portion is reversibly movable with respect to the base body in a predefined range, however, a rotation of the holding portion relative to the base body is limited by first stops.
US09270097B2

A cable manager includes a trough, defining a footprint, and a door. At least one side of the trough is formed from a plurality of finger-like projections extending forwardly from a support member. At least two of the projections include a hinge boss disposed at an outer end thereof and extending inwardly. At least one edge of the door has a hinge structure disposed therealong that includes an outer arm and an inner arm defining a hinge channel therebetween. The hinge bosses are disposed within the hinge channel such that the door is rotatably attached along at least one of its longitudinal edges to the trough. The door is rotatable to an open state without extending beyond the footprint of the trough.
US09270095B2

A tool for cutting and slitting the shielding of an electrical cable includes a cutting platform configured to engage the shield of the cable. A driven cutting blade is mounted for movement past the cutting platform into the shield. A fixture is provided for supporting the cable in a desired orientation during a cutting or slitting operation. The fixture includes a first cable support that defines a ring cut plane and a second cable support that defines a slitting plane.
US09270089B2

In accordance with the present disclosure, a system and method for providing scalable and modular power infrastructure outside of usable rack space is described. The system may include a chassis configured to mount on the side of a rack. A power cable interface box (PCIB) may be disposed within the chassis, and the PCIB may receive alternating current (AC) power. The system may further include at least one power supply unit disposed within a slot of the chassis, with the at least one power supply unit receiving AC power from the PCIB and outputting direct current (DC) power to a busbar. The system may also include a battery back-up unit (BBU) element disposed within the chassis. The BBU element may charge from and discharge to the busbar.
US09270086B2

A device is provided. The device includes a first organic light emitting device, which further comprises a first electrode, a second electrode, and an organic emissive layer disposed between the first electrode and the second electrode. The device also includes a first laser device, which further comprises an optical cavity and an organic lasing material disposed within the optical cavity. A focus mechanism is disposed to focus light emitted by the first organic light emitting device onto the first laser device. Preferably, the focus mechanism provides light incident on the first laser device at least 10 times greater, and more preferably at least 100 times greater, in intensity than the light emitted by the first organic light emitting device.
US09270082B2

Devices, apparatus, systems and methods for providing accurate linear and angular positioning with a payload mounted to a beam having freely moveable ends. The payload can be a laser pointer mounted on a firearm, which maintains the initial precise pointing during and after exposure in high G shock and vibration environments. Vertical and lateral adjustment controls can adjust minute changes in beam orientation. Precision adjustments can be performed in a zero G, one G, or high G environment and maintains the adjustment during and after being exposed to a high G shock or vibration environment.
US09270076B2

An optical amplifier includes an optical gain fiber into which signal light and pump light are input and at least one relative phase shifter is inserted. Preferably, the relative phase shifter is inserted so that the relative phase in the lengthwise direction of the optical gain fiber falls within a predetermined range containing 0.5π. Preferably, the optical gain fiber is a highly non-linear optical fiber having a non-linearity constant of at least 10/W/km. Preferably, the dispersion of the optical gain fiber is within the range from −1 ps/nm/km to 1 ps/nm/km in an amplification band. Preferably, the absolute value of the dispersion slope of the optical gain fiber at a zero dispersion wavelength is no greater than 0.05 ps/nm2/km.
US09270074B2

The laser comprising an optical fiber having two ends of which a first whereby the light is to be received, and a doped section for absorbing at least part of the light received via the first end and emitting light, the method includes: applying a torsion angle to the optical fiber; supplying light having a pump power at the first end of the optical fiber; checking that the Polarization Extinction Ratio of the light output from the first end of the optical fiber remains greater than a predetermined value throughout a predetermined range of the pump power; and, if the Polarization Extinction Ratio remains greater than the predetermined value throughout the predetermined range of the pump power, attaching the optical fiber to a mechanical mount at two attachment points of the optical fiber situated on either side of the doped section, with the torsion angle applied to the optical fiber.
US09270069B2

Embodiments of an angled electrical contactor are provided. An aspect includes a moving contact bar including at least 4 contact discs, wherein a first contact disc and a second contact disc of the moving contact bar are located in a first plane, and a third contact disc and a fourth contact disc of the moving contact bar are located in a second plane, wherein the first plane and the second plane are distinct and are at an angle to each other. Another aspect includes a first stationary contact bar including at least 2 contact discs, wherein a first contact disc of first stationary contact bar is in a third plane, the third plane being substantially parallel to the first plane, and a second contact disc of the first stationary contact bar is in a fourth plane, the fourth plane being substantially parallel to the second plane.
US09270067B2

A connector comprises a first shell configuring with a first insulative portion having a first base portion and a first tongue portion to conform an first type interface, a second shell configuring with a second insulative portion having a second base portion and a second tongue portion to conform an second type interface and a terminal set, held in a housing, including a plurality of the first terminals and a plurality of the second terminals, wherein said terminal set is made up of a group comprising the first terminals and the second terminals and configuring the terminal set with a special arrangement.
US09270064B2

A coaxial connector including a selectively engageable radio frequency interference shield.
US09270046B2

A seal member disposed within a coaxial cable connector comprising an annular body portion having an outer diameter surface and an inner diameter surface, and a plurality of flexible segments disposed along the inner diameter surface, extending radially inward from the inner diameter surface, wherein the flexible segments are configured to conform to a helical outer conductor and fill a valley of the helical outer conductor, thereby effectuating an environmental seal around the helical outer conductor is provided. A coaxial cable including the seal member is also provided. An associated method is further provided.
US09270044B2

There are provided in the substrate connector a connector main body that has a leading end face butted against the circuit board, thereby bringing leading end faces of terminal fitting, which are housed and retained in the connector main body, with contact point patterns on the circuit board, thereby butting; and a connector receiving member that is attached to the circuit board and that holds the leading end face of the connector main body butted against the surface of the circuit board. The terminal fitting is provided by spring pieces that impart predetermined contact pressure as a result of contact points, which contact the contact point patterns, experiencing elastic deformation upon contact with the corresponding contact point patterns.
US09270036B2

A ground electrode-coupling device functionally joined to a cylindrical body, with internal cylindrical form and external conical form. The device includes an internal blockage dividing the device into two cavities. The device also includes at least an orifice in each cavity communicating the internal coupling with the external coupling, for enabling the release of the air by coupling the bodies. The external form is a conical geometry for reducing the resistance of the device by being inserted in a solid medium.
US09270033B2

A lug arrangement for electrically connecting a conductor to a terminal of a circuit breaker. The lug arrangement includes a lug having a lug opening and first and second holes. The lug opening includes an opening for receiving the conductor and a slot for receiving the terminal. The lug arrangement includes a lug screw threadably engaged with the first hole for compressing the conductor against the terminal. Further, the lug arrangement includes a lug retainer for insertion into both the second hole and a third hole formed in the terminal. The lug retainer includes at least one protrusion that is moveable from a first position to a deflected position for enabling insertion of the lug retainer into the second hole. The at least one protrusion is also moveable back to the first position wherein the protrusion engages the second hole to attach the lug retainer to the lug.
US09270029B2

A metallic shaping plate located in the interior housing of a wireless device is disclosed. The metallic shaping plate may influence a radiation pattern being generated by a horizontal antenna array. The result may be an increase in the gain of the array.
US09270028B2

An octave bandwidth conformal cavity-backed slot antenna includes a ground plane with a number of different length slits that come together at the central feedpoint. The slit length varies from one-half a wavelength at the highest frequency at which the antenna is to operate for the short side to one wavelength at the highest frequency for the long side, with the proximal ends of the slits having a common feedpoint. Such slot antennas may be arrayed in a quad configuration. Because the trapezoidal envelope of the antenna induces the phase-center to shift with frequency, when two are arrayed with short sides adjacent, the spacing between them results in a phase center from one antenna to the next that is effectively within half a wavelength at all frequencies.
US09270026B2

Embodiments include antenna systems capable of producing high quality circularly, elliptically, or linearly polarized radiation. Embodiments include single feed (single-ended or differential) or multiple feed antennas. Embodiments can be electronically configured to adjust the type of polarization of the antenna system. In an embodiment, the polarization of the antenna system is adjusted by adjusting at least the position of a grounding node relative to the position of a feed node. In another embodiment, the polarization of the antenna system is adjusted by configuring one or more input nodes of the antenna between feed nodes, grounding nodes, and open nodes. In another embodiment, the polarization of the antenna system is adjusted by adjusting the phase of a single differential feed of the system.
US09270023B2

A random jitter beamforming method for reducing the influence of a side lobe to decrease a beam width, and a transmitter and a receiver using the same are provided. The random jitter beamforming method includes dividing a series of binary sequences to generate a plurality of bit groups, designating a beam pattern, corresponding to each of the bit groups, from a set of two or more beam patterns having the same gain and phase in a target direction, and forming a beam with the corresponding beam pattern, for each of the bit groups.
US09270010B2

An RFID antenna assembly configured to be energized with a carrier signal is disclosed. The RFID antenna assembly includes an inductive component including a loop antenna assembly, at least one capacitive component coupled to the inductive component, and an eddy current trap positioned a predetermined distance from the loop antenna assembly.
US09270005B2

Various embodiments of millimeter-wave systems on a printed circuit board, including a microstrip, a probe, and an RF integrated circuit, as well as methods for manufacturing said systems. Various embodiments have holes extending through lamina in the PCB, thereby improving radiation propagation. Various embodiments have conductive cages created by multiple through-holes extending through lamina in the PCB, thereby increasing radiation propagation. The manufacture of such systems is easier and less expensive than the manufacture of current systems.
US09270004B2

An electronic device includes a central control unit and a waveguide device. The waveguide device includes a high-frequency signal waveguide for transmitting a high-frequency signal emitted from a communication module having a communication function, and an attachment/detachment unit capable of attaching/detaching the communication module so that coupling between the high-frequency signal waveguide and the high-frequency signal is possible. The communication module includes a communication device and a transfer structure configured to cause the high-frequency signal emitted from the communication device to be transferred to the high-frequency signal waveguide of the waveguide device.
US09269997B2

An energy storage cell (20) including: an anode (40) formed of a molten alkali metal; an air cathode (60); and an electrolyte medium (50) located between the anode and cathode.
US09269996B2

An electrochemical cell system is configured to utilize an ionically conductive liquid flowing through a plurality of electrochemical cells. One or more hydrophilic filters for venting of gas from the cells are provided along a flow path for the ionically conductive liquid, so as to permit gasses that evolve in the ionically conductive liquid during charging or discharging to vent outside the cell system, while constraining the ionically conductive liquid within the flow path of the electrochemical cell system.
US09269992B2

Disclosed herein is a battery. The battery includes a contactless communication control block configured to execute contactless communication as a transponder and a reader/writer which are based on electromagnetic induction. The battery further includes an antenna configured to execute the contactless communication as the transponder; and an antenna configured to execute the contactless communication as the reader/writer. The battery further includes a battery control block configured to control a charge operation of a cell block. The contactless communication control block communicates, in a contactless manner, a charge state of the cell block supplied from the battery control block.
US09269985B2

Disclosed is a rechargeable lithium battery that includes a positive electrode including a lithium nickel-based positive active material; a negative electrode including a negative active material; an electrolyte including a lithium salt and a non-aqueous organic solvent; and a separator including a polymer substrate and a hydroxide compound-containing coating layer disposed on the polymer substrate.
US09269974B2

A fuel cell system acquires an operation state of a fuel cell and estimates an IV characteristic that indicates a relationship between a current and a voltage in the fuel cell. At least one of a resistance overvoltage, an activation overvoltage, a current-voltage hysteresis and a concentration overvoltage of the fuel cell is determined from the operation state of the fuel cell, and the IV characteristic is estimated based on the determined result.
US09269963B2

A method for producing and reactivating a solid oxide cell stack structure by providing a catalyst precursor in at least one of the electrode layers by impregnation and subsequent drying after the stack has been assembled and initiated. The method includes impregnating a catalyst precursor into a cathode of a solid oxide cell stack which already contains an active material (an anode reduction) for example, in the form of Ni/YSZ anodes. Due to a significantly improved performance and an unexpected voltage improvement this solid oxide cell stack structure is particularly suitable for use in solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) and solid oxide electrolysing cell (SOEC) applications.
US09269961B2

A lithium battery includes a cathode, an anode including a component made of silicon, a separator element disposed between the cathode and the anode, an electrolyte, and a substrate. The anode is disposed over the substrate or the anode is integrally formed with the substrate.
US09269959B2

A current collector includes a support and at least one graphene layer located on the support. The support includes two surfaces. The at least one graphene layer is located on one of the two surfaces of the support. The at least one graphene layer includes a number of uniformly distributed graphenes.
US09269957B2

Provided is a lithium ion battery having a long service life by improving an adhesion strength between a binder resin and a metal foil. A binder resin, which is a compound having a chemical structure that contains a polyvinylidene fluoride molecular chain, a six-membered ring such as a cyclohexane ring, and an end group selected from the group consisting of SiX3, SH, NH2, GeX3, and TiX3 (wherein X is a functional group that undergoes a condensation reaction), wherein the six-membered ring is disposed in a region between the polyvinylidene fluoride molecular chain and the end group, is mixed with an active material and applied to a metal foil, and the binder resin is chemically bonded to metal atoms such as copper atoms on the surface of the metal foil.
US09269945B2

An electrode lead for electrically connecting an electrode assembly provided inside a case of a secondary battery with the outside of the case, according to the present invention, comprises: an inner lead which is inserted between sealing parts of the case and to which an electrode tab of the electrode assembly is attached, and which has a gas flow path so as to allow gas to flow between the inside and the outside of the case; and an external lead which is insertably disposed in the gas flow path, is electrically connected with the inner lead when inserted into the gas flow path, seals one end of the gas flow path, and is separated from the gas flow path so as to cut off electrical connection with the inner lead when the pressure of the gas flowing into the gas flow path is greater than or equal to the predetermined pressure.
US09269932B2

A method comprising the steps of encapsulating a power source including a set of power terminals in a cover and sealing the power source including the set of power terminals within the cover and inserting a set of conductive contacts through the cover to contact the set of power terminals and provide conductive access to the set of power terminals of the power source from outside the cover without allowing exposure of the power source to an environment outside the cover.
US09269928B2

An organic EL light emitting device includes a transparent substrate, a transparent electrode film formed on the substrate, a positive electrode contact portion in contact with a part of the transparent electrode film and electrically connected therewith, an insulating layer formed on the transparent electrode film such that the an insulating layer covers a portion excluding a light emitting part, an organic light emitting layer formed on the transparent electrode film and on the insulating layer, a negative electrode film formed on the organic light emitting layer, a negative electrode contact portion in contact with at least a part of the negative electrode film and electrically connected therewith, and a protective layer for separating and electrically insulating the positive electrode contact portion and the transparent electrode film from the negative electrode contact portion.
US09269925B2

Embodiments of the present invention provide an array substrate, a manufacturing method thereof and a display device. The array substrate comprises a plurality of pixel units disposed on a substrate, each pixel unit including a thin-film transistor (TFT) structure and an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) driven by the TFT structure. The OLED includes a transparent first electrode, an emission layer and a second electrode for reflecting light in sequence in a direction away from the substrate. A color filter disposed between a layer provided with the OLED and a layer provided with the TFT structure. A transflective layer disposed between the OLED and the color filter. The second electrode of the OLED and the transflective layer constitute a microcavity structure.
US09269920B2

A light-emitting element having extremely high efficiency of approximately 25% is provided. The light-emitting element includes a light-emitting layer which contains a phosphorescent guest, an n-type host, and a p-type host, where the light-emitting layer is interposed between an n-type layer including the n-type host and a p-type layer including the p-type host, and where the n-type host and the p-type host are able to form an exciplex in the light-emitting layer. The light-emitting element exhibits an extremely high emission efficiency (power efficiency of 74.3 lm/W, external quantum efficiency of 24.5%, energy efficiency of 19.3%) at a low driving voltage (2.6 V) at which luminance of 1200 cd/m2 is attainable.
US09269918B2

An organic light-emitting display device includes a substrate which includes a plurality of areas, a plurality of first electrodes disposed on the areas of the substrate, respectively, a second electrode disposed on the first electrodes, and a plurality of emitting layers disposed between the first electrodes and the second electrode. At least two of the emitting layers are disposed on all of the areas.
US09269915B2

A display device having high display quality is provided. In the display device that includes a plurality of display regions having different normal directions, the arrangement directions of a plurality of subpixels included in pixels vary between the display regions.
US09269912B2

Disclosed is a metal complex having a partial structure represented by the following Formula (I-0) or a tautomer thereof: formula (I-0) Cy is a 5 to 7 membered heterocyclic ring, preferably a 6-membered ring, which may be aromatic, non aromatic or partially aromatic and which coordinates to the metal atom through a carbon atom; A is a nitrogen atom a is an integer equal or superior to 1; D is an electron donor group; and b is an integer equal or superior to 1.
US09269909B2

There is provided a compound having Formula I or Formula II where: Ar1-Ar4 are the same or different and are H, D, or aryl.
US09269905B2

A polymer compound, is provided in which at least a part of repeating units has a group containing a carbon cluster structure. The polymer compound preferably one or more, more preferably two or more, units selected from an arylene unit, a heteroarylene unit and an aromatic amine unit, as repeating units.
US09269904B2

A method for manufacturing large-area organic solar cells utilizes a hot solvent vapor annealing manufacturing process while manufacturing the organic solar cells via a large-area proceeding method, such as spraying. Namely, a heated solvent vapor is utilized to modify an active layer after the active layer of the organic solar cells is formed, which ensures a flatness and an uniformity thereof and increases a crystallinity of the active layer and an element charge transport rate so that a power conversion efficiency of the large area organic solar cells is increased, a proceeding time is quite short, and the performance thereof is quite obvious. Therefore, the method not only reduces the cost by a large area production but obtains organic solar cells with higher conversion efficiency.
US09269902B2

Provided are resistive random access memory (ReRAM) cells and methods of fabricating thereof. The ReRAM cells may include a first layer operable as a bottom electrode and a second layer operable to switch between a first resistive state and a second resistive state. The ReRAM cells may include a third layer that includes a material having a lower breakdown voltage than the second layer and further includes a conductive path created by electrical breakdown. The third layer may include any of tantalum oxide, titanium oxide, and zirconium oxide. Moreover, the third layer may include a binary nitride or a ternary nitride. The binary nitrides may include any of tantalum, titanium, tungsten, and molybdenum. The ternary nitrides may include silicon or aluminum and any of tantalum, titanium, tungsten, and molybdenum. The ReRAM cells may further include a fourth layer operable as a top electrode.
US09269896B2

Provided are resistive random access memory (ReRAM) cells and methods of fabricating thereof. A stack including a defect source layer, a defect blocking layer, and a defect acceptor layer disposed between the defect source layer and the defect blocking layer may be subjected to annealing. During the annealing, defects are transferred in a controllable manner from the defect source layer to the defect acceptor layer. At the same time, the defects are not transferred into the defect blocking layer thereby creating a lowest concentration zone within the defect acceptor layer. This zone is responsible for resistive switching. The precise control over the size of the zone and the defect concentration within the zone allows substantially improvement of resistive switching characteristics of the ReRAM cell. In some embodiments, the defect source layer includes aluminum oxynitride, the defect blocking layer includes titanium nitride, and the defect acceptor layer includes aluminum oxide.
US09269890B2

According to one embodiment, a magnetoresistance effect element includes a reference layer, a shift canceling layer, a storage layer provided between the reference layer and the shift canceling layer, a tunnel barrier layer provided between the reference layer and the storage layer, and a spacer layer provided between the shift canceling layer and the storage layer, wherein a pattern of the storage layer is provided inside a pattern of the shift canceling layer when the patterns of the storage layer and the shift canceling layer are viewed from a direction perpendicular to the patterns of the storage layer and the shift canceling layer.
US09269886B1

A circuit combines the features of fast startup with low current, low frequency response, and low noise. With the use of a novel biasing technique, it is possible to operate the piezoelectric crystal at zero DC voltage bias, both throughout the startup phase and during normal operation, by setting both ends of the piezoelectric crystal to the same voltage potential. In this application, the potential is that of the reference voltage. Not having to charge the piezoelectric crystal capacitance reduces the startup time dramatically.
US09269884B2

An ultrasonic transducer includes a substrate, a supporting film, and a piezoelectric element. The substrate includes an opening. The supporting film is configured on the substrate to cover the opening. The piezoelectric element is configured at a part of the supporting film. The part overlaps with the opening in a planar view in a thickness direction of the substrate. A thickness of the part of at a center of gravity in the planar view is smaller than a thickness of an outer edge portion of the part. The outer edge portion is closer to the substrate than the center to the substrate.
US09269879B2

Provided is a light emitting device package. It is a substrate comprising a top and a bottom surfaces being substantially parallel to each other; a light emitting diode chip on the substrate; a frame disposed around the light emitting diode chip and configured to reflect light emitted from the light emitting diode chip, the frame having an opening; a first metal layer disposed on the top surface of the substrate; a second metal layer disposed on the top surface of the substrate; a third metal layer disposed on the bottom surface of the substrate; a through hole connected between the first metal layer and the third metal layer; a material being filled in the opening of the frame; and a lens disposed on the material, wherein the substrate and the frame are separate from each other.
US09269875B2

A light emitter is disclosed herein. The light emitter may have a lead frame and a plastic reflector cup. The lead frame may have a planar portion; a bond area having a light-emitting diode attached thereto; and at least two terminals configured for surface mount technology. The reflector cup may be proximate the bond area and may have an opening, wherein light emitted from the light-emitting diode passes through the opening; a side wall extending between the planar portion and the opening; and a clear lens located proximate the opening and attached to the reflector cup. The combination of the lens and the reflector cup causes a light beam originating from the light-emitting diode to be less than fifteen degrees.
US09269858B2

Engineered substrates for semiconductor devices are disclosed herein. A device in accordance with a particular embodiment includes a transducer structure having a plurality of semiconductor materials including a radiation-emitting active region. The device further includes an engineered substrate having a first material and a second material, at least one of the first material and the second material having a coefficient of thermal expansion at least approximately matched to a coefficient of thermal expansion of at least one of the plurality of semiconductor materials. At least one of the first material and the second material is positioned to receive radiation from the active region and modify a characteristic of the light.
US09269856B2

The disclosure relates to a method of making light emitting diode. The method includes following steps: providing a free-standing carbon nanotube film, wherein the carbon nanotube film includes a number of carbon nanotubes aligned and connected with each other via van der Waals force; suspending the carbon nanotube film and inducing defects on the surface of the carbon nanotubes; growing a nano-material layer on the surface of the carbon nanotubes via atomic layer deposition; removing the carbon nanotube film by annealing to form a number of nanotubes; wherein the number of nanotubes are successively aligned and connected with each other to form a free-standing nanotube film; setting the nanotube film on a substrate; growing a first semiconductor layer, an active layer and a second semiconductor layer on the substrate; and applying a first electrode on the second semiconductor layer and a second electrode on the first semiconductor layer.
US09269854B2

Methods of making optoelectronic devices containing functional elements made from layers liberated from natural and/or fabricated lamellar semiconductor donors. In one embodiment, a donor is provided, a layer is detached from the donor, and the layer is incorporated into an optoelectronic device as a functional element thereof. The thickness of the detached layer is tuned as needed to suit the functionality of the functional element. Examples of functional elements that can be made using detached layers include p-n junctions, Schotkey junctions, PIN junctions, and confinement layers, among others. Examples of optoelectronic devices that can incorporate detached layers include LEDs, laser diodes, MOSFET transistors, and MISFET transistors, among others.
US09269853B2

A luminescent device including an upper electrode layer, a lower electrode layer and an active layer provided between these electrode layers, the device having such a structure that at least one electrode layer of the upper electrode layer and the lower electrode layer is provided in an in-plane direction of the active layer being divided into plural electrodes, current is injected into plural different regions of the active layer by the plural electrodes to cause emission in plural luminescent regions, and light emitted from one luminescent region of the plural luminescent regions enters in another luminescent region and exits. The device further includes a light receiving portion for detecting light that is emitted from one luminescent region of the plural luminescent regions and does not go through another luminescent region.
US09269848B2

A method for producing a plurality of optoelectronic semiconductor components in combination is specified. A plurality of radiation-emitting and radiation-detecting semiconductor chips are applied on a carrier substrate. The semiconductor chips are potted with a respective potting compound. The potting compounds are subsequently severed by sawing between adjacent semiconductor chips. A common frame is subsequently applied to the carrier substrate The common frame has a plurality of chambers open toward the top. The frame is arranged in such a way that a respective semiconductor chip is arranged in a respective chamber of the frame. A semiconductor component produced in such a way and the use of the semiconductor component are furthermore specified.
US09269847B2

A small anode germanium well (SAGe well) radiation detector system/method providing for low capacitance, short signal leads, small area bottom-oriented signal contacts, enhanced performance independent of well diameter, and ability to determine radiation directionality is disclosed. The system incorporates a P-type bulk germanium volume (PGEV) having an internal well cavity void (IWCV). The external PGEV and IWCV surfaces incorporate an N+ electrode except for the PGEV external base region (EBR) in which a P+ contact electrode is fabricated within an isolation region. The PGEV structure is further encapsulated to permit operation at cryogenic temperatures. Electrical connection to the SAGe well is accomplished by bonding or mechanical contacting to the P+ contact electrode and the N+ electrode. The EBR of the PGEV may incorporate an integrated preamplifier inside the vacuum housing to minimize the noise and gain change due to ambient temperature variation.
US09269826B2

The present invention relates to an amorphous oxide and a thin film transistor using the amorphous oxide. In particular, the present invention provides an amorphous oxide having an electron carrier concentration less than 1018/cm3, and a thin film transistor using such an amorphous oxide. In a thin film transistor having a source electrode 6, a drain electrode 5, a gate electrode 4, a gate insulating film 3, and a channel layer 2, an amorphous oxide having an electron carrier concentration less than 1018/cm3 is used in the channel layer 2.
US09269823B2

In a miniaturized transistor, a gate insulating layer is required to reduce its thickness; however, in the case where the gate insulating layer is a single layer of a silicon oxide film, a physical limit on thinning of the gate insulating layer might occur due to an increase in tunneling current, i.e. gate leakage current. With the use of a high-k film whose relative permittivity is higher than or equal to 10 is used for the gate insulating layer, gate leakage current of the miniaturized transistor is reduced. With the use of the high-k film as a first insulating layer whose relative permittivity is higher than that of a second insulating layer in contact with an oxide semiconductor layer, the thickness of the gate insulating layer can be thinner than a thickness of a gate insulating layer considered in terms of a silicon oxide film.
US09269813B2

Field effect transistors are provided. An active region protrudes from a substrate and a gate electrode is provided on the active region. Source/drain regions are provided at both sides of the active region under the gate electrode, respectively. A width of a lower portion of the gate electrode is greater than a width of an upper portion of the gate electrode.
US09269811B2

A manufacturing method for a semiconductor device includes providing a substrate having at least agate structure formed thereon and a first spacer formed on sidewalls of the gate structure, performing an ion implantation to implant dopants into the substrate, forming a disposal spacer having at least a carbon-containing layer on the sidewalls of the gate structure, the carbon-containing layer contacting the first spacer, and performing a thermal treatment to form a protecting layer between the carbon-containing layer and the first spacer.
US09269807B2

A semiconductor device includes a drift region in a first region of a semiconductor body. The drift region includes dopants of a first conductivity type. A dopant retarding region is formed at least adjacent an edge of the drift region. Dopants of a second conductivity type are implanted into the semiconductor body. The semiconductor body is annealed to form a body region so that dopants of the second conductivity type are driven into the semiconductor body at a first diffusion rate. The dopant retarding region prevents the dopants from diffusing into the drift region at the first diffusion rate.
US09269801B2

A normally-off-type HFET includes: an undoped AlwGa1-wN layer of t1 thickness, an undoped AlxGa1-xN layer of t2 thickness and an undoped GaN channel layer of tch thickness that are sequentially stacked; a source electrode and a drain electrode separated from each other and electrically connected to the channel layer; an undoped AlyGa1-yN layer of t3 thickness formed between the source electrode and the drain electrode on the channel layer; an AlzGa1-zN layer of t4 thickness formed in a shape of a mesa on a partial area of the AlyGa1-yN layer between the source electrode and the drain electrode; and a Schottky barrier type gate electrode formed on the AlzGa1-zN layer, in which conditions of y>x>w>z, t1>t4>t3 and 2wtch/(x−w)>t2>1 nm are satisfied.
US09269796B2

The present invention provides a method of manufacturing a thin film transistor and a pixel unit thereof, comprising: forming a metal oxide layer, a gate insulating layer, a gate metal layer and an etching barrier layer on a substrate; through the same mask, etching a part of the etching barrier layer, the gate metal layer and the gate insulating layer on the substrate, while retaining: the metal oxide layer, the gate insulating layer, the gate metal layer and the etching barrier layer in a gate region, and the part of the metal oxide layer, the gate insulating layer and the gate metal layer in source and drain regions for forming contact vias; and exposing the remaining metal oxide layer in the source region and in the drain region; depositing a passivation layer, etching and metallizing the exposed oxide in the source and drain regions to form the source and drain contact vias.
US09269795B2

A circuit structure includes a substrate having an array region and a peripheral region. The substrate in the array and peripheral regions includes insulator material over first semiconductor material, conductive material over the insulator material, and second semiconductor material over the conductive material. The array region includes vertical circuit devices which include the second semiconductor material. The peripheral region includes horizontal circuit devices which include the second semiconductor material. The horizontal circuit devices in the peripheral region individually have a floating body which includes the second semiconductor material. The conductive material in the peripheral region is under and electrically coupled to the second semiconductor material of the floating bodies. Conductive straps in the array region are under the vertical circuit devices. The conductive straps include the conductive material and individually are electrically coupled to a plurality of the vertical circuit devices in the array region. Other implementations are disclosed.
US09269792B2

A robust gate spacer that can resist a long overetch that is required to form gate spacers in fin field effect transistors (FinFETs) and a method of forming the same are provided. The gate spacer includes a first gate spacer adjacent sidewalls of at least one hard mask and a top portion of sacrificial gate material of a sacrificial gate structure and a second gate spacer located beneath the first gate spacer and adjacent remaining portions of sidewalls of the sacrificial gate material. The first gate spacers is composed of a material having a high etch resistance that is not prone to material loss during subsequent exposure to dry or wet etch chemicals employed to form the second gate spacer and to remove the hard mask.
US09269790B2

A high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) device includes a plurality of semiconductor layers formed on a substrate, wherein a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) layer is formed in the semiconductor layers; an etch-stop layer formed on the plurality of semiconductor layers; a p-type semiconductor layer pattern formed on the etch-stop layer; and a gate electrode formed on the p-type semiconductor layer pattern.
US09269787B2

According to a bipolar transistor structure having a transistor top and a transistor bottom herein, a silicon substrate located at the transistor bottom has a collector region of a first conductivity type. An epitaxial base layer of a second conductivity type overlies, relative to the transistor top and bottom, a portion of the collector region. The epitaxial base layer has a bottom surface on the silicon substrate and a top surface opposite the bottom surface. A top region, relative to the transistor top and bottom, of the epitaxial base layer comprises a concentration of germanium having atomic compositions sufficient to avoid impacting transistor parameters, and sufficient to be resistant to selective chemical etching. A silicon emitter layer of the first conductivity type overlies, relative to the transistor top and bottom, a portion of the epitaxial base layer adjacent to the top surface of the epitaxial base layer.
US09269784B2

A device includes a semiconductor die. The semiconductor die includes a plurality of semiconductor layers disposed on a GaAs substrate, including a first semiconductor layer having a first band-gap and a second semiconductor layer having a second band-gap. The semiconductor die further includes a contact layer disposed epitaxially upon the first semiconductor layer. The contact layer has a thickness that is less than a critical thickness. The second semiconductor layer is epitaxially disposed upon the contact layer. The contact layer has a third band-gap that is less than the first band-gap and the second band-gap. The semiconductor die further includes a conductive layer disposed upon the contact layer to form an ohmic contact. The conductive layer comprises one or more metal layers compatible with silicon processing techniques.
US09269761B2

An embodiment metal-insulator-metal (MiM) capacitor includes a gate stack disposed upon an insulation layer, the gate stack including a gate metal, the gate metal serving as a bottom electrode, a dielectric layer disposed upon the gate stack, and a top metal layer disposed upon the dielectric layer, the top metal serving as a top electrode.
US09269755B2

An organic light-emitting display apparatus including a switching thin film transistor (TFT) on a substrate, wherein the switching TFT is electrically coupled to a scan line and a data line, a driving TFT electrically coupled to the switching TFT, the driving TFT including a driving semiconductor layer, and an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) electrically coupled to the driving TFT, wherein the driving semiconductor layer includes a first region bending from a first direction to a second direction that intersects with the first direction a second region bending from the second direction to the first direction, and a third region coupling the first region to the second region, the third region making an obtuse angle with each of the first region and the second region.
US09269751B2

A display panel is provided. The display panel includes a substrate and a plurality of sub-pixels. The substrate includes a plurality of unit regions. One first sub-pixel, one second sub-pixel, one third sub-pixel and one fourth sub-pixel are disposed in each unit region. Each sub-pixel includes a first electrode layer, a light-emitting layer and a second electrode layer. The light-emitting layer is disposed on the first electrode layer, and the second electrode layer is disposed on the light-emitting layer. The light-emitting layer of each first sub-pixel and the light-emitting layer of each second sub-pixel include a same light-emitting material capable of emitting a first color light and a second color light. A difference between a main peak of the first color light and a main peak of the second color light is within 50 nm in the wavelength range.
US09269748B2

The present invention discloses a display device. The display device includes an OLED display and a voltage converter. The OLED display used for displaying images comprises at least one pixel comprising red, green and blue sub-pixels and arranges an OPV cell used for converting solar energy into electrical energy. The voltage converter is used for converting voltage of the electrical energy. The present invention also discloses a method that the display device converts solar energy into electrical energy.
US09269746B2

A semiconductor device includes a first electrode on a substrate, a selection device pattern, a variable resistance layer pattern, a first protective layer pattern, a second protective layer pattern and a second electrode. The selection device pattern is wider, in a given direction, than the variable resistance layer pattern. The first protective layer pattern is formed on a first pair of opposite sides of the variable resistance layer pattern. The second protective layer pattern is formed on a second pair of opposite of the variable resistance layer pattern. The second electrode is disposed on the variable resistance layer pattern.
US09269742B2

A cover glass for semiconductor package having thermal expansion coefficient conformable to plastic packages and allowing accurate detection of existence of foreign substances, dusts, etc. in an imaging test always having a low emission amount of alpha-ray, and a related production method. The cover glass comprises, in terms of percentage by mass, of from 58 to 75% of SiO2, of from 1.1 to 20% of Al2O3, of from 0 to 10% of B2O3, of from 0.1 to 20% of Na2O, of from 0 to 11% of K2O, and of from 0 to 20% of alkaline earth metal oxide. The cover glass has average thermal expansion coefficient of from 90 to 180×10−7/° C. in the temperature range of from 30 to 380° C., a Young's modulus of 68 GPa or more, and an emission amount of alpha-ray from the glass of 0.05 c/cm2·hr or less.
US09269741B2

The present invention provides a production method of a radiation image detector, comprising a scintillator panel preparation step, a composite rigid plate preparation step of bonding a flexible polymer film to a rigid plate with an adhesive to prepare the composite rigid plate, a preparation step of a scintillator panel provided with a composite rigid plate of bonding the composite rigid plate to a scintillator panel to prepare the scintillator panel provided with a composite rigid plate, and a preparation step of a radiation image detection member of opposing the surface of the photoelectric conversion base plate in which the photoelectric conversion elements are disposed to the surface of the side of the scintillator layer of the scintillator panel provided with the composite rigid plate and bonding the photoelectric conversion base plate to the scintillator panel to prepare a radiation image detection member; whereby there are provided a production method of a radiation image detector which can be easily produced and results in superior image uniformity, and a radiation image detector obtained by the method.
US09269739B2

A device includes a substrate carrying an array of diodes, organized in rows and columns, and a peripheral substrate contact is arranged on at least one side of the array. The substrate includes one or more buried conducting lines electrically connected to the peripheral substrate contact and being positioned between at least two neighboring columns of diodes and/or between at least two neighboring rows of diodes.
US09269733B2

A semiconductor device includes a substrate, a semiconductor layer and a switching element. The semiconductor layer is disposed on the substrate. The semiconductor layer has a light-sensing portion and includes microstructures at a side face area corresponding to the light-sensing portion. The switching element is disposed on the semiconductor layer. In the semiconductor device, the switching element and the light-sensing portion are staggered.
US09269729B2

A thin film transistor (“TFT”) array panel includes; an insulation substrate, a TFT disposed on the insulation substrate and including a drain electrode, a passivation layer covering the TFT and including a contact portion disposed therein corresponding to the drain electrode, a partition comprising an organic material disposed on the passivation layer, and including a transverse portion, a longitudinal portion, and a contact portion disposed on the drain electrode, a color filter disposed on the passivation layer and disposed in a region defined by the partition, an organic capping layer disposed on the partition and the color filter, and a pixel electrode disposed on the organic capping layer, and connected to the drain electrode through the contact portion of the passivation layer and the contact portion of the partition, wherein a contact hole is formed in the organic capping layer corresponding to the contact portion of the passivation layer.
US09269727B2

A curved display device includes a first substrate, a pixels and a second substrate. The first substrate is curved along a first direction and includes a pixel area through which light is transmitted and a non-pixel area which blocks light transmission therethrough. The pixel is disposed in the pixel area. The second substrate is curved along the first direction, and is opposite to and coupled to the first substrate. First trenches are defined in at least one substrate among the first and second substrates and extending in a second direction intersecting the first direction.
US09269717B2

An EEPROM device, a forming method thereof, and a method for implementing an erase operation to the device are provided. The EEPROM device includes: a semiconductor substrate having active regions therein; a word line disposed on a first active region; float gate dielectric layers disposed on second active regions; float gates disposed on the float gate dielectric layers, wherein each of the float gates has a width larger than that of the second active region; control gates disposed on control gate dielectric layers which are disposed on the float gates; an isolation oxide layer disposed between the word line and the float gates along with the control gates; and bit line doping regions disposed on third active regions. Accordingly, an erase operation can be implemented from a bit line, and coupling ratios of a float gate to a control gate and to a bit line doping region can be improved.
US09269698B2

This invention discloses an AC-type vertical light emitting element and fabrication method thereof, which achieves polarity reversal of two LEDs via regional laser stripping and die bonding. The two LEDs are placed on a conductive substrate (e.g. Si substrate); therefore, the bonding pads of the two LEDs are on the back of the conductive substrate and the light emitting surfaces of the two LEDs, thus overcoming such problems of low light emitting efficiency and high thermal resistance of the traditional lateral structure.
US09269683B2

Disclosed is a chip and method of forming the chip with improved conductive pads that allow for flexible C4 connections with a chip carrier or with another integrated circuit chip. The pads have a three-dimensional geometric shape (e.g., a pyramid or cone shape) with a base adjacent to the surface of the chip, a vertex opposite the base and, optionally, mushroom-shaped cap atop the vertex. Each pad can include a single layer of conductive material or multiple layers of conductive material (e.g., a wetting layer stacked above a non-wetting layer). The pads can be left exposed to allow for subsequent connection to corresponding solder bumps on a chip carrier or a second chip. Alternatively, solder balls can be positioned on the conductive pads to allow for subsequent connection to corresponding solder-paste filled openings on a chip carrier or a second chip.
US09269682B2

A method of forming a bump structure includes forming a metallization layer on a top metal layer by electroless plating process, forming a polymer layer over the metallization layer; forming an opening on the polymer layer to expose the metallization layer, and forming a solder bump over the exposed metallization layer to make electrical contact with the top metal layer.
US09269674B2

The present invention discloses an integrated circuit having electromagnetic shielding capability and the manufacturing method thereof. An embodiment of the said integrated circuit comprises: a semiconductor circuit structure including a first surface which covers an electromagnetic radiation area; an electromagnetic shielding layer covering the first surface and including at least one contact; and at least one conducting path operable to electrically connect the at least one contact with a steady voltage and thereby shield off the electromagnetic wave from the electromagnetic radiation area, wherein the current running through the electromagnetic shielding layer is zero or less than the maximum current running through the electromagnetic radiation area.
US09269657B2

Flexible stack packages are provided. The flexible stack package includes a first unit package and a second unit package which are sequentially stacked. Each of the first and second unit packages has a fixed area and a floating area. The fixed area of the first unit package is connected and fixed to the fixed area of the second unit package by a fixing part.
US09269653B2

A printed circuit board (PCB) assembly includes a PCB having a core substrate, a plurality of conductive traces on a first surface of the PCB, and a ground layer on the second surface of the PCB. The conductive traces comprise a pair of differential signal traces. An intervening reference trace is disposed between the differential signal traces. A connector is disposed at one end of the plurality of conductive traces. A semiconductor package is mounted on the first surface at the other end of the plurality of conductive traces.
US09269652B2

A method including forming a dielectric material including a surface porosity on a circuit substrate including a plurality of devices; chemically modifying a portion of the surface of the dielectric material with a first reactant; reacting the chemically modified portion of the surface with a molecule that, once reacted, will be thermally stable; and forming a film including the molecule. An apparatus including a circuit substrate including a plurality of devices; a plurality of interconnect lines disposed in a plurality of layers coupled to the plurality of devices; and a plurality of dielectric layers disposed between the plurality of interconnect lines, wherein at least one of the dielectric layers comprises a porous material surface relative to the plurality of devices and the surface comprises a pore obstructing material.
US09269651B2

A semiconductor chip includes a substrate and a semiconductor layer positioned above the substrate. A hybrid through-silicon via (“TSV”) extends continuously through at least the semiconductor layer and the substrate and includes a first TSV portion and a second TSV portion. A lower portion of the first TSV portion is positioned in the substrate and has a lower surface adjacent to a back side of the substrate and an upper surface below the semiconductor layer. Upper sidewall portions of the first TSV portion extend from the upper surface through at least the semiconductor layer. A depth of the lower portion is greater than a thickness of the upper sidewall portions. The second TSV portion is conductively coupled to the first TSV portion, is laterally surrounded by the upper sidewall portions, and extends continuously from the upper surface through at least the semiconductor layer.
US09269650B2

A chip-on-film package includes a base film including a bending area, an integrated circuit chip at an upper surface of the base film, a first line at the upper surface of the base film and overlapping the bending area, a second line at a lower surface of the base film and overlapping the bending area, a via pattern penetrating the base film to electrically couple the first line and the second line, and a common line coupled to the first line and to the integrated circuit chip, wherein at least a portion of the first line does not overlap at least a portion of the second line in a plan view.
US09269649B2

A method for generating dummy patterns includes providing a layout region having a layout pattern with a first density, inserting a plurality of first dummy patterns with a second density corresponding to the first density in the layout pattern, dividing the layout region into a plurality of sub-regions with a third density, adjusting a size of the first dummy pattern according to a difference between the second density and the third density, and outputting the layout pattern and the first dummy patterns on a photomask.
US09269646B2

A semiconductor die assembly comprises a plurality of semiconductor dice in a stack. Another semiconductor die is adjacent to the stack and has a region, which may comprise a relatively higher power density region, extends peripherally beyond the stack. Conductive elements extend between and electrically interconnect integrated circuits of semiconductor dice in the stack and of the other semiconductor die. Thermal pillars are interposed between semiconductor dice of the stack, and a heat dissipation structure, such as a lid, is in contact with an uppermost die of the stack and the higher power density region of the other semiconductor die. Other die assemblies, semiconductor devices and methods of managing heat transfer within a semiconductor die assembly are also disclosed.
US09269639B2

The present invention provides a method of detecting and measuring the alignment shift of the contacts relative to the gate structures. The method comprises: designing a test model array having different test model regions on the substrate; forming second conductivity type doped well regions, gate structures, and first conductivity type doped active regions in each of the test model regions; forming contacts in each of the test model region; scanning the test model array by an electron-beam inspector to obtain light-dark patterns of the contacts; and detecting and measuring the alignment shift of the contacts relative to the gate structures according to the light-dark patterns of the contacts and the critical dimensions of the transistors in the test model regions.
US09269637B2

A TFT substrate includes: a substrate; and a plurality of TFTs, wherein each of the TFTs comprises: a gate electrode, disposed on the substrate; a gate insulating layer, disposed on the substrate and covering the gate electrode; a metallic oxide active layer, disposed on the gate insulating layer; a metallic oxide protection layer, disposed on the metallic oxide active layer; an etching stop layer, disposed on the metallic oxide protection layer, wherein a first through hole and a second through hole penetrate through the etching stop layer and the metallic oxide protection layer; and a source electrode and a drain electrode, disposed in the first through hole and the second through hole respectively, and electrically connected to the metallic oxide active layer.
US09269632B2

A semiconductor device and method for fabricating a semiconductor device is disclosed. An exemplary semiconductor device includes a substrate including a fin structure disposed over the substrate. The fin structure includes one or more fins. The semiconductor device further includes an insulation material disposed on the substrate. The semiconductor device further includes a gate structure disposed on a portion of the fin structure and on a portion of the insulation material. The gate structure traverses each fin of the fin structure. The semiconductor device further includes a source and drain feature formed from a material having a continuous and uninterrupted surface area. The source and drain feature includes a surface in a plane that is in direct contact with a surface in a parallel plane of the insulation material, each of the one or more fins of the fin structure, and the gate structure.
US09269627B1

A method of forming semiconductor fins with variable pitches of arbitrary values in a sidewall image transfer (SIT) process is provided. After forming an array of first mandrel structures with a constant pitch and removing at least one first mandrel structure form the array, a set of second mandrel structures are formed overlapping the first mandrel structures. The combination of the first mandrel structures and the second mandrel structures defines pitches of sidewall spacer patterns to be subsequently formed.
US09269626B2

An integrated circuit structure is provided including a substrate, a low voltage device and a high voltage device. The low voltage device has a first beeline distance from a first epitaxial structure to an adjacent gate stack; and the high voltage structure has a second beeline distance from a second epitaxial structure to an adjacent gate stack. The second beeline distance of the high voltage device is greater than the first beeline distance of the low voltage device, so that the leakage current in the high voltage device may be decreased under high voltage operation. Further, a method for manufacturing the integrated circuit structure also provides herein.
US09269618B2

A semiconductor device comprises a bit line formed over a semiconductor substrate. The bit line has an upper portion and a lower portion, and the upper portion is narrower than the lower portion. An barrier film is formed over sidewalls of the bit line, and a storage node contact plug is obtained by filling a space between the bit lines so that an upper portion of the storage node contact is wider than a lower portion of the storage node contact. As a result, the process can be simplified and a short between the storage node contact plug and the bit line can be prevented.
US09269609B2

A device includes a semiconductor substrate, a contact plug over the semiconductor substrate, and an Inter-Layer Dielectric (ILD) layer over the semiconductor substrate, with the contact plug being disposed in the ILD. An air gap is sealed by a portion of the ILD and the semiconductor substrate. The air gap forms a full air gap ring encircling a portion of the semiconductor substrate.
US09269605B2

The present invention relates to a substrate gripping apparatus includes a base, a plurality of support posts which are vertically movable relative to the base, a lifting mechanism configured to lift the support posts, and a substrate holder and a substrate guide member mounted to each of the support posts. Each of the support posts includes a relative movement mechanism configured to move the substrate holder in such a direction that the substrate holder releases a peripheral portion of a substrate, while raising the substrate guide member relative to the substrate holder, when the support post moves upward, and to move the substrate holder in such a direction that the substrate holder grips the peripheral portion of the substrate, while lowering the substrate guide member relative to the substrate holder, when the support post moves downward.
US09269603B2

An assembly including a liquid thermal interface material for surface tension adhesion and thermal control used during electrical/thermal test of a 3D wafer and methods of use. The method includes temporarily attaching a thinned wafer to a carrier wafer by applying a non-adhesive material therebetween and pressing the thinned wafer and the blank silicon-based carrier wafer together.
US09269594B2

According to an embodiment of a high power package, the package includes a heat sink containing enough copper to have a thermal conductivity of at least 350 W/mK, an electrically insulating attached to the heat sink with an epoxy and a semiconductor chip attached to the heat sink on the same side as the lead frame with an electrically conductive material having a melting point of 280° C. or greater.
US09269585B2

The present disclosure provides a method for forming an integrated circuit (IC) structure. The method includes providing a metal gate (MG), an etch stop layer (ESL) formed on the MG, and a dielectric layer formed on the ESL. The method further includes etching the ESL and the dielectric layer to form a trench. A surface of the MG exposed in the trench is oxidized to form a first oxide layer on the MG. The method further includes removing the first oxide layer using a H3PO4 solution.
US09269580B2

Embodiments of a semiconductor device having increased channel mobility and methods of manufacturing thereof are disclosed. In one embodiment, the semiconductor device includes a substrate including a channel region and a gate stack on the substrate over the channel region. The gate stack includes an alkaline earth metal. In one embodiment, the alkaline earth metal is Barium (Ba). In another embodiment, the alkaline earth metal is Strontium (Sr). The alkaline earth metal results in a substantial improvement of the channel mobility of the semiconductor device.
US09269572B2

A method for manufacturing a silicon carbide semiconductor substrate is provided to offer a silicon carbide semiconductor substrate having a highly flat surface at low cost. The method includes: a step of preparing a silicon carbide substrate as a seed substrate; a step of performing vapor phase etching onto a main surface of the silicon carbide substrate; and a step of epitaxially growing silicon carbide on the main surface. A carbon-atom containing gas is supplied to silicon carbide substrate from a point of time in the step of performing the vapor phase etching.
US09269558B2

A method for selecting product ions at the time of performing multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) using an MS/MS type mass spectrometer is provided. Plurality of product ion scan events is prepared for certain precursor ions. In the product ion scan events, parameters for determining the cleavage conditions of the precursor ions are changed. Next, the precursor ions are introduced into a collision cell and the plurality of product ion scan events is executed, thereby obtaining a plurality of mass spectra corresponding to the respective product ion scan events. Then, the plurality of mass spectra is compared with one another, and ions corresponding to the mass peak with the highest appearance frequency are selected as product ions. Alternatively, ions having the highest cumulative signal intensity obtained by integrating the plurality of mass spectra are selected as product ions. Accordingly, optimum product ions for certain precursor ions are selected.
US09269556B2

Mass spectrometry cells include one or more interleaved magnetostatic and electrostatic lenses. In some examples, the electrostatic lenses are based on electrical potentials applied to magnetostatic lens pole pieces. In other alternatives, the electrostatic lenses can include conductive apertures. Applied voltages can be selected to trap or transport charged particles, and photon sources, gas sources, ion sources, and electron sources can be provided for various dissociation processes.
US09269532B2

A charged particle beam writing apparatus includes a first limiting aperture member, in which a first opening is formed, to block a charged particle beam having been blanking-controlled to be beam “off”, and to let a part of the charged particle beam having been blanking-controlled to be beam “on” pass through the first opening, a first detector to detect a first electron amount irradiating the first limiting aperture member, in a state where beam “on” and beam “off” are repeated, a first integration processing unit to generate a first integrated signal by integrating components in a band sufficiently lower than a band of a repetition cycle of beam “on” and beam “off”, in a first detected signal detected for obtaining the first electron amount, and a first irregularity detection unit to detect irregularity in a dose amount of the charged particle beam by using the first integrated signal.
US09269529B2

A method for performing DA (Dynamic Alignment) beam calibration in a plasma processing system is provided. The method including acquiring a positional difference, the positional difference is acquired using an optical imaging approach. The optical imaging approach comprising of positioning the wafer on the end effector, taking a still image of the wafer on the end effector, processing the still image to ascertain the center of the wafer and an end effector-defined center defined by the end effector, and determining the positional difference between the center of the wafer and the end effector-defined center defined by the end effector. The method also includes centering a wafer with respect to an end effector by compensating for a positional difference between the wafer and the end effector with robot movement compensation. The method including moving the wafer and the end effector through DA beams associated with a plasma processing module. The method also includes obtaining a reference DA beam pattern by recording a break-and-make pattern of the DA beams. The break-and-make pattern occurring as the wafer and the end effector move through the DA beams.
US09269527B2

An electron microscope is disclosed which has a laser-driven photocathode and an arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) laser system (“laser”). The laser produces a train of temporally-shaped laser pulses each being of a programmable pulse duration, and directs the laser pulses to the laser-driven photocathode to produce a train of electron pulses. An image sensor is used along with a deflector subsystem. The deflector subsystem is arranged downstream of the target but upstream of the image sensor, and has a plurality of plates. A control system having a digital sequencer controls the laser and a plurality of switching components, synchronized with the laser, to independently control excitation of each one of the deflector plates. This allows each electron pulse to be directed to a different portion of the image sensor, as well as to enable programmable pulse durations and programmable inter-pulse spacings.
US09269524B1

The various technologies presented herein relate to the generation of x-rays and other charged particles. A plurality of disparate source materials can be combined on an array to facilitate fabrication of co-located mixed tips (point sources) which can be utilized to form a polychromatic cloud, e.g., a plurality of x-rays having a range of energies and or wavelengths, etc. The tips can be formed such that the x-rays are emitted in a direction different to other charged particles to facilitate clean x-ray sourcing. Particles, such as protons, can be directionally emitted to facilitate generation of neutrons at a secondary target. The various particles can be generated by interaction of a laser irradiating the array of tips. The tips can be incorporated into a plurality of 3D conical targets, the conical target sidewall(s) can be utilized to microfocus a portion of a laser beam onto the tip material.
US09269521B2

In some aspects, a micro-plasma device comprises a plasma gas enclosure containing at least one plasma gas, and a plurality of electrodes interfaced with the plasma gas enclosure. In other aspects, a micro-plasma circuitry apparatus comprises a first layer having a cavity formed therein and a second layer having a circuit formed therein. The circuit includes a micro-plasma circuit (“MPC”) that includes one or more micro-plasma devices (“MPDs”). The first layer of the circuit is bonded to the second layer of the circuit thereby forming an enclosure that contains at least one plasma gas. An excitation voltage is applied to a drain electrode of the MPDs to generate a conductive plasma path between the drain electrode and a source electrode.
US09269510B2

Control apparatus for an electrical or electronic device. The apparatus includes a substrate having a surface with a selected contour. A cover lays over the surface of the substrate and conforms to the contour. A touch matrix is sandwiched between the substrate and the cover. At least one fashion button is mounted at the front surface of the cover. Manipulation of the fashion button is detected by the touch matrix.
US09269509B2

A backlight module is used in a lighting keyboard. The backlight module includes a light guiding plate and a masking. The masking is disposed on the light guiding plate. The masking includes a support layer, a cover layer and a reflective layer. The support layer includes a first surface and a second surface opposite to the first surface. The cover layer is disposed on the first surface. The cover layer includes a first opening. The reflective layer is disposed on the second surface and faces the light guiding plate for reflecting light emitted from the light guiding plate, so as to enhance lighting efficiency on the first opening. The reflective layer includes a second opening. A shape and a position of the second opening are respectively corresponding to a shape and a position of the first opening.
US09269497B2

A switchable capacitor including a first electrode, a dielectric layer on the first electrode, a second electrode configured to be suspended in an undeflected position over the dielectric layer in a de-activated state, and to deflect toward the first electrode in an activated state in response to a voltage difference between the two electrodes, a gap between the second electrode and the dielectric layer in the activated state being less than a corresponding gap in the de-activated state, and a capacitor having a first and second end, coupled to one of the electrodes at the first end, and configured to reduce the voltage difference between the electrodes as the second electrode deflects toward the first electrode in the activated state, wherein the voltage difference between the electrodes corresponds to a bias voltage applied across the second end of the capacitor and an other one of the first and second electrodes.
US09269492B2

An orthogonal finger capacitor includes a layer having an anode bone frame adjacent a cathode bone frame, the anode bone frame having a first portion extending along an axis and a second portion extending perpendicular to the axis. A set of anode fingers extends from the first portion. A set of cathode fingers extends from the cathode bone frame, interdigitated with the set of anode fingers. An overlaying layer has another anode bone frame having a first portion parallel to the axis and a perpendicular second portion. A via couples the overlaying anode bone frame to the underlying anode bone frame. The via is located where the first portion of the overlaying anode bone frame overlaps the second portion of the underlying anode bone frame or, optionally, where the second portion of the overlying anode bone frame overlaps the first portion of the underlying anode bone frame.
US09269490B2

A non-contact power transmission apparatus accurately determines the kind of object that is placed on the charging deck of the non-contact power transmission apparatus, and, only when a non-contact power receiving apparatus is placed on the power transmission apparatus, allows power transmission and data communication to take place, thereby accurately determining the state of the receiver side and efficiently controlling the transmission of power. In the power transmission apparatus, the power supplied to the non-contact power receiving apparatus is measured, and the output power of the wireless power signal output from two different cores is controlled, thereby allowing the charging operation to be stably conducted even if the non-contact power receiving apparatus is moved anywhere on the power transmission apparatus. The power transmission apparatus improves both the reliability of operation of the non-contact charging system, and the competitiveness of related products, such as portable terminals, battery packs and the like.
US09269488B2

A position pointer is disclosed, in which an electronic ink cartridge of an electromagnetic induction type is accommodated. The electronic ink cartridge includes a resonance circuit having a coil and a capacitor circuit, and is configured to detect pressure applied to a core member accommodated in the position pointer based on a variation of a resonance frequency of the resonance circuit. The cartridge includes a tubular member, in which the core member and the coil are accommodated such that the coil is positioned between the core member, which extends outwardly from one end of the tubular member, and the capacitor circuit along a direction of a center axis of the tubular member. The cartridge also includes a connection member in the tubular member, which electrically connects a first end and a second end of the coil to a first terminal and a second terminal of the capacitor circuit, respectively.
US09269480B1

Systems and methods for forming magnetic recording media with improved columnar growth for energy assisted magnetic recording are provided. In one such method, a first sub-layer of a magnetic layer is formed on a substrate, the magnetic layer including a magnetic material and a plurality of non-magnetic segregants, a top surface of the first sub-layer is etched to substantially remove the non-magnetic segregants accumulated on the top surface, and a second sub-layer of the magnetic layer is formed on the first sub-layer.
US09269477B2

One embodiment provides a multi-core cable including: at least one ground wire which is arranged in a center or its vicinity in a cross section perpendicular to a length direction of the cable; plural insulated wires arranged in a periphery of the ground wire; an overall shield layer which covers a periphery of the insulated wires; and a sheath which covers a periphery of the overall shield layer.
US09269476B2

A data communications cable is disclosed herein. The data communications cable includes a plurality of twisted pairs of conductive wires and a separator between the plurality of twisted pairs of conductive wires. The separator includes an inner member and an outer layer being supported and shaped by the inner member for completely encapsulating at least one gas pocket between the outer layer and the inner member. The outer layer prevents the plurality of twisted pairs of conductive wires from entering the at least one gas pocket.
US09269473B2

The disclosure relates generally to materials that comprise conductive covalent organic frameworks. The disclosure also relates to materials that are useful to store and separate gas molecules and sensors.
US09269471B2

An X-ray differential phase-contrast imaging system has three circular gratings. The circular gratings are aligned with the optical axis of the radiation beam and a phase stepping is performed along the optical axis with the focal spot, the phase grating and/or the absorber grating. The signal measured is the phase-gradient in radial direction away from the optical axis.
US09269470B1

A neutron beam regulator has a magnetic coil configured around a neutron beam between the neutron beam source and a target. The magnetic coil may be used to contain the neutron beam and reduce the scattering of neutron. Neutrons have a magnetic moment and can be affected by exposure to magnetics fields. The magnetic coil may be used to modulate the neutron beam shape, intensity, velocity, direction and polarization. A magnetic coil may extend substantially the entire distance between a neutron beam source and a target. A magnetic coil may be a discrete magnetic coil having a separate power input and output from other magnetic coils and a plurality of discrete magnetic coils may be configured around the neutron beam. A magnetic coil may be a spiral magnetic coil and may be continuous, or extends substantially from the neutron beam source to the target.
US09269458B2

A semiconductor device includes memory blocks MB1 and MB2 and redundancy determination circuit 25 that can enter a normal operation mode that accesses either memory block MB1 or memory block MB2 and a refresh mode that simultaneously accesses both memory block MB1 and memory block MB2. In response to normal memory cell NMC that belongs to at least one of memory blocks MB1 and MB2 being replaced by redundant memory cell RMC in the refresh mode, redundancy determination circuit 25 deactivates normal cell area NCA to which normal memory cell NMC that is a source of replacement belongs, and activates redundant cell area RCA to which redundant memory cell RMC that is to be replaced belongs and normal cell area NCA to which normal memory cell NMC that is not being replaced belongs.
US09269448B2

A starting read threshold is received. A first offset and a second offset is determined. A first read is performed at the starting read threshold offset by the first offset to obtain a first hard read value and a second read is performed at the starting read threshold offset by the second offset to obtain a second hard read value. A soft read value is generated based at least in part on the first hard read value and the second hard read value.
US09269446B1

For a non-volatile memory device having a NAND type of architecture, techniques are presented for determining NAND strings that are slow to program. These techniques are particularly applicable to memory devices have a 3D structure, such as of BiCS type, where the slow programming can arise from defects of the spacing between the memory holes, in which the NAND strings are formed, and the local interconnects, such as for connecting common source lines and which run in a vertical direction between groups of NAND strings. The slow to program NAND strings can be recorded and this information can be used when writing data to the NAND strings. Several methods of writing data along a word line that includes such slow to program cells are described.
US09269435B2

An RC-based sensing method and computer program product to effectively sense the cell resistance of a programmed Phase Change Material (PCM) memory cell. The sensing method ensures the same physical configuration of each cell (after programming): same amorphous volume, same trap density/distribution, etc. The sensing method is based on a metric: the RC based sense amplifier implements two trigger points. The measured time interval between these two points is used as the metric to determine whether the programmed cell state, e.g., resistance, is programmed into desired value. The RC-based sensing method is embedded into an iterative PCM cell programming technique to ensure a tight distribution of resistance at each level after programming; and ensure the probability of level aliasing is very small, leading to less problematic drift.
US09269428B2

A resistive random-access memory (RRAM) device and a method thereof are disclosed. The RRAM device is contains a plurality of bit cells, a plurality of word lines, a plurality of bit lines and a plurality of source lines. Each bit cell includes a transistor and resistive element, the transistor includes a gate, a source and a drain, and the resistive element is coupled to the drain of the transistor. The plurality of word lines are arranged in parallel to one another, and coupled to respective gates of the transistors. The plurality of bit lines are arranged in parallel to one another and being intersected with the plurality of word lines, and coupled to respective drains of the transistors through the resistive elements. The plurality of source lines are arranged in parallel to one another and the plurality of bit lines.
US09269424B2

A method includes causing, by a first circuit, a first signal transition at a first node based on a clock signal. A first edge, from a first level to a second level, of a word line signal is generated responsive to the first signal transition. A second signal transition at a second node is caused by a second circuit based on the clock signal. The second circuit and the first circuit are configured to cause the second signal transition to occur later than the first signal transition by a delay time. A first edge, from a third logic level to a fourth level, of a tracking word line signal is generated responsive to the second signal transition.
US09269419B2

Disclosed herein is a semiconductor memory device using a pre-fetch method and a semiconductor system including the same. The semiconductor memory device may include a memory bank having an odd-numbered array region suitable for inputting/outputting data through N first local lines in response to an odd-numbered column address, and an even-numbered array region suitable for inputting/outputting data through N second local lines in response to an even-numbered column address, N being a positive integer, a column address generation unit suitable for consecutively generating the odd-numbered column address and the even-numbered column address whose generation sequence is controlled depending on whether an external column address has an even-numbered value or an odd-numbered value, and N global lines coupled in common to the N first local lines and the N second local lines, suitable for inputting/outputting data.
US09269418B2

An apparatus comprises a dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) for storing data. Refresh control circuitry is provided to control the DRAM to periodically perform a refresh cycle for refreshing the data stored in each memory location of the DRAM. A refresh address sequence generator generates a refresh address sequence of addresses identifying the order in which memory locations of the DRAM are refreshed during the refresh cycle. To deter differential power analysis attacks on secure data stored in the DRAM, the refresh address sequence is generated with the addresses of at least a portion of the memory locations in a random order which varies from refresh cycle to refresh cycle.
US09269409B2

Methods and systems to provide bit cell write-assist, including equalization of voltages of Bit and Bit nodes of a bit cell prior to a write operation. Equalization may be performed with a pulse-controlled transistor to transfer charge between the storage nodes. Pulse width and/or amplitude may be configurable, such as to scale with voltage. Bit cell write-assist may include reduction of bit cell retention strength during equalization, which may be continued during a write operation. Write-assist may be provided to each of multiple bit cells when a write operation is directed to a subset of the bit cells, which may conserve power and/or area. A partially-decoded address may be used to provide write-assistance to multiple bit cells prior to a write operation. Write-assistance may permit writing of Bit and Bit with a voltage swing significantly lower than an operating voltage of the bit cell.
US09269408B2

In a semiconductor device, memory modules each having a low power consumption mode that is enabled and disabled by a control signal belong to a memory block. A transmission path of the control signal is provided such that the control signal is inputted in parallel to the memory module via an inside-of-module path, and such that the control signal is outputted by a particular memory module of the memory modules via the inside-of-module path to a downstream outside-of-module path. The particular memory module in the memory block is selected such that it has a greater storage capacity than the other memory modules belonging to this same memory block have.
US09269401B2

An apparatus for storing data and supplying stored data. The apparatus comprises a support unit having a plurality of connectors for connecting to a plurality of data storage elements, and a plurality of data storage elements. Each data storage element is connected to one of the connectors. The apparatus also comprises a cable having a first end connected to the support unit and a second end connected to a main part. The main part defining a first space containing a portion of the cable, and a second space for containing the support unit. The support unit is movable between (i) a first position providing access to the data storage elements and (ii) a second position in which the data storage elements are located within the second space. The cable is a ribbon cable comprising power wires having a relatively large gauge and signal wires having a relatively small gauge.
US09269398B2

The invention is for player/recording systems for AN content such as DVD+RW, HDD, Blu-ray RE that record content from broadcast. To navigate through the content the player provides menus allowing the user can select content to watch. Passive content is replaced with active agents so that each piece of content will also contain a program part. The action by a user selecting a piece of content to play results in the program part being executed instead of the content being played. This program part displays menus that allow the user to navigate this particular piece of content, or alternatively, the program part may just start playing the AN content. Playing the actual content is under the control of the application. At the end of the content, the application decides the next action, such as displaying another menu. The application chooses when to exit the content (based on user action or end of content) and returns to the player menus. The invention provides more control for the content provider to control the appearance of their content.
US09269394B2

According to various embodiments, a method for reading data from a storage medium using a reader, wherein the reader includes at least one reader head, may be provided, wherein the storage medium includes a plurality of tracks. The method may include: reading a first signal with a reader head of the reader at a pre-determined position of the storage medium; reading a second signal with a reader head of the reader at the pre-determined position of the storage medium; and determining data stored at the pre-determined position of the storage medium based on the first signal and based on the second signal.
US09269390B2

Storage apparatus and related methods for managing removable media. A controller is configured to manage the removable media. A user interface is coupled to the controller for displaying errors. When an error displayed on the user interface is selected, the controller causes the user interface to display additional information related to the error from an event log. For example, when the error is selected, a complete error log for an individual error or a screen display showing all current errors, if there are multiple ones, is displayed.
US09269380B1

A device that includes a near field transducer (NFT); at least one cladding layer adjacent the NFT; and a carbon interlayer positioned between the NFT and the at least one cladding layer.
US09269372B2

A method for spectrum recovery in spectral decoding of an audio signal, comprises obtaining (210) of an initial set of spectral coefficients representing the audio signal, and determining (212) a transition frequency. The transition frequency is adapted to a spectral content of the audio signal. Spectral holes in the initial set of spectral coefficients below the transition frequency are noise filled (214) and the initial set of spectral coefficients are bandwidth extended (216) above the transition frequency. Decoders and encoders being arranged for performing part of or the entire method are also illustrated.
US09269371B2

Various methods and systems are provided for related to adaptive systems using correntropy. In one embodiment, a signal processing device includes a processing unit and a memory storing an adaptive system executable in the at least one processing unit. The adaptive system includes modules that, when executed by the processing unit, cause the signal processing device to adaptively filter a desired signal using a correntropy cost function. In another embodiment, a method includes adjusting a coefficient of an adaptive filter based at least in part on a correntropy cost function signal, providing an adaptive filter output signal based at least in part on the adjusted coefficient and a reference signal, and determining an error signal based at least in part on a received signal and the adaptive filter output signal.
US09269366B2

A hybrid instantaneous/differential encoding technique is described herein that may be used to reduce the bit rate required to encode a pitch period associated with a segment of a speech signal in a manner that will result in relatively little or no degradation of a decoded speech signal generated using the encoded pitch period. The hybrid instantaneous/differential encoding technique is advantageously applicable to any speech codec that encodes a pitch period associated with a segment of a speech signal.
US09269365B2

There is provided a method of encoding an input speech signal. The method comprises identifying a fixed codebook vector from a fixed codebook; identifying an adaptive codebook vector from a adaptive codebook; calculating an adaptive codebook gain; reducing the adaptive codebook gain by an amount; optimally selecting a fixed codebook gain based on the adaptive codebook gain while both the fixed codebook vector and the adaptive codebook vector remain fixed; and converting the input speech signal into an encoded speech using the fixed codebook gain, the adaptive codebook gain, the fixed codebook vector and the adaptive codebook vector. The amount of reducing the adaptive codebook gain may be varied.
US09269358B1

Obtaining and/or validating user credentials at client devices is described. A phrase may be generated based on one or more index values determined according to a function of time and a credential identifier identifying a user credential. The phrase may be output by the client device for validating the user credential.
US09269355B1

Features are disclosed for transferring speech recognition workloads between pooled execution resources. For example, various parts of an automatic speech recognition engine may be implemented by various pools of servers. Servers in a speech recognition pool may explore a plurality of paths in a graph to find the path that best matches an utterance. A set of active nodes comprising the last node explored in each path may be transferred between servers in the pool depending on resource availability at each server. A history of nodes or arcs traversed in each path may be maintained by a separate pool of history servers, and used to generate text corresponding to the path identified as the best match by the speech recognition servers.
US09269350B2

A method includes obtaining a plurality of audio channels using a plurality of microphone outputs having at least one audio control channel and at least one audio output channel. When a keyword is detected on the audio control channel using voice recognition, adaptive filtering is performed to attenuate the keyword from the audio output channel. An apparatus operative to perform the method includes a plurality of microphones that provide a plurality of audio channels with at least one audio output channel and at least one audio control channel. Voice command recognition logic is operatively coupled to the plurality of microphones to receive the at least one audio control channel. The voice command recognition logic detect keywords on the audio control channel and filter logic with at least one adaptive filter performs adaptive filtering to attenuate the keyword from the at least one audio output channel.
US09269344B2

A device and method that is configured to operate an active noise reduction system for a motor vehicle, where there is an active noise reduction system input signal that is related to the vehicle engine speed, and where the active noise reduction system comprises one or more adaptive filters that use a filter coefficient to modify the amplitude and/or phase of a noise cancellation reference signal and output noise reduction signals that are used to drive one or more transducers with their outputs directed to reduce engine noise, where the value of the coefficient is related to an adaptive filter leakage factor. Changes in the engine speed, based on the input signal that is related to the vehicle engine operation, are monitored. In response to changes in the engine speed, the adaptive filter leakage factor is temporarily modified.
US09269343B2

An audio processing device comprises a feedback estimation system for estimating feedback from an output transducer to an input transducer, the feedback estimation system comprising an adaptive filter comprising a variable filter part for filtering an input signal according to variable filter coefficients and an algorithm part comprising an adaptive algorithm for dynamically updating filter coefficients, a control unit for controlling the de-correlation unit and the adaptive algorithm, and a correlation detection unit for determining a) the auto-correlation of a signal of the forward path and providing an AC-value and/or b) the cross-correlation between two different signals of the forward path and providing an XC-value.
US09269333B2

A terminal and a method for charging and discharging is described. The terminal includes a first hardware system and a second hardware system. The first hardware system includes a first processing unit, a first charging unit, a first switching unit, and a first battery unit. The second hardware system includes a second processing unit and a second battery unit. On the basis of a first status information piece and/or a second status information piece, the first processing unit controls the first charging unit to charge the first battery unit and/or the second battery unit via the first switching unit, or, the first processing unit controls the first switching unit to select the first battery unit or the second battery unit to supply the first hardware system with electricity.
US09269324B2

Methods for presenting an orientation aware application on a device are provided. In one aspect, a method includes receiving visual data providing an image of a physical three-dimensional environment and orientation data indicating an orientation of an actual device within the physical three-dimensional environment, and providing, for display on the actual device, a visual representation of a virtual device displaying an orientation aware application using the image of the physical three-dimensional environment. The visual representation of the virtual device appears within a simulated three-dimensional environment that is based on the orientation data indicating the orientation of the actual device within the physical three-dimensional environment. At least a portion of the area surrounding the visual representation of the virtual device includes a display of the simulated three-dimensional environment. Systems and machine-readable storage media are also provided.
US09269313B2

There are provided a GOA circuit, an array substrate, a display device and a driving method. The GOA circuit includes clock signal input lines and more than two GOA units connected in cascade, wherein each of the GOA units includes a selection signal output sub-unit and a selection sub-unit; the selection signal output sub-unit is configured to receive a source signal, and output a selection signal in accordance with the source signal; the selection sub-unit receives the selection signal and N clock signals, and outputs the received signal in accordance with the selection signal; and the clock signal input lines are no less than a number of N, and are configured to input the clock signals to the selection sub-unit, where N is an integer number which is higher than or equal to two. The gate driving structure of the GOA circuit, the array substrate and the display device occupies a small area. The driving method can achieve a single dot polarity inversion.
US09269311B2

Waveforms for driving electro-optic displays, especially bistable electro-optic displays, are modified by one or more of insertion of at least one balanced pulse pair into a base waveform; excision of at least one balanced pulse pair from the base waveform; and insertion of at least one period of zero voltage into the base waveform. Such modifications permit fine control of gray levels.
US09269305B2

Systems, devices, and methods for using a hot plug detect (HPD) signal to reduce turn on time of a backlight of a display are disclosed. The backlight controller may pre-charge the backlight based at least in part on receiving the HPD signal prior to receiving a BL_EN signal to turn on the backlight. The HPD signal may be a multipurpose signal used by components of a system in addition to the backlight driver. The backlight driver may turn on the pre-charged backlight immediately upon receiving the BL_EN signal. The backlight controller may maintain the pre-charge of the backlight while the device is in a sleep state to reduce the turn on time of the backlight from the sleep state. Embodiments of the HPD signal may also power down the display and backlight.
US09269302B2

An OLED display device includes multiple pixel units arranged in a matrix and a power supply driver chip located at one side of the multiple pixel units. The power supply driver chip is configured to supply input voltages to the multiple pixel units. The power supply driver chip provides the input voltages to the multiple pixel units through a plurality of input paths. The input paths are associated with input points, each of the input points corresponds to a pixel unit at a different location. The power supply driver chip compensates the input voltages to ensure that all of the pixel units at different locations may have an approximately equal input voltage, enabling the entire display region of the OLED display device to display with a uniform brightness and improving the display performance.
US09269301B2

The self-lighting subpixels of a display device are ones whose output luminances are functions of analog drive voltages applied to the subpixels and corresponding digital grayscale command signals used for controlling the subpixels. The display device generates corresponding analog dimming values and digital dimming values in accordance with supplied current limiting parameters and generates control value signals using the analog dimming values and the digital dimming values. It also changes the original grayscale digital data values of input video signals of one frame in accordance with the digital dimming values.
US09269283B2

A display device includes a base structure with a plurality of modules coupled to the base structure. Each of the modules includes a plurality of actuator assemblies, with each of the actuator assemblies being individually controllable to move the actuator assemblies between a retracted state and a plurality of extended states. A controller is coupled to each of the modules. The controller is programmed to control the actuator assemblies to move the actuator assemblies between the retracted state and the plurality of extended states.
US09269281B2

A server apparatus renders a process result of software on an image memory that stores a display image to be displayed on a client terminal, detects an update area in which an update occurs between frames of an image. The server apparatus selectively switches and performs a first generation process and a second generation process according to the number of detected update areas. The first generation process is a process that generates a color map for each update area based on colors used in the update area. The second generation process is a process that generates a color map commonly used between the update areas based on colors used in images of the update areas. The server apparatus reduces the number of colors in an update area using the generated color map and transmits a compressed image of the update area to the client terminal.
US09269280B2

Disclosed are a geographic information analyzing apparatus and a method thereof, and more specifically, a geographic information analyzing apparatus which is capable of analyzing a region arbitrarily set by a user and a method thereof. The a geographic information analyzing apparatus disclosed in this specification includes a data storing unit which includes a spatial data storing unit which stores geospatial information and an attribute data storing unit which stores attribute information corresponding to the spatial data; a map viewer which provides a user interface and receives spatial information of an arbitrary region from a user, and a function providing unit which compares the geospatial information with the spatial information of the arbitrary region to calculate an overlapping ratio and performs analysis in accordance with a previously set function using attribute information in accordance with the overlapping ratio.
US09269278B1

The present subject matter relates to methods and systems for assessing an athlete's risk of injury and for determining athletic performance training and treatment programs. The methods and systems comprise a series of observational and objective medical tests, recorded electronically through a customized software and mobile application package, which allows for pre-diagnosis of or propensity for potential injury. Test results are collected, analyzed and then used to recommend both treatment and performance training recommendations for the purposes of safety and athletic performance enhancement.
US09269276B2

A music teaching aid may incorporate a pinball-like game. The music teaching aid may comprise a playing field depicting a musical staff and a keyboard. Lines and spaces on the staff may contain pockets into which a ball may fall and be contained. The pockets may correspond to notes on a staff, which may correspond to notes on the keyboard. A ball launched into the playing field may fall into a pocket. A user may select a note on the keyboard. If the selected note matches the note corresponding to the pocket having the ball, the ball may be released from the pocket. The note may be audibly rendered. The ball may be released into or out of the playing field. The music teaching aid may be implemented mechanically, electrically, or any appropriate combination thereof.
US09269275B2

A bone implant surgery system is used for simulating a dental surgical procedure having a display that shows placing a simulated bone implant at a simulated implant site on a living body by using a simulated surgical tool holding the simulated bone implant. At least one hand-held haptic device is used to control the surgical tool and at least one controller is specifically configured to cause movement of the surgical tool on the display based on motions of the haptic device and to cause haptic feedback to a user holding the haptic device depending on the position of the surgical tool on the display. A user may then review and evaluate the results of the surgical simulation.
US09269268B2

An adaptive sensing system is configured to acquire sensor data pertaining to objects in the vicinity of a land vehicle. The adaptive sensing system may be configured to identify objects that are at least partially obscured by other objects and, in response, the adaptive sensing system may be configured to modify the configuration of one or more sensors to obtain additional information pertaining to the obscured objects. The adaptive sensing system may comprise and/or be communicatively coupled to a collision detection module, which may use the sensor data acquired by the adaptive sensing system to detect potential collisions.
US09269267B2

A driver-initiated warning device is described for communicating descriptive vehicle-to-vehicle warning messages. The device can be deployed within an automobile and can include an interface that receives input from a driver or passenger of a vehicle. The device also includes a vehicle-to-vehicle communications component that generates anonymous messages upon having received the input and broadcasts the anonymous messages to other vehicles within range. The anonymous messages have embedded electronic data regarding an event observed by the driver or passenger, such as location information of a road hazard. Based on receiving the messages, the device can make decisions as to whether to alert the driver of any upcoming dangers or other events. The location information contained in the messages can be used to filter the messages based on relevance. The messages can also be relayed to other vehicles in order to optimize information diffusion between moving automobiles.
US09269262B2

Device and method of efficiently controlling a traffic light using identification information having a layered structure are provided. A traffic light control device that controls signal light change of a management-target traffic light includes: a broadcast signal receiving unit that receives a broadcast signal emitted from a traffic control center via a broadcast network, wherein the broadcast signal includes identification information having a layered structure and a control command; and a traffic light control unit that determines whether the management-target traffic light belongs to a target of the control command on the basis of the identification information having a layered structure and that outputs the control signal for performing the signal light change based on the control command only when the management-target traffic light belongs to the target of the control command.
US09269260B2

Methods and systems to increase protection of personnel during K9 deployments include receiving contextual and situational data from mobile devices associated with a plurality of officers at a scene, a mobile device associated with a K9 handler at the scene, and a device associated with a K9 at the scene, wherein each of the mobile devices and the device are communicatively coupled to one or more networks; determining safety conditions of each of the plurality of officers based on the contextual and situational data; and notifying any of the plurality of officers and the K9 handler via the associated mobile devices of unsafe conditions based on the determining.
US09269258B2

A method and control arrangement to secure an alarm system in a site to be monitored. The readiness to forward an alarm out of the site is monitored with a control arrangement through which at least data transmission connections of the alarm system to outside the site are repetitively checked to enable sending the alarm via at least one secondary alarm connection in case the primary alarm connection is prevented. The control arrangement includes at least two controlling devices that monitor continuously the electric connection/readiness of the site to at least two of the following: a data transmission route working on a free frequency, a mobile phone network, an electricity grid, the internet, one or several other controlling devices, a communication connection working on a free frequency, an alarm arrangement belonging to the alarm system, a wired connection.
US09269243B2

A forensic video search user interface is disclosed that accesses databases of stored video event metadata from multiple camera streams and facilitates the workflow of search of complex global events that are composed of a number of simpler, low complexity events.
US09269242B2

The autonomous space vehicle video monitoring system is an electrically and mechanically powered camera system for video and audio monitoring of space vehicles. The system allows for autonomous monitoring and implementing corrective actions, providing telemetry and communications to keep the health and wellbeing of a space vehicle. It utilizes a Modular Mounting formed to exact dimensions on any type space vehicle. It has an arm like device to enable complete viewing of the entire 360 degree surface of a space vehicle. The autonomous space vehicle video monitoring system also utilizes rotor joints allowing maximum angle flexibility for viewing the space vehicle. The system has electrically conductive tracks and wheels that have a camera mounted on it with an arm like device in turn enabling 360 degree viewing of the space vehicle surfaces. Delivered in pre-designed sections then fit to the specific structure and assembled on the space vehicle.
US09269240B2

A caster indicator displays the state of casters provided on an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus or a medical bed. The caster indicator includes a position sensing unit sensing the position of levers determining the state of casters, and a display unit displaying the state of the casters according to the position of the levers. With the caster indicator, a user easily confirms the state of the casters, even if a medical electronic apparatus, such as the ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus or the medical bed, is located at a dark place.
US09269239B1

A situational awareness system includes a network radio module configured to be coupled with an ad-hoc network. A portable situational awareness unit includes a sensor associated with a user for sensing data indicative of a location of a current field of view of the user in an external scene and to output a signal indicative of the location of the current field of view of the user. A receiver is configured to receive a signal indicative of a location of an object in the external scene and/or identifying information for the object. A display is configured to display a visual indicator in the current field of view of the user. A processing module is configured to generate a visual indicator indicative of identifying information for the object and a location for the object, and to provide the visual indicator to the display for display to the user.
US09269234B2

A method and apparatus for playing keno on multiple cards with a two-draw cycle where hits from a first draw are replicated from a primary card to at least one secondary card while misses from a first draw are not replicated from the primary card to the at least one secondary card. An independent second draw for each card completes the game cycle resulting in different game outcomes based off the same first draw cycle. The player is awarded where appropriate for each game outcome on each of the cards played.
US09269233B2

A gaming system and method for conducting a poker-themed wagering game. A basic wager is accepted to play the poker-themed wagering game via a wager input device. A plurality of symbol-bearing objects are provided to form a user-playable hand on a display. A payoff is awarded based on a non-monetary ranking of the user-playable hand meeting a predetermined criterion via a controller. The opportunity to earn a bonus feature is provided. The bonus feature has an expected value based on the ranking of the user playable hand meeting one of the predetermined criterion.
US09269222B2

A mobile gaming device may be a player's own personal tablet, smartphone, PDA, etc., with an application program installed via the internet for carrying out a remote gaming session. All gaming functions are carried out by a stationary gaming terminal communicating with the mobile device, such as by using WiFi. The mobile device operates as a user interface. Registration for the mobile device may be via a registration terminal connected in a network with a plurality of gaming terminals. The mobile device may communicate wirelessly with the registration terminal, and the registration terminal then communicates with the played gaming terminal via the network. The mobile device may select to play games offered by any available gaming terminal. The gaming terminals may be gaming machines. The registration terminal may also be a cashing out terminal and print a ticket.
US09269216B2

In one embodiment, a gaming machine has a digital camera and automatically takes a picture of a player. Facial detection software identifies certain facial characteristics of the player, such as approximate age and gender. Rules software then selects appropriate sets of animation images and sound files that are associated with the detected physical features of the player. The displayed game, user interface, theme, etc. are then adapted to the player's detected features. If the player is identified, by comparing the picture to previously stored pictures, a personalized message may be displayed. When the gaming machine is in an attract mode, the camera may take pictures/videos of passersby and adapt the attract mode animation to the passerby's physical image or movement. In another embodiment, the camera is used to sense physical motions by the player to control aspects of the game or other displayed features.
US09269204B2

A vehicle fault determination device includes a relay, a vehicle configuration circuit, and a control section. The relay is connected to a power source. The vehicle configuration circuit is supplied with power from the power source via the relay. The control section determines whether the relay is faulty while controlling the relay and the vehicle configuration circuit. The control section includes first and second ports. The first port outputs a control signal to a coil portion of the relay. The second port is connected to a contact portion of the relay via the vehicle configuration circuit. The second port serves as an input port when the fault determination is made and as an operation port when the vehicle configuration circuit is controlled. Thus, the number of parts is keep to a minimum to increase the number of dedicated ports for determining whether the relay is faulty.
US09269203B2

A method and system for utilizing a telematics unit on a telematics-equipped vehicle as a register for ECU Critical Information (ECI) associated with the ECUs in the vehicle, which may include their serial numbers, configurations, software images, and other data includes the telematics unit querying ECUs within the telematics-equipped vehicle such as, for example, when the vehicle is started. The ECUs may then provide the telematics unit with the ECI associated with each ECU. The ECI may be encrypted, and the telematics unit may provide each module that it queries with a nonce used in the encryption process. The telematics unit may then decrypt the ECI received from each of the ECUs and compare the received ECI to previously stored ECI. If the received ECI is different from the previously stored ECI, the telematics unit may send the new ECI to a TSP call center. Both the telematics unit and the call center may replace the previously stored ECI with the new ECI and may maintain records of previously stored ECI and updates to the ECI.
US09269201B2

A tire pressure monitor system tool that stores information regarding a plurality of tire pressure monitor systems. The information may include procedures for resetting and diagnosing the tire pressure monitor system. The tool may include a storing module that stores the information and a displaying module that causes the information to be displayed on a display of the tool. The tool may enable a user to input data regarding a vehicle. Based on the vehicle data input by the user, the tool may determine a tire pressure monitor system installed on the vehicle using the information stored. Based on the tire pressure monitoring system installed on the vehicle, the tool may determine one or more reset or diagnostic procedures that may be performed by the tool. The tool may also reference the owner's manual of the vehicle. The tool may also include an updating module that updates the information stored by the tool. The tool may also include an update interface that may be, for example, an RS232 port. The tool may interface with an electronic control unit of a vehicle.
US09269195B2

Methods and apparatus for generating curved extrusions. A user interface may be provided via which the value of one or more extrusion parameters and/or a reference point may be changed. An extrusion may be generated from an initial 2D object according to the set of extrusion parameters and/or the reference point.
US09269186B2

A computer-readable recording medium stores a visualization program that renders an internal organ and causes a computer to execute a process that includes generating along an input normal vector, a given stereoscopic shape; calculating an overlapping portion that overlaps the given stereoscopic shape and the shape of the internal organ; changing a degree of transparency of the overlapping portion; and rendering the shape of the internal organ to include the overlapping portion for which the degree of transparency has been changed.
US09269170B2

An apparatus including: an image sensor unit configured to convert a sensed hand-drawn sketch to a digital image, an image display unit configured to visualize the digital image to a virtual hand-drawn sketch, and a controller configured to sense a first hand-drawn sketch being drawn with a first sketching tool having a first sketching characteristics on a first sketching plane, store the sensed first hand-drawn sketch as a first digital image with the first sketching characteristics, visualize the stored first digital image as a first virtual hand-drawn sketch on a second sketching plane, sense a second hand-drawn sketch being drawn with a second sketching tool having a second sketching characteristics on the second sketching plane while the first virtual hand-drawn sketch is visualized on the second sketching plane, and store the sensed second hand-drawn sketch as a second digital image. The second digital image is stored with the first sketching characteristics, when the second hand-drawn sketch is a continued sketch of the first hand-drawn sketch.
US09269166B2

A method includes performing a motion compensated reconstruction of functional projection data using a patient-adapted motion model, which is generated based on a generic anatomical motion model and imaging data from a structural scan. A system includes a first adapter (202) configured to adapt a generic anatomical model to structural image data, producing an adapted model, a forward projector (204) configured to forward project the adapted model, producing forward projected data, and a second adapter (206) configured to adapt the forward projected data to individual projections of projected data, which is used to generate the structural image data, producing a patient-adapted motion model.
US09269159B2

A system and method for tracking association of two or more objects over time, according to various embodiments, is configured to determine the association based at least in part on an image. The system may be configured to capture the image, identify two or more objects of interest within the image, determine whether the two or more objects are associated in the image, and store image association data for the two or more objects. In various embodiments the system is configured to create a timeline of object association over time for display to a user.
US09269151B2

Systems and method for monitoring a workstation region of a manufacturing line are provided. In one example, depth image data is received from one or more depth cameras trained on the workstation region, with the data comprising a temporal sequence of images of an operator. Using the depth image data, a series of movements of the operator is tracked in 3D space of the workstation region. Operational status data is received from the manufacturing line indicating the manufacturing line is operating. Using the series of movements, the operator is determined to be within a predetermined distance of a hazard. In response, a command is issued to the manufacturing line to cease operating.
US09269148B2

A displacement detection device includes a light source, an image sensor and a processing unit. The light source is configured to illuminate a work surface. The image sensor is configured to capture reflected light from the work surface and to output an image frame. The processing unit is configured to select a window of interest in the image frame having a maximum image feature and to calculate a displacement of the displacement detection device according to the window of interest.
US09269147B2

According to one embodiment, the visual signature of a moving target may be measured by measuring, using a photometer, an optical property of a moving target while the target moves along a path from a start position to an end position in front of a background. The photometer may be repositioned to measure optical properties of the background at the start position. The photometer may measure the optical property of the background along the path between the start position and the end position. The visual signature of the moving target may be determined by comparing the measured optical property of the moving target along the path to the measured optical property of the background along the path.
US09269143B2

A surveying system comprising a station and rover is used to make field measurements of a job site. The station at a first location has one or more cameras and one or more targets. The rover has one or more cameras and one or more targets. The rover is moved to a plurality of locations and images are acquired of the one or more targets of the station and/or the rover. The images are used to determine a spatial relationship between the first location and the plurality of locations.
US09269142B2

To improve the performance for determining obstruction of a stereoscopic system using two cameras or more, a hybrid of local and semi-global methods is provided. For each stereoscopic image formed from simultaneous left and right images, a breakdown of each left and right image into corresponding sectors is applied. Obstruction level is determined by a disparity map by sector, based on left or right images, and in which a disparity is assigned to each pixel corresponding to the best matching score. A determination of density by sector of the disparity map is carried out by reference to a fraction of pixels with a disparity considered to be valid. A state of obstruction of at least one camera is determined based on a weighted average of the probabilities of obscuring of the sectors of the disparity map obtained by comparison between the density of the sectors and a predefined density level.
US09269134B2

An inspection area setting method for setting inspection area-defining information defining an inspection area to an image inspecting device, the image inspecting device being configured to extract a portion constituting the inspection area as an inspection area image from an original image obtained by taking an image of an inspection object, and to inspect the inspection object by analyzing the inspection area image, includes an acquisition step of acquiring a sample image obtained by taking an image of a sample of the inspection object, an inspection area searching step, and a setting step.
US09269133B2

Provided are a method and system for providing cooking information about food. The method includes receiving, from a camera, an ingredients image of at least one ingredient on a plate; determining the at least one ingredient based on the ingredients image; determining a food recommendation list related to the at least one ingredient, based on user information about a user of a mobile device; obtaining cooking information about food that is selected from the food recommendation list; and providing the cooking information to a projector that is connected to the mobile device, wherein the cooking information is projected, via the projector, onto the plate on which the at least one ingredient is disposed.
US09269131B2

An image processing apparatus which can increase processing speed, reduce memory access load, and enhance ease of control in image processing. Coordinate computations through different geometric deformations are performed on respective pixels of an input image, thus calculating post-geometric deformation coordinates and coordinate moving vectors. Geometric deformation parameters for geometric deformations are output to a plurality of coordinate computation units connected in series. The coordinate moving vectors are collectively combined together to generate combined coordinate moving vectors, based on which coordinates of pixels in an image to be output are converted into coordinates of the pixels of the input image. The coordinate computations are performed based on the coordinates of the pixels of the input image and the geometric deformation parameters. The post-geometric deformation coordinates output from the preceding coordinate computation units are input as coordinates of the pixels of the image to the second and subsequent coordinate computation units.
US09269130B2

An image correction method arranged for processing an original image to obtain a corrected image includes steps: receiving the original image from an image sensor; regarding each pixel of the original image, calculating a horizontal distance and a vertical distance between the pixel and a reference point in the original image; determining a horizontal ratio parameter and a vertical ratio parameter according to the horizontal distance and the vertical distance between the pixel and the reference point in the original image; and performing an approximately non-linear regression calculation on the horizontal ratio parameter, the vertical ratio parameter and a coordinate of the pixel to obtain a position of the pixel in the corrected image.
US09269128B2

There is provided a method of reducing noise in a medical image while maintaining structure characteristics within the medical image. The method of reducing noise in the medical image includes: a step of estimating the amount of noise at each pixel by using a look-up table that previously stores physical properties of an image capturing device; a step of calculating a structure direction and a signal coherence at each pixel; a step of performing anisotropic smoothing by using an anisotropic smoothing filter kernel that reflects the structure direction and the signal coherence; and a step of obtaining a structure direction and a signal coherence from an image on which the anisotropic smoothing is performed, obtaining an anisotropic smoothing filter kernel that reflects the obtained structure direction and the signal coherence, and performing filtering that reflects statistical properties of the estimated amount of noise.
US09269123B2

A method, system and product are disclosed for volume rendering of medical images on a shared memory system implemented on a multi-socket mainboard with multiple multi-core processors and multiple last level caches, cores that share a cache being united in a socket. The method includes decomposing the image space to be used for rendering in regions, each region including a plurality of tiles; assigning two sockets to each of the decomposed regions; determining a tile enumeration scheme for a region; rendering all tiles within a region according to a determined tile enumeration scheme on the assigned two sockets until the respective region is finished; if a region is finished, assigning the two sockets to another region; and if no region is left, splitting an existing region of un-rendered tiles into sub-regions according to a splitting scheme and applying the steps recursively for the sub-regions.
US09269110B2

A graphical user interface system for displaying content on a user interface and for integrating and manipulating social network content includes a display window for displaying and manipulating content from at least one social network; a horizontal panel for manipulating content from at least one social network; and tabs on the horizontal panel and user-selectable for manipulating the content. The tabs disposed on the horizontal panel may include a post tab for selecting a type of content to be manipulated; a media tab for manipulating audio/visual media content; a social tab for manipulating one or more social media or communication content in the social network; a persona tab for configuring at least one user-persona associated with the content to be manipulated; and an account tab for managing at least one external user account or profile when interacting with the content.
US09269107B2

Data streams are generally selected according to user preferences and transmitted to the user in general alignment with expressed preferences of the user. Such data streams may be music, including music videos. Users may indicate their general or specific preferences with regards to song, artists, or albums. Any other aspects or factors that might affect the user's preferences can be taken into account. A playlist is created that combines all of these factors. The playlist then serves as the basis for feeding the data streams to the user. Each user is able to express his or her own preferences and receive music corresponding to those preferences on an on-going basis.
US09269105B2

An image processing method includes partitioning an image under test to form a plurality of contiguous image segments having similar image properties, deriving feature data from a subset including one or more of the image segments, and comparing the feature data from the subset of image segments with feature data derived from respective image segments of one or more other images so as to detect a similarity between the image under test and the one or more other images.
US09269104B2

In one embodiment, a method for making an payment from a buyer to an online seller includes providing the buyer with a mobile payment application that is operable when run on one or more processors of a mobile device of the buyer to effect payments to the seller using a payment service provider. The seller is provided with computer code that is operable when run on one or more processors of a web server of the seller to detect whether a mobile device of a buyer in communication with the server has the payment application installed thereon, and if the server detects that the buyer's device has the application installed thereon, the seller's server automatically redirects the buyer to a web server of the payment service provider to effect a payment from the buyer to the seller using the mobile payment application.
US09269097B2

The system and method described herein may use various natural language models to deliver targeted advertisements and/or provide natural language processing based on advertisements. In one implementation, an advertisement associated with a product or service may be provided for presentation to a user. A natural language utterance of the user may be received. The natural language utterance may be interpreted based on the advertisement and, responsive to the existence of a pronoun in the natural language utterance, a determination of whether the pronoun refers to one or more of the product or service or a provider of the product or service may be effectuated.
US09269073B2

Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media for managing meeting agendas in a meeting or conference via a virtual agenda participant. The system maintains, prior to a communication session, a conference agenda associated with the communication session. During the communication session, the system identifies, via a virtual entity, communication items associated with the communication session to yield identified communication items, wherein the virtual entity dynamically monitors the communication session and processes data associated with the communication session to identify the communication items. The system then compares, via the virtual entity, the conference agenda with the identified communication items to determine which items from the conference agenda have been addressed during the communication session.
US09269063B2

Computationally implemented methods and systems include detecting an occurrence of an event, acquiring one or more subtasks configured to be carried out by two or more discrete interface devices, the subtasks corresponding to portions of one or more tasks of acquiring information related to the event, facilitating transmission of the one or more subtasks to the two or more discrete interface devices, and receiving data corresponding to a result of the one or more subtasks executed by two or more of the two or more discrete interface devices. In addition to the foregoing, other aspects are described in the claims, drawings, and text.
US09269058B2

Variation in hole diameter due to heating effects is minimized even if the shortest machining route is set, and machining quality is improved. A printed circuit board to be scanned by a laser beam is divided into a plurality of scan areas (S1). An order of drilling within the scan area is sorted to obtain a scanning route with the shortest distance (S2). The order of the (N+1)th hole and the (N+2)th hole is swapped in each scanning area if it is determined that the distance between the Nth hole and the (N+1)th hole (here, N is an integer in a range of 1≦N≦“the maximum number of holes to be drilled in the area”−1″) is less than a predetermined threshold value, and that N+1 is not correspond to the maximum number of holes to be drilled in the scanning area (S3). The scanning area is machined and then machining each scanning area, specifically in machining the (N+1)th hole, after pausing for a period of a predetermined heat dissipation time if it is determined that the distance between the N-th hole and the (N+1)th hole swapped is less than the predetermined threshold value. Subsequently, machining is performed (S4).
US09269057B1

Systems and techniques are disclosed for generating weighted machine learned models using multi-shard combiners. A learner in a machine learning system may receive labeled positive and negative examples and workers within the learner may be configured to receive either positive or negative examples. A positive and negative statistic may be calculated for a given feature and may either be applied separately in a model or may be combined to generate an overall statistic.
US09269047B2

A method includes, at a customer premise equipment (CPE) device, accessing data descriptive of content available via a network coupled to a network interface of the CPE device. A plurality of rules are analyzed using a forward-inferencing rules engine to determine whether one or more of the rules are satisfied based on the data. The rules include at least one user-defined rule and at least one automatically generated rule, where the at least one automatically generated rule is automatically generated based on user history information. The method includes selecting particular content of the content available via the network for presentation via a display device.
US09269045B2

A method of audio source segregation includes selecting an audio attribute of an audio signal. The method also includes representing a portion of the audio attribute that is dominated by a single source as a source spiking event. In addition, the method includes representing a remaining portion of the audio signal as an audio signal spiking event. The method further includes determining whether the remaining portion coincides with the single source based on coincidence of the source spiking event and audio signal spiking event.
US09269044B2

An event-driven neural network includes a plurality of interconnected core circuits is provided. Each core circuit includes an electronic synapse array has multiple digital synapses interconnecting a plurality of digital electronic neurons. A synapse interconnects an axon of a pre-synaptic neuron with a dendrite of a post-synaptic neuron. A neuron integrates input spikes and generates a spike event in response to the integrated input spikes exceeding a threshold. Each core circuit also has a scheduler that receives a spike event and delivers the spike event to a selected axon in the synapse array based on a schedule for deterministic event delivery.
US09269034B2

Symbologies for encoding data, as well as methods of encoding and decoding thereof are described. The symbologies may have a plurality of pixels arranged in a plurality of patterns on or in a substrate. Furthermore, each of the plurality of pixels may have one or more optical properties that each provides one or more types of non-interacting data.
US09269033B2

A system for identifying elements involved in joints of elements configured to form a duct, such as a pipeline, which works on element identifiers for an element identification code. The system includes an element identifier reader and a management device for supplying by a combination device the joint identification codes between two elements according to element identification codes of the two elements. The system is also useful for production of tanks for hydrocarbon by-products and for control and maintenance, for example, of pipeline networks and tanks.
US09269021B2

A method including dividing a first image into first sub-images; calculating a first checksum value for each of the first sub-images; dividing a second image into second sub-images; calculating a second checksum value for each of the second sub-images; comparing the first checksum values with the second checksum values; and determining whether one or more differences in checksum values exist between the first checksum values and the second checksum values and correspondingly whether one or more differences exist between the first sub-images and the second sub-images.
US09269014B2

The hyperspectral detector systems and methods disclosed herein include capturing a context image and a single-column spectral image that falls within the context image. The context and spectral images are then combined to form a fused image. Using the fused image, the spectral image is panned over the scene and within the context image to capture spectral signatures within the scene. The spectral signatures are compared to reference spectral signatures, and the locations of the one or more spectral signatures within the context image are marked. The systems and methods obviate the need to store and process large amounts of spectral data and allow for real-time display of the fused context image and spectral image, along with the marked locations of matched spectral signatures.
US09269013B2

Methods, systems, and apparatus including computer program products for using extracted image text are provided. In one implementation, a computer-implemented method is provided. The method includes receiving an input of one or more image search terms and identifying keywords from the received one or more image search terms. The method also includes searching a collection of keywords including keywords extracted from image text, retrieving an image associated with extracted image text corresponding to one or more of the image search terms, and presenting the image.
US09269005B2

A commodity recognition apparatus acquires an image including a commodity captured by an image capturing module and displays the acquired image on a display module. The commodity recognition apparatus displays a frame border surrounding the commodity on at least a portion of the image displayed on the display module. Moreover, the commodity recognition apparatus recognizes the commodity existing in the frame border according to a feature amount of the image in the area surrounded by the frame border. The commodity recognition apparatus outputs information of the commodity recognized.
US09268990B2

An authentication system authenticates an object. The authentication system includes a capture device for capturing at least one biometric output data record (BD) for the object; a reading device for reading configuration data (Konf), associated with the object, for an artificial neural network; a processing device designed to produce the artificial neural network and to input the BD into the neural network; a verification device which captures an output from the neural network to authenticate the object, wherein the neural network is a bidirectional associative memory, particularly a Hopfield network, having a multiplicity of network states. The verification device is designed to determine the output from the neural network by capturing a final state derived from the input of the BD. The neural network stores a key associated with a particular person. The key is released only when appropriate biometric data are input into the neural network.
US09268986B2

According to one example, there is provided a method of generating a security feature that encodes data. The method comprises obtaining an n-bit code of data to encode, generating an arrangement of dots, designating a first portion of the dots as reference dots and a second portion of the dots as encoding dots, and moving a group of the designated encoding dots by a predetermined direction in a predetermined amount to encode the n-bit code of data.
US09268978B2

A self-contained RFID-enabling drawer module includes a probe antenna to introduce a robust EM field into a container within a Faraday cage to activate RFID tags within the container, regardless of the container's resonant frequency. A receiving antenna and reader read the data of the activated RFID tags, and a processor and communications module transmit the RFID tag data to a remote processor. The RFID-enabling module is self-contained in that it needs only power and a data connection with which to operate. Where an Ethernet is used, power is obtained by PoE. The RFID-enabling module may be used to retrofit existing medication drawers of a medication cabinet or may be used during the construction of a new cabinet. The RFID-enabling system includes auto tuning of the antenna to dynamically compensate for loading changes on the EM field. Assembly and testing costs are reduced and serviceability of the system is increased.
US09268977B2

A method and system for an electronic price label system comprising at least a base station and a plurality of electronic labels for transferring information between the base station and electronic labels. The method comprises transmitting a first message from base station 6 to a plurality of electronic labels 5a, 5b, the first message comprising at least identification information of one electronic label 5a, 5b, receiving the first message at the electronic label 5a, 5b, recognizing the identification information in the first transmitted message by the electronic label 5a, 5b, transmitting a second message from the base station 6 to the electronic label 5a, 5b, receiving the second message and sending an acknowledgement message to the second message from electronic label 5a, 5b with a modulation frequency from a certain frequency range, and searching the acknowledgement message from a predefined frequency range at the base station 6.
US09268961B2

In a storage system, a storage apparatus has an encryption key generator and an encryption processor that encrypts data to be recorded in a storage region using an encryption key from the encryption key generator, and is able to change an encryption key for each divided region set in the storage region. A control apparatus has a logical volume setting unit that requests the encryption processor to set an individual divided region for each storage region set as a logical volume in the storage region of the storage apparatus and a data erasure processor that requests the encryption processor to change the encryption key used for encryption in the divided region corresponding to the logical volume to be erased.
US09268951B2

A method and a system transmit data between a technical apparatus which has a reception unit, a transmission unit and a computer unit, an external device which has a reception unit, a transmission unit and a computer unit, and a mobile terminal which has a reception unit, a transmission unit and a memory unit. The method and system allow registered, authenticated users to use the mobile terminal to perform safe reservation or enabling for a technical apparatus, without requiring an online connection and check between the technical apparatus and the external device for the purpose of authorization and authentication of the user.
US09268950B2

A method, system and computer program product for preventing sensitive pattern disclosures from Linked Data graphs. The proposed method (i) receives as input a Linked Data graph and a set of query patterns that correspond to sensitive knowledge that needs to be concealed, and (b) minimally distorts the Linked Data graph to generate a sanitized counterpart (graph) in which only the non-sensitive patterns can be discovered. The method supports a variety of utility functions, which it optimizes during the graph sanitization process. The resulting, sanitized graph can be subsequently used for publishing and/or querying purposes.
US09268949B2

Systems and methods for protecting data being sent between a client and a server include the capability of defining programmable processing steps that are applied by the server when protecting the data and the same steps are applied by the client when unprotecting the data. The programmable processing steps can be defined uniquely for each client, and the programmable processing steps are selected from a number of functions using sequencing data that defines the processing steps. The programmable processing steps allow for each client to process encrypted data in a different manner and the programmable processing steps are defined by what is called a digital rights management (DRM) Sequencing Key, and as such the system and method introduces a key-able DRM whereby each DRM message can be processed in a unique (or pseudo unique) manner.
US09268946B2

Quantifying the risks of applications (“apps”) for mobile devices is disclosed. In some embodiments, quantifying the risks of apps for mobile devices includes receiving an application for a mobile device; performing an automated analysis of the application based on a risk profile; and generating a risk score based on the automated analysis of the application based on the risk profile.
US09268940B1

A computer-implemented method for assessing Internet addresses may include (1) identifying an Internet Protocol address, (2) identifying a plurality of files downloaded from the Internet Protocol address, (3) generating an aggregation of security assessments that relates to the Internet Protocol address and that may be based at least in part on a security assessment of each of the plurality of files, (4) determining a trustworthiness of the Internet Protocol address based at least in part on the aggregation of security assessments and (5) facilitating a security action based at least in part on the trustworthiness of the Internet Protocol address. Various other methods, systems, and computer-readable media are also disclosed.
US09268939B2

Disclosed in the present invention are a method and apparatus for determining a virus-infected file, which belong to the field of computer security. The method includes: locating data in a file being scanned according to the file offset address associated with a virus signature of a virus; making a comparison of the virus signature with the data located in the file being scanned; and determining that the file being scanned is a virus-infected file when the virus signature matches the located data. The apparatus includes: a locating module, a comparison module and a determination module.
US09268936B2

The method of the present inventive concept is configured to utilize Operating System data structures related to memory-mapped binaries to reconstruct processes. These structures provide a system configured to facilitate the acquisition of data that traditional memory analysis tools fail to identify, including by providing a system configured to traverse a virtual address descriptor, determine a pointer to a control area, traverse a PPTE array, copy binary data identified in the PPTE array, generate markers to determine whether the binary data is compromised, and utilize the binary data to reconstruct a process.
US09268934B2

This invention provides a novel method, system, and apparatus allowing an authorized user access to controlled assets when a passcode method malfunctions, such as when a user forgets a password, a token malfunction, or a biometric mismatch. The invention allows temporary access to an access control system without knowing the password and without sending the user the password or a new random password. The user is able to set a new password without knowing the previous password. Furthermore, stored encrypted data is preserved and made accessible once again via the new passcode. This invention works for many authentication methods such as restoring access when a password, token, access card, or biometric sample is used.
US09268929B2

The subject technology discloses configurations for receiving a request from a user to log into a communications server in which the request includes user credentials The user is authenticated based on the included user credentials in the request. The user is then permitted to log into the communications server if the user is successfully authenticated. An input selecting a person of interest is received. The subject technology retrieves information associated with the selected person of interest. A dossier of information including the retrieved information associated with the selected person of interest is generated. The subject technology transmits the generated dossier to the user or an indicated recipient.
US09268922B2

Methods and structure for Digital Rights Management (DRM) are provided. An exemplary system includes a Digital Rights Management (DRM) licensing server. The DRM licensing server is able to receive authentication information generated by a DRM module of a client device, and to receive a device identifier that uniquely distinguishes the client device from other client devices, wherein the device identifier has been generated by the DRM module. The DRM licensing server is further able to authenticate the DRM module based on the authentication information, to create a signed identifier based on the device identifier responsive to authenticating the DRM module, and to transmit the signed identifier to the client device. The system also includes an application server able to register the client device with an account at the application server, based on the signed identifier.
US09268918B2

It is described a method for encrypting and a method for decrypting at least a portion (155) of a dataset being stored in a memory (150), wherein the dataset has at least two dimensions. The described multi-dimensional cryptographic methods comprise forming a first keystream (165) being assigned to a first dimension of the dataset and forming a second keystream (175) being assigned to a second dimension of the dataset. The encrypting method further comprises encrypting each data packet of the portion (155) of the dataset by using a combination of the first keystream (165) and the second keystream (175). The decrypting method further comprises decrypting each data packet of the portion (155) of the dataset by using a combination of the first keystream (165) and the second keystream (175). It is further described a method for temporarily storing at least a portion (155) of a dataset into a memory (150) and a device for handling a dataset, which method and which device take advantage of the above-described encrypting method and/or the above-described decrypting method.
US09268908B2

The present invention relates to computer-implemented methods and system for analyzing a biomarker which cycles in a subject. In some other aspects, the present invention relates to analyzing a biomarker which at least initially increases or decreases in amount in a subject following a treatment for a disease. In further aspects, the present invention relates to computer-implemented methods and systems for determining a preferred time to administer a therapy to treat a disease in a subject. The present invention also relates to computer program product to implement the methods. Further, the present invention relates to methods of determining the timing of treating a disease in a subject in which the immune system is cycling.
US09268894B2

A computerized method for designing a layout of a driver includes analyzing a schematic circuit. PMOSFETs coupled between first common nodes are grouped into one or more first classes. NMOSFETs coupled between second common nodes are grouped into one or more second classes. The method further includes generating the layout for each MOSFET at each location in a layout area of the driver by generating a super parameterized cell (PCELL) layout block comprising a master MOSFET PCELL and a master guard ring PCELL for each of the first class and the second class. The master MOSFET PCELL includes a first set of parameters for the MOSFET and the master guard ring PCELL includes a second set of parameters for the guard ring around the MOSFET. A child PCELL of the master MOSFET PCELL and the master guard ring PCELL are instantiated at each location in the layout area.
US09268889B2

Various implementations of a method, system and computer program product receive a circuit model that can include an asynchronous crossing between a first set of one or more logic components in a first clock domain and a second set of one or more logic components in a second clock domain. A shadow network can be constructed that corresponds to the asynchronous crossing, where the shadow network includes at least one of an asynchronous transition detector, an asynchronous sample detector, and a metastability timer. The shadow network can include shadow network signals corresponding to signals of the asynchronous crossing.
US09268887B2

A system and method for determining fluid flow of compressible and non-compressible liquids includes an input receiving an object model defined as a plurality of cells having nodes, a processor and memory. The processor is configured for: discretizing a partial differential equation (PDE) corresponding to the received model; for each node P: (i) locating all neighboring cells that share the node P; establish a finite difference stencil at each cell center, and identify stencil intersection points with cell boundary edges; calculate an approximate solution of the PDE at the intersection points; (ii) approximating the PDE at the cell center of the neighboring cells using the stencil and discretized PDE; and (iii) updating a solution of the PDE at the node P by using the solution of approximated discretized PDE at all the neighboring cell centers; and iteratively updating the solution for all nodes P from an initial guess until a convergence criterion is satisfied.
US09268884B2

A device for checkivng steel pipes during production and to a method using the device. The device includes a station for acquiring measurement data representative of physical measurements of the geometry of a pipe taken on an outside thereof, and a computer system configured to store template data applicable in a coordinate system and representative of overall geometry of a sizing body. In a chosen coordinate system, the system then provides a three-dimensional representation of parts of the pipe. For each part of the pipe, the system is referenced to determine a critical parameter, representative of the margin of passage of the sizing body inside a chosen part of the pipe. The method and device may thus establish a diagnostic of traversability of the pipe by a sizing body.
US09268875B2

Technologies are described herein for providing a focus-on-content (FOC) mode for a content page. The content page may be received. The content page may include a content portion and various other portions. The content page may be configured in a first state. Code configured to transform the content page from the first state to a second state may be received. The second state may place a greater focus on the content portion and produce a reduced focus on the other portions than the first state. The code may be inserted into the content page. A user instruction to enable the FOC mode may be received. Response to receiving the user instruction to enable the FOC mode, the content page may be transformed from the first state to the second state in accordance with the code.
US09268871B2

A method and apparatus for obtaining content with reduces round trip times is provided. The method may comprise transmitting, from a device, a primary content item request to a proxy server to obtain a primary content item using a first protocol, receiving the primary content item from the remote proxy using the first protocol, generating one or more secondary content item requests for one or more secondary content items associated with the primary content item, transmitting the one or more secondary content item requests to the proxy server using a second protocol, wherein the second protocol decouples the one or more secondary content item requests from an acknowledgement of receipt of the one or more secondary content item requests, and receiving at least one of the one or more secondary content items from the proxy server using the second protocol.
US09268869B2

An image processing apparatus which is capable of improving the visibility and operability of icons for a user. The image processing apparatus includes a console section. A button data import-processing section acquires location information of a server on a network. A server stores icon data indicating an icon to be displayed on a console section, for use in executing predetermined processing. When the location information is acquired, a communication section accesses the server indicated by the location information to thereby acquire icon data. The console section is caused to display the icon indicated by the acquired icon data.
US09268867B2

The invention provides enhancements for the use of favorites during a Web browsing session. A first enhancement identifies when a user is adding a favorite to his favorites list and auto-suggests a category under which the favorite could be stored. A second enhancement allows a user to review his favorites list and see a summary of feed content (RSS or other standard) on each feed enabled page on his favorites list, without requiring the user to link to the page in question. A third enhancement allows the user to view an manipulate the feed in an independent display window.
US09268863B2

A local sorting module includes a set of storage elements storing binary vectors configured in a one-dimensional (1D) or two-dimensional (2D) array structure and separated by respective comparators configured to conditionally compare and sort the binary vectors. The comparators may perform a sort using a compare-and-flip or a compare-and-swap operation. Local sorting modules may be coupled with a global sorting module for enabling a tournament sort algorithm to output values stored in storage elements one at a time until all data is outputted in a predetermined sorting order.
US09268862B2

A tracking system passively tracks and records searches conducted by actual search engine users. The recorded data for each search event preferably includes the search query submitted, the search engine used, the search result item (e.g., web page) selected, the position (e.g., page number) of this item, and the user's IP address. The collected data is aggregated and analyzed to generate data regarding the search queries used to locate and access particular destinations (e.g., web pages and sites). This data may be used for various purposes, such as (1) to generate reports showing, e.g., how users reach a particular destination from different search engines and geographic locations, (2) to select content to display on a destination page, such that the content is relevant to search queries commonly used to locate that page, and (3) to update the database of one search engine to reflect searches conducted on other search engines.
US09268858B1

Techniques are described for identifying potentially interesting portions of a content item to be provided as a preview of the content item for prospective purchasers, based on previously collected data associated with the content item. Portions of a content item may be identified as potentially interesting based on a number of annotations (e.g., highlights, bookmarks, notes, and shares) previously made by viewers of a digital version of the content item. Potentially interesting portions may also include portions which prior viewers spent more time viewing, portions related to identified interests of the potential buyer, portions that are identified as separable for particular categories of content, and/or portions that have been previously identified as associated with elements of the content such as character, plot, and/or keywords.
US09268849B2

This invention relates to the creation of a software application to: facilitate the creation, representation and publication of digital objects; in particular, methods and apparatus that improve digital resource retrieval on the part of end users and to provide a new system for the web based marketing of digital assets and the online distribution of metadata enriched advertising.
US09268839B2

Systems and methods that create and edit a network of interconnected concepts are disclosed. In one embodiment, a semantic engine implements a method comprising receiving a primary term representing a first concept to be added to a network of interrelated concepts, receiving at least one related term related to the primary term, receiving at least one relationship between the first concept and a second concept, receiving a strength value associated with the relationship, and adding the first concept to the network.
US09268837B2

A computing device is described that includes a user interface to receive contribution data of an enterprise and to display a sheet of the contribution data, an annotation interface module to receive one or more annotations for objects of the contribution data, a planning application to retrieve a context definition defining a context in which each of the annotations was received, and an annotation table to store each of the annotations and the context definition corresponding to each of the annotations. The user interface may be configured to output the annotations. The computing device may improve the collaborative process of developing multidimensional data. Users of the computing device may quickly and easily share their thoughts, questions, and comments about the data through annotations. Recreating an annotated sheet may be done efficiently by storing relevant coordinates.
US09268836B2

Exemplary methods, apparatuses, and systems that can intelligently copy data to a plurality of datastores are described. In one embodiment, a distance value of a path between each datastore is determined. Based on the distance values, a graph cluster analysis creates clusters of the datastores within close proximity to one another. Also, a shortest path tree determines the most efficient paths available for copying data from a source datastore to one or more destination datastores. The source datastore is designated as the root of the shortest path tree, and the one or more destination datastores are designated as the vertices of the tree. After each child vertex of the source datastore is ordered in descending order according to a number of unique clusters to which descendants of the child vertex belong, the data is copied from the source datastore to the one or more destination datastores in the descending order.
US09268829B2

The present invention includes systems and methods for retrieving information via a flexible and consistent targeted search model that employs interactive multi-prefix, multi-tier and dynamic menu information retrieval techniques (including predictive text techniques to facilitate the generation of targeted ads) that provide context-specific functionality tailored to particular information channels, as well as to records within or across such channels, and other known state information. Users are presented with a consistent search interface among multiple tiers across and within a large domain of information sources, and need not learn different or special search syntax. A thin-client server-controlled architecture enables users of resource-constrained mobile communications devices to locate targeted information more quickly by entering fewer keystrokes and performing fewer query iterations and web page refreshes, which in turn reduces required network bandwidth. Applications are built by leveraging existing collaborative cloud services that enable the maintenance and sharing of user content.
US09268822B2

A system and method for determining organizational hierarchy from contact data. A phrase having multiple terms representing a job title is received and converted to lower case, then concatenated with a symbol to separate the terms. The phrase is compared to a training set of predefined normalized phrases representing known job titles. If a match is found, a data record is created or updated with organizational hierarchy information associated with the matched phrase in the training set. If a match is not found, a term is removed from the phrase and the comparison repeated.
US09268819B1

An interconnect financial web can identify connections between individual entities (e.g., individuals and/or businesses) supported by financial objects. Many financial objects can be tracked, such that the web can represent an entity's financial standing. An interface can allow a reviewer to submit a request that identifies a first entity. A representation of the first entity can be located within the web, and financial objects and/or other entities connected to the first entity can be identified. A representation of these connections can be presented to the reviewer. This representation can be interactive, such that the reviewer can request additional detail about one of the related entities and/or financial objects. The reviewer can thus explore financial circumstances surrounding an entity of interest.