US09924619B2

The present invention relates to a passive layer including graphene for the attenuation of near-field electromagnetic waves and heat dissipation. The passive layer blocks electromagnetic waves radiated from an external electronic device or prevents electromagnetic waves generated in an electronic device from emitting to the outside. The passive layer is designed to reduce interference between transmission circuits of a device in the near-field region or influence such as malfunction caused by external electromagnetic waves. The present invention also relates to an electromagnetic device and a circuit board, each including the passive layer.
US09924617B2

An information processing device includes: a device main body including a cooling plate; and a heat generating unit including a heat generating element and a contact plate thermally coupled to the heat generating element, the heat generating unit being detachable from the device main body, wherein the cooling plate includes a heat transfer spring configured to come into contact with the contact plate, the heat transfer spring includes a spring portion configured to come into elastic contact with the contact plate, and a thermally conductive portion disposed between a surface of the spring portion on an opposite side from a contact surface of the spring portion that comes into contact with the contact plate, and the cooling plate.
US09924614B2

A coolant supply unit includes a plurality of pumps, a casing that includes a coolant inlet port, a plurality of branch ports that respectively convey coolant to the plurality of pumps, a plurality of flow merging ports through which the coolant from the plurality of pumps merges, and a coolant outlet port; and a separating wall that is provided inside the casing and that separates the inside of the casing into a distribution chamber that is in communication with the inlet port and the branch ports, and a flow merging chamber that is in communication with the flow merging ports and the outlet port.
US09924608B2

A circuit board assembly includes a main board, a daughter board, a metal bracket, and a conductive gasket. The daughter board includes a circuit board and an electronic module with a plurality of pins connected to the circuit board. The metal bracket clamps at one side of the circuit board and the electronic module to shield the plurality of pins. The metal bracket has a connection part connecting the main board. The conductive gasket is disposed between the metal bracket and the plurality of pins.
US09924606B2

Included are a housing that includes a housing chamber of an electronic component and from which electrical wires are drawn out to the outside when the electrical wires are electrically connected to the electronic component, and at least one retaining mechanism that is provided between a retaining wall out of a plurality of walls composing the housing chamber and the electronic component or a retaining member of the electronic component, and makes the housing chamber retain the electronic component or the retaining member. The housing includes a main component in which at least one housing chamber communicating with respective openings at both ends is formed. The retaining wall is made to warp toward the housing chamber side as compared with when the electronic component is in an accommodated state.
US09924605B2

The combination of a display and a security system. The display has a support assembly configured to maintain at least one article in a display position and a base assembly configured to maintain the support assembly in an operative state on a subjacent surface wherein the support assembly can be moved relative to the base assembly to reposition an article in the display position relative to the base assembly. The security system has an anchoring assembly configured to be operatively secured relative to a subjacent surface and/or another object in the vicinity of a subjacent surface at a display location at which the display is to be supported to prevent removal of the display from the display location. The security system and display are configured to be releasably placed in an engaged relationship wherein the base assembly cannot be separated from the anchoring assembly.
US09924604B2

Display modules have a plurality of light emitting elements arranged in a predetermined pattern and providing a highly uniform visual effect. Systems are provided to support a plurality of flexible display modules in an adjustable convex arrangement. Alignment and complementary alignment features enable the alignment of adjacent display modules and the creation of large displays from a plurality of aligned display modules. Features to couple to and retain a support frame are provided. Flexible and durable weather resistance features are provided. A system of modular support frames works cooperatively with the display modules, adapting to different mounting environments, and thereby providing large modular displays with desirable properties.
US09924602B1

A modular display or modular camera that is an integrated portion of a mobile phone hardware of a mobile phone can be selected. The modular display/camera component includes a connector having pin-outs that permit data transfer. Traces electronically connect the pin-outs to other electronics of modular display/camera. The modular display/camera when integrated to the logic board is coupled to the logic board by coupling the connector to a matching socket of the logic board. The modular display/camera can be manually removing from the logic board and can be physically mated to a different matching socket within a different device. Thus, the modular display/camera of the mobile phone can be repurposed/reused/recycled for the different device.
US09924598B2

An electronic control device includes a wiring unit made from a resin material and an integrated circuit placed on the wiring unit. The wiring unit has a conductive member partially buried therein and including a bus bar terminal and a wiring part extending along a basal plane. The bus bar terminal is bent to extend in a first direction intersecting the basal plane. The integrated circuit includes a lead directed away from the basal plane and connected to the bus bar terminal.
US09924597B2

A material for forming of the capacitor layer which generates no crack in drilling on the dielectric layer of the capacitor in manufacturing of a highly multilayered printed wiring board embedded a capacitor circuit. Copper clad laminate for forming of an embedded capacitor layer of a multilayered printed wiring board including an embedded capacitor circuit having a layer structure of copper layer/dielectric layer of the capacitor/copper layer in an inner layer characterized in that the composite elastic modulus Er of the resin film constituting the dielectric layer of the capacitor along the thickness direction is less than 6.1 GPa is employed.
US09924586B2

This disclosure relates to methods and devices for generating electron dense air plasmas at atmospheric pressures. In particular, this disclosure relate to self-contained toroidal air plasmas. Methods and apparatuses have been developed for generating atmospheric toroidal air plasmas. The air plasmas are self-confining, can be projected, and do not require additional support equipment once formed.
US09924584B2

A method of pixel control which reduces the number of DMX control channels required for generation of artistic pixel patterns displayed on a large number of pixel LEDs is described. Further described are a set of control parameters which facilitate the introduction of pixel control and sophisticated pixel pattern generation without a costly DMX controller upgrade. Also described is a device for generating lighting effects. The device may be portable, battery-powered, radio-controlled and small enough to easily hide in most theatrical and film sets, set pieces, props, and practicals. The device may be configured to process DMX data for controlling and generating graphical patterns among pixel LEDs based on the set of one or more control parameters. The method and device relocate the processing of the DMX data from the DMX controller to one or more individual hardware drivers for the pixel LEDS.
US09924581B1

An apparatus is provided for creating functional lighting groups. The apparatus includes a multimode wireless switch and a gateway. The multimode wireless switch is coupled to one or more wireless devices via a line voltage, and is configured to enter a grouping mode responsive to commands sent over a wireless network, and is configured to switch the line voltage off and then back on, where the one or more wireless devices send messages over the wireless network indicating that they have been power cycled. The gateway is coupled to the one or more wireless devices over the wireless network, and is configured to send the commands, and is configured to receive the messages and is configured to create a functional lighting group comprising the multimode wireless switch and the one or more wireless devices.
US09924579B2

Systems and methods are disclosed with one or more light emitting diodes (LEDs) with at least one optical transmitter and receiver optically coupled to an optical network over 1 Mbps using at least one LED with a first mode to communicate using infrared (IR) light and a second mode to communicate using broadband optical transmission; and a controller coupled to the LEDs, the controller communicating with the optical network using the optical transmitter and receiver.
US09924576B2

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) generate light more efficiently than high-intensity discharge lamps or high-intensity fluorescent lamps. Driving a series of LEDs with a constant-voltage primary supply and a low-voltage LED driver keeps efficiency high. Unfortunately, LED forward voltage varies as a function of temperature: at low temperature, the forward voltage rises. Placing the LEDs in series magnifies the forward voltage increases. This makes it difficult to drive a series of LEDs at low temperature with a constant-voltage supply because the forward voltage can exceed the power supply voltage. To account for this behavior, an exemplary LED lighting fixture includes a “bypass” circuit that, when engaged, effectively removes at least one LED from each series string of LEDs to bring the total forward voltage below the power supply voltage. The low-voltage driver circuit monitors temperature, and engages the “bypass” circuit when necessary to ensure that DC voltage is not exceeded.
US09924566B2

An assembly for evaporating a volatile material is described, the assembly comprising a device and a refill which are detachable from one another: wherein the device comprises a magnetic induction coil configured to operate with an alternating current passed therethrough at a frequency of between substantially 20 KHz to substantially 500 KHz; and wherein the refill comprises at least one magnetic susceptor having a coercivity of substantially 50 ampere/meter (HC) to substantially 1500 ampere/meter (HC) and a substantially liquid-tight sealed reservoir containing the volatile material; wherein, in use, the magnetic susceptor(s) is arranged to heat the material predominately by magnetic hysteresis when the magnetic susceptor(s) is at least partially positioned in the induced magnetic field generated, in use, when said alternating current is passed through the induction coil. Refills, devices and methods of use are also described.
US09924562B2

Architecture that allows a user to control the way a connection is made to a destination. A destination can be tagged with an attribute that defines how the connection to that destination should be routed. For example, a phone address book allows the user not only to enter the usual call recipient information such as name and telephone number, but also to add an attribute in the form of a network identifier associated with a network that should be used when connecting to the destination. Where multiple networks are associated with the destination, the phone subsystem, recognizing that the destination now has multiple network IDs for connecting the call, can prompt the user to select the desired network pathway. The user can also tag the destination with a protocol that should be employed. Thus, not only will the phone be connected according to the network, but according to the protocol.
US09924557B2

A network device performs a delayed registration in connection with phone call setup, if the network device does not know a phone number of a user in question at the time of updating the location updating. In addition, the network device performs user authentication and creates and maintains an encrypted and secure network connection between the network device and an IP multimedia subsystem by using data security mechanisms of a terminal of the IP multimedia subsystem and the authentication and data security parameters of the terminal received from the IP multimedia subsystem.
US09924555B2

One of the embodiments of the present invention relates to a method for controlling a D2D discovery process at a discovering user equipment. The method comprises determining by the discovering user equipment whether discovery information in a discovering message received from a discovered user equipment is sufficient for performing the D2D discovery process or not. In response to a positive result of the determination, the user equipment continues the discovery procedure without involvement of network node, at least by using the discovery information in the discovering message; in response to a negative result of the determination, the user equipment sends a request to a network node for assistance on further discovery information for performing the D2D discovery process, and then receives the further discovery information from the network node. Embodiments of the present invention also provide methods, apparatuses and computer program products.
US09924554B2

A communication apparatus in which a service can more efficiently used is provided. The communication apparatus searches for an apparatus that provides a particular service and establishes a wireless connection to the other searched communication apparatus. Subsequently, an address of the other connected communication apparatus is obtained from the other communication apparatus, and the service provided by the other communication apparatus is used using the obtained address.
US09924553B2

The present disclosure relates to a device-to-device (D2D) communication for direct communication between nodes in a wireless communication system, wherein an operation method of a terminal includes the steps of: generating sequences, which belong to an orthogonal sequence set, according to a sequence pattern corresponding to a priority of a link; and transmitting the sequences, as signals for measurement of a reception electric power of a counterpart terminal, through sub-blocks within a channel, wherein one sequence is transmitted through each of the sub-blocks.
US09924548B2

A communication system and method of using the communication system to determine whether to maintain a connection between a wireless carrier system and a telematics unit in a vehicle. The method includes the steps of: providing a connection request between the vehicle and the wireless carrier system (WCS), wherein the connection request includes a first connectivity identifier; receiving a connection response from the WCS indicating a vehicle-WCS connection, wherein the connection response includes a second connectivity identifier; based on receiving the connection response, determining at the telematics unit whether to maintain the vehicle-WCS connection using the first and second connectivity identifiers; and when the telematics unit determines to not maintain the vehicle-WCS connection, then carrying out one or more actions to terminate the vehicle-WCS connection.
US09924543B2

A method of receiving a random access sequence by a base station in a wireless communication system is disclosed. The method includes transmitting information on at least one of random access formats for different effective channel lengths to the user equipment from a base station, and transmitting a random access sequence based on the at least one random access format from the base station, wherein the random access formats have different lengths of effective channel section for receiving the random access sequence.
US09924541B2

Disclosed are a method and an apparatus for transmitting a frame in a wireless LAN. The method for transmitting a frame in a wireless LAN may comprise: a step in which an AP transmits an RTS frame for protecting a medium to an STA; a step in which the AP receives a CTS frame from the STA in response to the RTS frame; and a step in which the AP transmits a data frame to the STA in response to the CTS frame, wherein the RTS frame is included in a first PPDU which is generated on the basis of a first IFFT size, the data frame is included in a second PPDU which is generated on the basis of a second IFFT size, the second IFFT size is greater than the first IFFT size, and the data frame can be transmitted on the basis of a transmission-range-determining parameter which is determined on the basis of the difference between the second IFFT size and the first IFFT size.
US09924536B2

A communication method for a terminal in a wireless communication system and a terminal using the method are provided. The method comprises: a first downlink subframe receiving a downlink grant; and a plurality of downlink subframes receiving a plurality of data channels that are scheduled by the downlink grant, wherein the plurality of downlink subframes belong to a predetermined downlink subframe group.
US09924524B2

The object is achieved by providing a base station apparatus for performing time and frequency scheduling in uplink packet access with: an interference amount measurement part configured to measure an uplink interference amount for each interference amount measurement unit which comprises a predetermined period and a predetermined number of frequency blocks; an interference amount determination part configured to determine whether the uplink interference amount satisfies a predetermined condition; and an overload indicator reporting part configured to report an overload indicator to a neighboring cell when the predetermined condition is satisfied.
US09924521B2

Technology for supporting dual connectivity is disclosed. A user equipment (UE) may receive a radio resource control (RRC) reconfiguration message from a macro evolved node B (MeNB). The RRC reconfiguration message may indicate that a secondary cell associated with a secondary eNB (SeNB) is to be added for connection to the UE. The UE may complete an RRC reconfiguration procedure to add the secondary cell. The UE may send a preamble to the SeNB indicating that the UE has completed the RRC reconfiguration procedure. The UE may communicate data with the SeNB after sending the preamble to the SeNB, wherein the UE supports dual connectivity to the MeNB and the SeNB.
US09924514B2

Embodiments relate generally to method, system and apparatus for wireless communications between multiple wireless sensor nodes for wireless sensor networks. More specifically, disclosed are system and method that enable wireless communications between devices using different wireless transmission protocols, via one or more multi-channel intermediate devices.
US09924513B2

Techniques and systems for selectively performing band-switching operations are provided. For example, a method, computing device, or computer-program product may be provided, and may include receiving a communication from a first device, wherein the communication is received on a channel of a first WiFi frequency band, wherein the communication is received using a first WiFi circuit of the computing device, and wherein the computing device is a node of a mesh network. The method, computing device, or computer-program product may further include determining whether the first device is a node of the mesh network, determining a second device to which to transmit the communication, and determining whether the second device is a node of the mesh network. The method, computing device, or computer-program product may further include determining whether to transmit the communication to the second device on a second WiFi frequency band, wherein the second WiFi frequency band is different from the first WiFi frequency band, and wherein determining whether to transmit the communication on the second WiFi frequency band depends on whether the first device is a node of the mesh network.
US09924507B2

A wireless communication system is disclosed. A method and apparatus for allowing a user equipment (UE) to transmit uplink control information through a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) are disclosed. A method for allowing a UE to transmit uplink control information through a PUSCH in a wireless communication system includes receiving configuration information about a plurality of PUSCH feedback modes, identifying information indicating a specific PUSCH feedback mode for the PUSCH by using uplink allocation information for the PUSCH, and transmitting the uplink control information through the PUSCH in accordance with the specific PUSCH feedback mode.
US09924494B2

Various examples provide a method for radio resources management. An MCE or a GCSE AS or a UE receives usage information of eMBMS radio resources, and adjusts radio resources in response to a determination that there is an overload state. The MCE may re-configure the eMBMS radio resources. Alternatively, the UE or the GCSE AS may establish a unicast channel for transporting a GCSE service which was transmitted on an overloaded eMBMS bearer, and release the eMBMS bearer. The technical mechanism can make effective use of radio interface resources and reduce data loss.
US09924491B1

Disclosed is a method and system for managing a mobile terminal connection. A paging controller attempts to page a mobile terminal and detects failure of the paging. In response, a packet-network address that had been assigned for the mobile terminal is released and/or a data link layer connection that had been established for the mobile terminal is released.
US09924482B2

A communications terminal receives a data communications signal via a random access channel. A processor searches for data bursts in a first time-slot that include one of a first set of signature sequences assigned to the first time-slot. When a data burst A in the first time-slot includes one of the first set of signature sequences, the data burst A in the first time-slot is an initial burst of a message from a first communications terminal. The processor determines whether a second time-slot includes a data burst B that includes the one signature sequence. When the second time-slot includes the data burst B, the message is a multi-burst message and that the data burst B is a second burst of the multi-burst message. When the second time-slot does not include the data burst B the message is a single-burst message that has been completed via the first time-slot.
US09924479B2

Provided is a communication control device including: a communication control unit configured to control radio communication in a small cell partially or entirely overlapping with a macro cell; and an acquisition unit configured to acquire first synchronization relationship information indicating which frequency bands are mutually synchronized among a plurality of frequency bands used for the small cell. The first synchronization relationship information is supplied in the small cell by the communication control unit and is not supplied in the macro cell by a base station of the macro cell.
US09924475B2

A method manages sub-frame data transmission in a cellular network including a macro node and at least one small node associated therewith. The method includes at a macro node side: based on channel quality information from user equipment associated with the macro node, grouping the user equipment into a first group that can be served at a macro node first transmission power and a second group that has to be served at a macro node second transmission power higher than the macro node first transmission power, and determining a sub-frames pattern including: a number of no-transmission sub-frames wherein data transmission is prevented at the macro node side, a number of limited-transmission sub-frames wherein data transmission is allowed at the macro node side at only the first transmission power, and a number of normal-transmission sub frames wherein data transmission is allowed at the macro node side at the second transmission power.
US09924459B2

A method of determining a transmission time of a packet in a mobile device according to the present disclosure may include: if a request for the transmission of a present packet from at least one operated application is detected, identifying whether it is possible to delay a transmission time of the present packet; when it is possible to delay the transmission time of the present packet, calculating a power gain generated as the transmission time of the present packet is delayed; and determining whether the transmission time of the present packet will be delayed according to the calculated power gain.
US09924451B2

A method for communicating half-rate encoded voice frames. The method includes receiving, by a digital signal processor, a half-rate encoded voice frame. The method further includes determining, by the digital signal processor, a network access code. The method further includes encoding, by the digital signal processor, a network identifier based on the network access code. The method further includes scrambling, by the digital signal processor, the network identifier to generate a scrambled network identifier. The method further includes generating, by the digital signal processor, an erasure pattern. The method further includes generating, by the digital signal processor, a half-rate embedded voice code word based on the erasure pattern and the half-rate encoded voice frame. The method further includes generating, by the digital signal processor, a half-rate embedded logical data unit based on the half-rate embedded voice code word and the scrambled network identifier.
US09924443B2

Methods and apparatus are disclosed for configuring an access mode of a femtocell. The method includes determining whether a target channel is being used by a macrocell. The method includes, in response to the target channel being used by the macrocell, configuring the access mode to a closed access mode. The method includes in response to the target channel not being used by the macrocell, configuring the access mode to an open or hybrid access mode.
US09924439B2

A mobile communication network system operative in conjunction with a network includes a core device, a plurality of base stations including at least one static base station, and a population of mobile stations communicating via antennae with at least one of the base stations. The system includes at least one moving base station included in the plurality of base stations which communicates via antennae with the mobile stations and includes base station functionality, a first radio manager and mobile station functionality all co-located with the base station functionality. The base station functionality has a physical back-connection to the first radio manager. The mobile station functionality communicates via antennae with at least one selectable base station. The plurality of routes of base stations via which the individual moving base station can communicate with the core network includes at least one route characterized by multi-hop backhauling.
US09924438B1

Devices, systems and methods are disclosed for allowing a mobile device to roam from a first frequency band to a second frequency band for a dual band access point when a signal strength associated with the first frequency band improves. For example, the mobile device may store a first signal strength associated with the first frequency band when the mobile device first connects to the first frequency band and may monitor subsequent signal strengths to determine if they exceed the first signal strength. When a subsequent signal strength exceeds the first signal strength, the mobile device may use this as an indication that the mobile device is closer to the access point and within range of the second frequency band. The mobile device may then detect and connect to the second frequency band.
US09924432B2

Device-to-device (D2D) communications between user equipment (UE) allows two UEs in a long-term evolution (LTE) network to communicate directly with each other without the need to first send their communications to a network (such as via an evolved node B). In order to communicate in a D2D mode, the UEs first need to discover each other. One method of allowing the UEs to discover each other involves the use of a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH). After a network determines that certain UEs would benefit from D2D communication, the UEs can be set up to send and receive discovery signals using the PUCCH.
US09924429B2

A wireless terminal can communicate with a first network of first type and a second network of second different type. The wireless terminal performs a packet-domain attachment to the first network and initiates a ready timer indicating that the wireless terminal is in an attached state and has recently sent data to the first network. The wireless terminal initiates an inter-system change from the first network to the second network whereby the wireless terminal becomes registered to the second network. Advantageously the wireless terminal has means for rendering the ready timer ineffective when the inter-system change is performed. The network apparatus has means for initiating its own ready timer dependent on the attachment occurring, this ready timer also indicating that the wireless terminal is in an attached state and has recently sent data to the first network.
US09924427B2

A communication system can provide an independent mobile cellular network to devices within a covered area. In addition, the system can determine whether user equipment within a covered area of the communication system are to have backhaul access to another communication system and/or whether to adjust the point of presence of the user equipment.
US09924426B2

An apparatus, computer program, and method are provided for criteria-based conditional cell reselection. In operation, information is identified in connection with a mobile communication device being serviced by a first cell of a network utilizing a first frequency with a first priority. A determination is then made as to whether the information meets one or more criteria. Based on such determination, reselection is conditionally caused for the mobile communication device in connection with a second cell of the network utilizing a second frequency with a second priority.
US09924423B2

A method and apparatus for different-frequency measurement and evaluation by a cluster answering user are provided, which relate to the technical field of communications. The method includes acquiring a public network signal evaluation threshold value and a signal threshold adjustment value, the signal threshold adjustment value being for adjusting an evaluation threshold; saving a result of different-frequency measurement by performing the different-frequency measurement on cells; and evaluating the saved result of different-frequency measurement using the acquired public network signal evaluation threshold value and the acquired signal threshold adjustment value. The method and apparatus enable a cluster terminal to timely measure a better adjacent cell and to switch to the cell, thereby making the cluster terminal always reside in a better cell to use voice and data services, ensuring the quality of the services and bringing user experience.
US09924414B2

The invention relates to methods and nodes for supporting a session transfer, for a user equipment, from a circuit switched network to a packets witched network. According to one aspect a method for operating a control node of a core network is provided. The method comprises the steps: requesting from a radio access network of the circuit switched network information on whether a capability of the user equipment related to the session transfer are compatible with a network configuration related to the session transfer; receiving from the radio access network an indication whether the capability of the user equipment and the network configuration are compatible; determining whether to indicate that the session transfer is supported by using the received compatibility indication; and setting an indication whether the session transfer is supported according to the determination.
US09924411B2

The present invention provides a communication network comprising a host network, a plurality of base stations, at least a mobile host capable of establishing links to the base stations, and a hierarchy-network of plural routers which are improved in transferring performances for ensuring continuous operations with a reduced load without packet loss.
US09924407B2

A contention adjustment method for use in an apparatus and a system in a wireless local area network. The method includes acquiring an air interface occupancy time ratio of a terminal that is in a service operating state, and adjusting an uplink data sending threshold of the terminal according to the air interface occupancy time ratio of the terminal, where the air interface occupancy time ratio of the terminal is a ratio of an air interface occupancy time of the terminal to an air interface time, and the air interface occupancy time of the terminal is a ratio of a volume of data sent by the terminal to an air interface data sending rate of the terminal in the air interface time. The present disclosure may avoid that a terminal with a stronger demand excessively preempts a terminal with a weaker demand.
US09924402B2

Systems and methodologies are described herein that facilitate efficient transfer of quality of service (QoS) context during inter-radio access technology (RAT) handovers. In particular, techniques are described herein for establishing rules for whether a user equipment unit (UE) or an associated network should establish QoS for a mixed-mode application, identifying flow to bearer mappings when translating QoS across an inter-RAT handover, mapping QoS parameters of respective RATs, mitigating QoS depreciation upon multiple handovers, performing one or more actions if QoS is not acceptable in a new RAT, maintaining QoS during tunnel mode, and handling scenarios in which a UE moves between a RAT using network-initiated QoS and a RAT using UE-initiated QoS.
US09924400B2

An arrangement of a mesh network comprising a first station, a second station and one or more intermediate stations is disclosed. The first, second and one or more intermediate stations are configured to comprise a sleep mode wherein the first, second and one or more intermediate stations are idle, and an awake mode wherein the first, second and one or more intermediate stations are awake. The first, second and one or more intermediate stations are further configured to be in the awake mode during a duration of a discovery window—DW—and a mesh management window—MMW—and wherein first, second and one or more intermediate stations are configured to listen for a synchronization beacon during the DW and to transmit and/or listen for zero or more mesh path hybrid wireless mesh protocol—HWMP—frames during the MMW. A method of the arrangement, as well as a first station, an intermediate station, a second station, a method for a first station, a method for an intermediate station and a method for a second station is also disclosed.
US09924399B2

A technique for operating a mobile station as wireless local-area network [“WLAN”] gateway. The mobile station is provided with a gateway application to control the following operations: activating (3-0) the WLAN means as a WLAN base station capable of communicating with at least one WLAN terminal over a WLAN network; creating a network identifier (3-2, 3-4) for the WLAN base station; assigning (3-8, 3-10) an internet protocol address for the at least one WLAN terminal; resolving domain name service [“DNS”] queries (3-12 . . . 3-18) in cooperation with an external DNS service system; assigning at least one port number for each protocol supported by the gateway application; and tunneling internet traffic (3-30 . . . 3-36) between the at least one WLAN terminal and an internet host over the broadband connection.
US09924397B2

Generally discussed herein are systems and apparatuses arranged to perform a Time-of-Flight (ToF) or Round Trip Time measurement. The disclosure also includes techniques of making and using the systems and apparatuses. According to an example a station (STA) can be arranged to perform a Time-of-Flight (ToF) measurement, the STA can include a transceiver arranged to transmit a hard constraint indicating a time window in which the STA is unavailable for performing the ToF measurement, and receive an action frame of the ToF measurement from another STA at a time that is outside the time window.
US09924389B2

A method implemented by a node in a wireless communication system comprises obtaining (120) a result of a timing measurement performed on one or more first radio signals associated with one or more specific characteristics. The method also includes verifying (130) one or more second radio signals as associated with the one or more specific characteristics, by determining whether the result meets one or more conditions. In some embodiments, the one or more specific characteristics is an identity of a specific radio node or cell. Moreover, in one or more embodiments, the result of the timing measurement is used for verification in this way instead of or in addition to the result of a power-based measurement.
US09924386B2

A system for wireless network optimization and remote control of mobile handset operation, comprising one or more devices disposed on a network and a server disposed on the network having a database, the server configured to push a client application to the one or more devices, instruct the client application to perform a plurality of tests on the one or more devices, collect a plurality of reports corresponding the plurality of tests performed on the on the one or more devices, instruct the client application to perform debugging tests on the one or more devices, collect debugging results corresponding to the debugging tests performed on the one or more devices, and remotely access the one or more devices to resolve any operational problems of the one or more devices.
US09924384B2

Embodiments of the present invention provide a method and an apparatus for optimizing a neighbor relation. The method for optimizing a neighbor relation in the present invention includes: determining, by a centralized device, to-be-processed neighboring cells according to a preset rule, generating an optimization suggestion according to the determined to-be-processed neighboring cells, and delivering the optimization suggestion to a radio network controller RNC, so that the RNC optimizes the to-be-processed neighboring cells according to the optimization suggestion. According to the embodiments of the present invention, automatic optimization of the neighbor relation is implemented.
US09924383B2

A method of and an apparatus for transmitting first data to a plurality of receiver terminals connected to a transmitter terminal through the transmitter terminal and transmitting second data to the plurality of receiver terminals through the transmitter terminal is performed according to a transmission speed determined based on at least one selected from feedback information of a receiver terminal selected based on a data loss rate of the first data and variation information of data stored in a buffer of the transmitter terminal.
US09924380B2

In switching a radio base station (SeNB) from a radio base station (SeNB#1) to a radio base station (SeNB#2) in an “Inter-node UP aggregation”, forwarding of new downlink data destined for a mobile station (UE) from a radio base station (MeNB) to the radio base station (SeNB#2) is quickly started. A mobile communication method according to the present invention includes: sending, by the mobile station UE, the radio base station (MeNB) a “New data delivery request” that requests forwarding of new downlink data destined for the mobile station (UE) to the radio base station (SeNB#2), in response to an “SeNB change command”; and forwarding, by the radio base station MeNB, the new downlink data destined for the mobile station (UE) to the radio base station (SeNB#2), in response to the “New data delivery request”.
US09924371B2

Techniques for wireless connectivity using white spaces (e.g., television (TV) white spaces) are described. In at least some embodiments, movement of a device operating as a white space access point is monitored by local sensors within the device. Movement data that is gathered by the local sensors is used to determine an upper bound of distance traveled. When the upper bound reaches a threshold distance, various actions can be performed relating to the data transmission, such as to cease transmission or to utilize different portions of the radio spectrum.
US09924370B2

Systems, methods, and software for controlling transmissions of User Equipment (UE) on an unlicensed spectrum. In one embodiment, a base station communicates with the UE through radio communications on a licensed spectrum of a carrier. The base station transmits a query to a policy control element requesting spectrum selection criteria for the UE over a direct interface. The base station receives a response from the policy control element that includes the spectrum selection criteria for the UE, and processes the spectrum selection criteria to allocate resources for transmissions involving the UE on the licensed spectrum and on the unlicensed spectrum. The base station then provides a control message including the allocated resources towards the UE to enable the UE to perform the transmissions on the unlicensed spectrum, the licensed spectrum, or a combination of the two.
US09924369B2

Selective non-distribution of received unlicensed spectrum communications by a remote unit(s) into a distributed communications system (DCS) is provided. In one aspect, the DCS is configured to receive communications signals in unlicensed spectrum from a source transceiver(s) for communications services. The DCS is configured to distribute the received communications signals in unlicensed spectrum to one or more remote units forming respective remote communications coverage areas. To reduce or avoid signal interference when communication signals in unlicensed spectrum are transmitted into the DCS that is also being used for transmissions by a remote transceiver to a remote unit at the same time, received communications signals by the remote units are monitored for unlicensed spectrum. The remote unit is configured to disable or disconnect the reception and/or transmission of the communications signals in the unlicensed spectrum based on the communication signal activity in the unlicensed spectrum.
US09924359B2

A method, system and apparatus for enhancing the security of a beacon device are herein disclosed. A service device includes a service communication unit and a service control unit. The service communication unit communicates with at least one terminal and a beacon device, and transmits and receives data required to enhance the security of the beacon device. The service control unit performs control so as to receive pieces of identification information from the terminal and the beacon device, to check the received pieces of identification information and then perform validation based on the times at which the pieces of identification information have been generated and whether authentication keys match each other, to extract service information in response to the result of the validation, and to transmit the extracted service information to the terminal.
US09924354B2

Embodiments of the present invention disclose a key exchange method and apparatus, which relate to the communications field, and can enable user equipments establishing a D2D link to share a set of keys, and further, information security can be achieved when a user equipment transmits service data or a signaling message through a Ud interface. A specific solution is that: a network device acquires a first key, and sends a message including the first key to a second user equipment, so that the second user equipment uses, when communicating with a first user equipment by using a D2D link, the first key to protect transmitted information. The present invention is applicable to an exchange process of keys for protecting data on a D2D link.
US09924353B2

The present application discloses a method for configuring and transmitting a key, which includes that: a) a serving cell (PCell) of UE determines a key (KeNB) used by a SCell and transmits the KeNB to the SCell; and b) the PCell transmits configuration information for configuring the SCell to the UE after receiving a response message from the SCell, and receives a response message from the UE. Or, the method includes that: a SCell of UE transmits a cell key request to a MME and receives key information from the MME; and the SCell transmits the key information received from the MME to the UE, and receives a response message from the UE. By the present application, data of the SCell is transmitted after being encrypted, so as to avoid a case that the data is decoded by other users, and further guarantee the security of the data.
US09924350B2

A wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) may communicate on a primary cell and a secondary cell. A transceiver of the WTRU may receive a medium access control (MAC) message indicating activation or deactivation of the secondary cell. A processor of the WTRU may start a timer in response to the activation of the secondary cell. The WTRU may deactivate the secondary cell on a condition that the timer expires.
US09924346B2

A subscriber identity is changed for a mobile terminal through an instruction being provided to the mobile terminal to detach from a first mobile communication system, to which the first mobile communication system the mobile terminal is attached using a first subscriber identity, where the instruction is also an instruction to change to a second subscriber identity associated with a second mobile communication system. The mobile terminal receives the instruction via the first mobile communication system, detach from the first mobile communication system attaches to the second mobile communication system using the second subscriber identity.
US09924341B2

One embodiment of the present invention relates to a method for mapping a discovery signal by a terminal in a wireless communication system, the method for mapping the discovery signal comprising the steps of: generating the discovery signal; mapping the discovery unit on at least a portion of a plurality of discovery signal resource blocks (RB), wherein when the number of terminals transreceiving the discovery signal including the terminal is less than or equal to a predetermined value, an absolute value of a frequency band of a discovery signal RB included in a positive frequency zone with respect to a direct current (DC) carrier, from among the plurality of discovery signal RBs, does not overlap with an absolute value of a frequency band corresponding to a discovery signal RB present in a negative frequency zone.
US09924339B2

A device may receive first information. The first information may be based on traffic associated with usage of a toll-free data service. The device may receive an identifier for a user device. The user device may be using the toll-free data service. The device may generate second information. The second information may correspond to usage, by the user device, of the toll-free data service. The second information may be generated based on the first information and the identifier. The device may send the second information to another device to support providing a notification of toll-free data service usage. The notification of toll-free data service usage may be based on the second information.
US09924338B1

A method of and relay for connecting communication networks. In one example, the relay is a non-collocated relay that includes a plurality of antennas including a first antenna and a second antenna and an antenna scanner connected to the plurality of antennas. The antenna scanner is configured to survey the plurality of antennas for signals from a first base station of a first incident area network and a second base station of a second incident area network. The non-collocated relay also includes a first user device and a second user device communicatively coupled to each other and an electronic processor. The electronic processor is configured to connect the first antenna receiving a signal from the first base station to the first user device and connect the second antenna receiving a signal from the second base station to the second user device.
US09924332B2

A transmission management system includes a memory that stores destination information indicating destination candidates of a request source terminal, a receiver that receives a destination registration request designating one or more destination terminals as the destination candidates, processing circuitry that, when approval of the destination registration request can be omitted, registers one or more request destination terminals in the destination information as the destination candidates, and a transmitter that, when the approval of the destination registration request cannot be omitted, transmits the approval request to the one or more request destination terminals. The receiver receives a response to the approval request from the one or more request destination terminals. The processing circuitry registers the request destination terminal in the destination information of the request source terminal as a destination candidate.
US09924319B2

A tracking system is disclosed that enables the tracking of a beacon device and a credential device being held by the beacon device. The beacon device may communicate with readers of an access control system using a first communication protocol whereas the credential device being held by the beacon device may communicate with readers of the access control system using a second communication protocol. As the beacon device and the credential device being held by the beacon device may also communicate with readers at different times, a beacon device may be associated with a credential device being held thereby such that tracking of one device enables inferred tracking of the other device.
US09924307B2

This specification discloses a terminal which performs position measurement and an operating method of the terminal. That is, a specific positioning area, to which the terminal belongs, is determined out of two or more positioning areas, to which different positioning methods are assigned, and the position measurement is performed by the terminal according to the positioning method which is assigned to the specific positioning area, such that the power consumption amount of the terminal for performing the position measurement is minimized and the accuracy of the position measurement is improved.
US09924306B2

An inferential people matching method, system, and device infers people's mutual interests in making contact with each other from usage behaviors associated with computer-implemented systems. The usage behaviors may comprise monitored geographic location information that is associated with portable processor-based devices. In accordance with the inference of mutual interest, recommendations of each of two people are generated for delivery to the other of the two people. Expressions of interest between the two people are determined based on usage behaviors exhibited by the two people in response to the recommendations. These post-recommendation usage behaviors may include gestures and physiological responses. A bilateral expression of interest is revealed to the two people if the bilateral expression of interest that is determined from the expressions of interest is sufficient.
US09924305B2

An application development platform enables applications to be created easily for, e.g., mobile devices that have short-range wireless communication capability. The development platform exposes a carefully chosen core set of services through an API. Each of the applications can broadcast its services to local and remote devices. Message delivery between devices is guaranteed even for messages that cannot be delivered directly by local short-range wireless transmission. Message delivery through other channels, including the Internet, can occur transparently to the user. Each device can be associated with an “owner”, which can be a person or a entity. Services can be customized to the owner based on stored information that maps owners to devices. Information associated with each of the owners of devices can be stored centrally and used in connection with providing the services at each of the mobile devices. Virtual GPS capabilities can be provided for mobile devices that do not have GPS chips.
US09924304B2

An interconnection method of networking of a Piconet based on Bluetooth low power and conventional Bluetooth is provided. Each of peripheral devices advertise service type information and service address information to the surroundings. The central device generates a peripheral device service list correspondingly according to the serve type information, so as to complete networking between the central device and the plurality of peripheral devices. The central device establishes a conventional Bluetooth connection between the central device and the peripheral device according to a service request, and establishes the Piconet correspondingly to allow any of two devices to be wirelessly connected according to the peripheral device service list.
US09924295B2

A computing device, such as a smartphone, can replace the hardware of various instruments to overcome the cost issue in designing universal smart instruments. Distinguished from traditional instruments, a universal smart instrument takes the maximum advantage of the latest smart phone or mobile computing devices. The instrument control panel is realized on the smartphone by applying the interactive graphical representation of control and indicator elements common in real instruments such as knobs, buttons, dials, graphs and the like. Universal smart instruments unify heterogeneous measurement probes on the market into a single device that can be readily modified or expanded when new technologies need to be added to the existing system or current measurement requirement change. Universal smart instruments also make use of the internet to publish and share data, which was unable to be achieved in conventional propriety instruments.
US09924294B2

Aspects of the disclosure provide a first device including a storage, a first communication circuit, and a controller. The storage is re-writable. The first communication circuit is configured to perform first wireless communication with other devices when the other devices are within a first distance to the first device. The controller is configured to write first information in a specific memory space of the storage in response to a trigger operation of a user. The first information is transmitted to a second device by the first communication circuit when the second device is within the first distance to the first device for a first time. The controller is further configured to write second information in the specific memory space of the storage. The second information is transmitted by the first communication circuit to one or more other devices at following times.
US09924291B2

A master device receives audio, down-mixes the audio to stereo if it is not already in stereo, and then up-mixes the stereo into as many channels as there speakers in the network. The up-mixing can be based on the number and locations of the speakers, which may be determined automatically using a real time location system such as ultra wide band (UWB) location determination techniques. The master device sends each speaker the stereo only, with each speaker also up-mixing the stereo into at least its own respective channel and in some cases into all N channels, selecting from the rendered “N” channels that result from the up-mix the channel indicated as being associated with the particular location of the particular speaker.
US09924289B2

MIDI-generated audio streams or other input streams of audio events are perceptually associated with specific locations in 3D space with respect to the listener. A conventional pan parameter is redefined so that it no longer specifies the relative balance between the audio being fed to two fixed speaker locations. Instead, the new MIDI pan parameter extension specifies a virtual position of an audio stream in 3D space. Preferably, the relative position of a single audio stream is set along a predefined arc in 3D space.
US09924281B2

The application relates to a binaural hearing assistance system comprising first and second hearing assistance devices adapted for being located at or in left and right ears of a user. The application further relates to a method of operating a binaural hearing assistance system. The object of the present application is to provide an improved binaural hearing assistance system. The problem is solved in that each of the first and second hearing assistance devices comprises a) a first wireless interface comprising first antenna and transceiver circuitry adapted for establishing a first communication link to the respective other hearing assistance device based on near-field communication; b) a second wireless interface comprising second antenna and transceiver circuitry adapted for establishing a second communication link to an auxiliary device based on far-field communication; c) a link control unit operatively coupled to the second antenna and transceiver circuitry and configured to repeatedly provide a second link quality measure indicative of a link quality of the second communication link; wherein the first and second hearing assistance devices are configured to exchange said respective second link quality measures between them via said first and/or second communication links. This has the advantage of providing a robust and flexible system. The invention may e.g. be used for binaural hearing assistance systems, e.g. binaural hearing aid systems, where audio quality and power consumption has to be mutually optimized.
US09924276B2

An ear tip apparatus for use with a hearing device is provided and comprises a malleable structure. The malleable structure is sized and configured for placement in an ear canal of a user. The malleable structure is deformable to allow an adjustable venting of the ear canal, thereby minimizing the occlusion effect. Methodology for adjusting a degree of venting of the ear canal is also provided, including the automatic adjustments. Adjusting the degree of venting may be done in response to one or more of detected feedback or an environmental cue.
US09924273B2

A suspension element coupled to a diaphragm and to a frame of an acoustic device. The suspension element includes a first surround element and a second surround element that are located adjacent to each other. At least one of the surround elements includes at least one or more openings. The at least one or more openings have features of being located at an edge of the at least one of the surround elements adjacent to the other surround element, or being located in both of the surround elements.
US09924269B1

A filter gain compensation method for a specific frequency band for use in an electronic device is provided. In the method, a windowed filter is applied on each of a plurality of band-pass filters in a multi-segment band-pass filter corresponding to the high-frequency signal and different frequency bands of the low-frequency signal. In addition, a high-frequency cancellation filter corresponding to the high-frequency signal of an input digital signal is calculated. A compensation gain for the high-frequency cancellation filter and each of the band-pass filters is calculated according to fitting frequency gains and a fitting frequency relationship matrix. The output acoustic signal is synthesized using output signals from the windowed band-pass filters and the high-frequency cancellation filter that are obtained according to updated filter features and compensation gain for the windowed band-pass filters and the high-frequency cancellation filter.
US09924265B2

A voice capture system worn by a user senses vibrations through the nose of the user when the user speaks. The voice capture system generates an electronic signal based on the sensed vibration and generate voice data based on the electronic signal. In this manner, the system may capture a user's voice while also screening out external noise (e.g., based on the sound dampening properties of the human skull). In one example, a voice capture system may include a wearable frame (e.g., eyeglass frame) on which is mounted at least one sensor and a device. The at least one sensor senses vibration in the nose of a user and generates the electronic signal based on the vibration. The device receives the electronic signal from the at least one sensor and generates voice data based on the electronic signal.
US09924243B2

The present disclosure relates to an environment control device (ECD) and a method using a wireless communication infrastructure for exchanging environmental data. The wireless communication infrastructure comprises a first Wi-Fi hotspot, and at least one of a second Wi-Fi hotspot and a mesh network. The ECD comprises a communication module for exchanging environmental data with at least another device over the wireless communication infrastructure. The communication module is capable of establishing the first Wi-Fi hotspot, associating with the second Wi-Fi hotspot, and communicating over the mesh network. The ECD further comprises a processing module capable of processing environmental data received from the other device via the wireless communication infrastructure, and/or transmitting generated environmental data to the other device via the wireless communication infrastructure. The ECD may consist of an environment controller, a sensor, a controlled appliance, and a relay for wired devices.
US09924239B2

Consumption habits of video content have been changing for some time, as more people (especially young people) prefer video on demand (VOD) services over linear channels. Disclosed is a communication system configured to efficiently deliver video content on demand over a satellite medium. Also disclosed are methods for efficiently delivering video content on demand using multicast transmissions and caching of video title prefixes.
US09924233B2

This disclosure relates to a devices and methods related to satellite information broadcasting. An embodiment may relate to a device that includes a plurality of respective tuning channels. The device includes a controller configured to transmit a registration query and receive a registration request from a client device. The registration request may include a client identifier and a tuner quantity. The tuner quantity may indicate the number of tuners associated with the client device. The controller may assign at least one tuning channel to the client device based on the tuner quantity. Furthermore, the controller may transmit a registration confirmation message to the client device. The registration confirmation message may include the respective tuning channel identifier of the at least one assigned tuning channel.
US09924225B2

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, receiving from a communication system media content with metadata, recording the media content, detecting in the metadata a description of the media content correlating with a preference profile, presenting a first prompt requesting an acceptance or rejection of the media content, presenting a second prompt requesting a selection from a plurality of communication devices to direct in whole or in part the media content thereto, detecting the selection from the plurality of communication devices, and transmitting in whole or in part the media content to the selected communication device. Other embodiments are disclosed.
US09924224B2

Methods and apparatus to determine a state of a media presentation device are disclosed. Example disclosed methods include generating a first set of weighted coefficients based on first audio received by first and second microphones at a first time. Example disclosed methods include generating a second set of weighted coefficients based on second audio received by the first and second microphones at a second time after the first time. Example disclosed methods include comparing the first set of coefficients and the second set of coefficients to generate a similarity value. Example disclosed methods include, when the similarity value satisfies a threshold, determining that the media presentation device is in a first state. Example disclosed methods include, when the similarity value does not satisfy the threshold, determining that the media presentation device is in a second state.
US09924207B2

The present invention provides a method of transmitting broadcast signals. The method includes, generating input packets including broadcast content data; generating a link layer packet by using the generated input packets, wherein the link layer packet includes a link layer header and a link layer payload including the generated input packets, wherein the link layer header includes a count field indicating number of the input packets included in the link layer payload, wherein the link layer header further includes a length part, wherein the length part includes a plurality of length fields as many as that the count field indicates, wherein each of the length fields indicates length of the each input packets included in the link layer payload; generating a broadcast signal including the generated link layer packet; and transmitting the broadcast signal.
US09924200B2

An adaptive video noise reduction (AVNR) engine reduces noise in streaming video. The engine reads embedded information in the streaming video describing attributes of the video, such as bit rate, frame rate, resolution, content type and quality of the streaming video. The information may be included in a manifest of the streaming video. Based on the video attributes, the engine outputs one or more input values to applications that reduce noise of the streaming video. The one or more applications may reduce mosquito, block, temporal, random and banding noise of the video in response to the input values from the engine.
US09924196B2

A method for real-time disparity estimation of stereo video data receives sequence of frames of stereo video data. Image-based disparity estimation is initially conducted to produce initial disparity estimates, and the disparity estimates are refined in a space-time volume. The algorithm produces disparity via multi-thread process in which an output is independent of the input for each step of the process.
US09924192B2

An encoding method and apparatus and a decoding method and apparatus for determining a motion vector of a current block based on a motion vector of at least one previously-encoded or previously-decoded block are provided. The decoding method includes: decoding information regarding a prediction direction from among a first direction, a second direction, and bi-directions, and information regarding pixel values of the current block; determining the prediction direction in which the current block is to be predicted, based on the decoded information regarding the prediction direction, and determining a motion vector for predicting the current block in the determined prediction direction; and restoring the current block, based on the determined motion vector and the decoded information regarding the pixel values, wherein the first direction is a direction from a current picture to a previous picture, and the second direction is a direction from the current picture to a subsequent picture.
US09924186B2

Provided is a method that de-multiplexes a bit stream to extract intra prediction mode information and residual signals, restores an intra prediction mode of a current prediction unit using the intra prediction information and intra prediction modes of prediction units adjacent to the current prediction unit, generates reference pixels using one or more available reference pixel if there exist unavailable reference pixels of the prediction unit, adaptively filters the reference pixels based on the restored intra prediction mode, generates a prediction block using the restored intra prediction mode and the reference pixels, decodes the residual signal to generating a residual block, and generates a reconstructed block using the prediction block and the residual block. Accordingly, additional bits resulted from increase of a number of intra prediction mode are effectively reduced. Also, an image compression ratio can be improved by generating a prediction block similar to an original block.
US09924179B2

Provided are a method and apparatus for decoding a multi-layer video, and a method and apparatus for encoding a multi-layer video. The method includes obtaining a NAL unit including encoding information and type information of a first layer picture and identifying a type of the first layer picture, obtaining a NAL unit including encoding information and type information of a second layer picture and identifying a type of the second layer picture that is set to be the same as the type of the first layer picture having a same POC as the second layer picture, and decoding the first layer picture and the second layer picture based on the identified first layer picture type and the identified second layer picture type.
US09924178B2

The present invention generally relates to a method and device for encoding an image. The method comprises: —encoding (12) a backlight image determined (11) from the image; —obtaining (13) a residual image by dividing the image by a decoded version of the backlight image, —obtaining (16) a tone-mapped residual image by tone-mapping the residual image; and —encoding (19) the tone-mapped residual image. The invention relates also to a method and device for decoding a bitstream representing a residual image calculated by dividing an image by a backlight image.
US09924173B2

A coding device and a decoding device are configured to include an estimated prediction mode deciding section (122a) including: a reference block selecting section (1223a) for selecting a reference block for use in estimating an intra-prediction mode for a subject block; an estimating number deciding section (1222a) for deciding an estimating number of estimated values to be estimated for the intra-prediction mode; and an estimated prediction mode deriving section (1221a) for estimating, based on a reference block, the estimating number of estimated values of the prediction mode.
US09924171B2

Techniques use multiple lower bit depth (e.g., 8 bits) codecs to provide higher bit depth (e.g., 12+ bits) high dynamic range images from an upstream device to a downstream device. Multiple layers comprising a base layer and one or more enhancement layers may be used to carry video signals comprising image data compressed by lower bit depth encoders to a downstream device, wherein the base layer cannot be decoded and viewed on its own. Lower bit depth input image data to base layer processing may be generated from higher bit depth high dynamic range input image data via advanced quantization to minimize the volume of image data to be carried by enhancement layer video signals. The image data in the enhancement layer video signals may comprise residual values, quantization parameters, and mapping parameters based in part on a prediction method corresponding to a specific method used in the advanced quantization. Adaptive dynamic range adaptation techniques take into consideration special transition effects, such as fade-in and fade-outs, for improved coding performance.
US09924162B2

An image decoding method for decoding a coded moving picture includes: switching a decoding order to either a fixed processing order or an adaptive processing order based on first information included in the coded moving picture; and decoding image data items included in the coded moving picture according to the decoding order switched to.
US09924147B2

A system, method and computer program product for generating an image set for a photographic scene. The method comprises sampling evaluation images, enumerating exposure requirements for each image comprising the image set, selecting exposure coordinates for each image comprising the image set, generating camera subsystem exposure parameters for each image comprising the image set based on corresponding selected exposure coordinates, storing camera subsystem exposure parameters for each image comprising the image set, sampling each image comprising the image set based on corresponding camera subsystem exposure parameters, and storing each sampled image comprising the image set. Techniques disclosed herein advantageously reduce inter-frame time for images sampled sequentially.
US09924145B2

An image display apparatus that enables easy setting of an adjustment parameter of an image quality setting item according to user preference includes an adjustment unit configured to adjust a display image based on an adjustment parameter, a display unit configured to generate a plurality of adjustment parameter candidates different from each other and display a list of a plurality of adjusted images adjusted by the adjustment unit based on the plurality of adjustment parameter candidates, and a selection unit configured to select an adjusted image from the displayed list. The adjustment parameter is set based on the adjusted image selected from the plurality of adjusted images and the plurality of adjustment parameter candidates when displaying an image.
US09924140B2

A camera device for use in a storage unit includes a case configured to be detachably installable inside the storage unit to a holder unit configured to hold the case inside the storage unit, an image capturing element provided inside the case and configured to capture an image inside the storage unit where the case is installed, an image capture window provided on a first surface portion of the case and configured for capturing the image inside the storage unit by the image capturing element, and a preventing element configured to prevent the case from being attached to the holder unit in an orientation other than a predetermined orientation. The image capture window is configured for capturing image inside the storage unit by the image capturing element. The holder unit holds the case inside the storage unit. The image capturing element captures the image inside the storage unit with the case being installed in the predetermined orientation.
US09924138B1

A passive thermal imaging system, includes a first detection unit, a second detection unit, imaging optics and processing electronics. The first detection unit and second detection unit each include at least one first detector array. The imaging optics are configured to image a first wavelength range of received EMR onto the at least one first detector array, and to image a second wavelength range of the received EMR onto the at least one second detector array. The processing electronics are configured to receive a first detected signal from the at least one first detector array and to determine whether a first detection event has occurred based on the first detected signal, and to receive a second detected signal from the at least one second detector array and to determine whether a second detection event and a third detection event have occurred based on the second detected signal.
US09924137B2

A conferencing system for providing remote assistance according to the present disclosure includes a service requester device configured to execute a service requester application, a service provider device configured to execute a service provider application and a server application executing on a computer server remotely located from the service requester and service provider devices, the service requester and service provider applications are configured to dynamically connect to each other through the at least one server application.
US09924136B1

The techniques disclosed herein provide coordinated display transitions of renderings of content and people that are moved between display areas of a user interface to bring emphasis to salient activity of a teleconference session. For example, as renderings of people or content shift from one section of a UI to another, the movement is performed in a guiding manner that enables participants of a teleconference session to follow the relevant action of a session. The movement is also performed in a manner that is natural, fluid, and delightful to users. The coordination of moving elements may emphasize the movement of a first rendering of people or content and deemphasize other types of activity. In addition, one or more graphical displays can involve the use of an easing curve and parallax animation techniques to emphasize or deemphasize select renderings of people or content.
US09924132B2

Even when mixing video data whose video formats are different, appropriate mix processing can be performed. Output video data is obtained by performing mix processing such as dissolve and wipe on first video data and second video data. Before performing the mix processing, a format of the first video data and the second video data is made the same as a video format handled by the mixing unit. Further, after performing the mix processing, a format of the output video data is made the same as an output video format.
US09924127B2

The present invention discloses a television pedestal and a television applying the same, and relates to the technical field of televisions. The television pedestal comprises a base comprising a base body in a shape of a plate. The base body is provided with a first threaded through hole and connected with a holding block via a bolt. A bottom surface of the holding block is provided with a second threaded hole which corresponds to the first threaded through hole. When the television pedestal is connected with the television body, the holding block is connected with a backplane arranged in the television body. The holding block is disposed inside a back cover of the television body. The television pedestal can be applied to a television for enhancing the convenience and comfort for the user during usage of the television and improving the overall appearance of the television.
US09924126B2

An audiovisual apparatus includes: a display section configured to display a picture; and one or a plurality of main speakers and a plurality of sub-speakers each having a sound output surface generating sound corresponding to the picture. The sound output surfaces of one or more of the plurality of sub-speakers are arranged to be inclined toward outside of the display section as compared with the sound output surfaces of the main speakers.
US09924122B2

A solid-state imaging device including a photoelectric conversion portion photoelectrically converting incident light into signal charge and accumulate the signal charge, a plurality of signal lines including a transfer signal line to which a transfer signal for reading the signal charge accumulated in the photoelectric conversion portion to a floating diffusion region is input, a driver circuit inputting a plurality of desired signals into the plurality of signal lines including the transfer signal line, and a terminal circuit connected to a side opposite to a side of the transfer signal line where the driver circuit is connected and to which a control signal for securing the transfer signal line at a constant voltage is input before a desired signal of the plurality of desired signals with respect to a signal line adjacent to the transfer signal line of the plurality of signal lines is input to the signal line adjacent to the transfer signal line.
US09924117B2

According to an embodiment, an imaging element includes a plurality of light receiving elements, a plurality of scanning circuits, a first line comprising a plurality of nodes, and a plurality of first variable resistance elements. The plurality of scanning circuits are respectively connected to the plurality of light receiving elements. Each of the plurality of first variable resistance elements is connected between the corresponding one of the nodes and a corresponding one of the scanning circuits. At least one of the first variable resistance elements includes a plurality of resistance elements connected to each other in parallel.
US09924108B2

A system and a method for goal recognition, in which a plurality of cameras monitor a goal line plane that is generated by a framework for a goal, wherein at least one camera module is provided which can be used to monitor a sector outside the goal laterally adjacent to the framework or in front of the framework in the direction of a playing field in order to determine a trajectory for a playing body in the region of the playing field in the direction of the goal, wherein the operation of the cameras for monitoring the goal line plane and/or the evaluation of the image data therefrom can be controlled on the basis of the image data from the camera module.
US09924106B2

An image pickup apparatus performs a global electronic shutter operation in which exposure periods of a plurality of pixels coincide with one another. In a first period in which a photoelectric conversion unit of at least one of the pixels stores charge, signals based on charges stored in holding units of the pixels are successively output to output lines. In a second period after the output of the signals from the pixels is terminated, the holding units of the pixels hold charge.
US09924102B2

Techniques for managing applications associated with a mobile device are provided. The techniques disclosed herein include techniques for obtaining an image of an object in the view of a camera associated with a mobile device, identifying the object in the image based on attributes of the object extracted from the image, and determining whether one or more applications are associated with the object. If there are one or more applications associated with the real-world object, an application associated with the object can be automatically launched on the mobile device. The association between a real-world object and an application may be identified by a visual indicator, such as an icon, symbol, or other markings on the object that indicates that the object is associated with one or more applications.
US09924093B1

A display device renders a field of view of a panoramic image that is produced from several separate images taken by different cameras. The field of view can be panned across the panoramic image. The separate images each show a portion of a panoramic view and border other images. When rendering a field of view that includes a border between two adjacent images, the images can be merged in a way that substantially eliminates the border and makes the view appear as one continuous image. The merging is performed only as needed, and border regions between images that are not in the rendered field of view are not merged so as to avoid using processing resources unnecessarily.
US09924089B2

In an image capturing apparatus that sequentially photographs a plurality of images by changing a focus position of a lens unit by a predetermined amount, a display area is selected according to a ratio of a vertical line component to a horizontal line component of a main subject for each of the plurality of images photographed by the image capturing apparatus. A display unit displays a plurality of display areas corresponding to the focus detection area selected by the selection unit, by arranging the plurality of display areas side by side.
US09924080B2

The present technology relates to a conversion apparatus, an imaging apparatus, an electronic apparatus, and a conversion method that are capable of reducing the scale of a circuit.The conversion apparatus includes: a comparison unit that compares an input voltage of an input signal and a ramp voltage of a ramp signal that varies with time; and a storage unit that holds a code value when a comparison result from the comparison unit is inverted, the holding of the code value by the storage unit being repeated a plurality of times, to generate a digital signal having a predetermined bit number. The predetermined bit number is divided into high-order bits and low-order bits, the low-order bits are acquired earlier than the high-order bits, and the acquired low-order bits and the high-order bits are combined with each other, to generate the digital signal having the predetermined bit number. The present technology can be applied to a portion of an image sensor, in which AD conversion is performed.
US09924075B2

An image processing apparatus includes a control unit configured to control execution of monochromatic calibration and multi-color calibration, and a registration unit configured to register paper types of paper to be used at time of execution of the monochromatic calibration, a monochromatic target value set for each of the paper types used for the monochromatic calibration, paper types of paper to be used at time of execution of multi-color calibration, and a multi-color target value set for each of the paper types used for the multi-color calibration. The image processing apparatus executes the multi-color calibration, after executing the monochromatic calibration, via the control unit by using paper of a paper type selected from common paper types out of the registered paper types and the monochromatic target value and the multi-color target value set for the selected paper type.
US09924073B2

Described are substituted imidazo[1,2-a]pyrazine compounds, which are coelenterazine analogs, kits comprising the compounds, and methods of using the compounds for the detection of luminescence in luciferase-based assays. Also described are methods for making the compounds, such as a method using aminopyrazine acetophosphonates as synthesis intermediates.
US09924070B2

A correction method for an image forming apparatus including: a light source including light emitting points, a photosensitive member configured to rotate in a first direction, and a deflecting unit configured to deflect light beam emitted from the light source in a second direction orthogonal to the first direction to form scanning lines, the correction method including a correction step of correcting sparseness and denseness of density in the first direction caused by deviation of the scanning lines by moving a predetermined pixel in the first direction in accordance with the deviation, and causing a pixel value of the predetermined pixel to be output in accordance with movement of the predetermined pixel, wherein the correction step corrects the sparseness and denseness of the density based on the deviation of the scanning lines and the pixel value of the pixel, which are adjusted in accordance with an image forming condition.
US09924068B2

Based on the resolution of acquired image data and a target resolution, a first resolution higher than the resolution of the image data and closest to the resolution of the image data is decided out of divisors of the target resolution. The image data is converted into first image data having the first resolution. The first image data is processed using a filter configured to compensate for degradation in quality of an image represented by the image data, which can occur when the image data is processed. The first image data processed using the filter is converted into second image data having the target resolution.
US09924064B2

An information processing apparatus and a method of controlling the same include/use: a storage unit that stores user information; a timer that clocks a time; a storing unit that stores retention period information indicating a retention period of the user information; and a saving unit that saves data of a job input by a user. The user information stored in the storage unit is deleted in accordance with a current date and time obtained from the timer, the retention period information stored in the storing unit, the user information, and a save status of the data in the saving unit.
US09924058B2

An information processing apparatus capable of properly supplying electric power to a power supply destination associated with each function of a USB device. An MFP as the information processing apparatus is capable of operating in a power saving mode. A USB device having both of a Bluetooth communication function and a wireless LAN communication function is connected to the MFP. When an instruction for returning from the power saving mode is received from the USB device, it is determined whether the return instruction is an instruction generated due to the Bluetooth communication function or an instruction generated due to the wireless LAN communication function. Electric power supply destinations to which electric power is to be supplied when the information processing apparatus returns from the power saving mode are decided based on a result of the determination.
US09924055B1

A media tracking sensor (MTS) apparatus for performing a calibration procedure to determine a resolution calibration factor includes: a full sensor array including: a first virtual array, having a first width, for capturing a calibration reference image; and a second virtual array having a third width equal to the first width, for capturing a plurality of images and comparing the captured images with the calibration reference image. The MTS apparatus further includes a print media positioned below the full sensor array; and a host system for moving the print media below the full sensor array. When the first virtual array captures the calibration reference image, motion data of the full sensor array will be set to zero, and when an image captured by the second virtual array matches the calibration reference image, total motion data will be recorded and used to determine the resolution conversion factor.
US09924051B2

A controller in an image forming apparatus, which stores print data generated based on a collection setting received from an external apparatus and performs printing in response to an instruction from a user, acquires information about the collection setting of the print data, uses information about the collection setting and coordinate information contained in each of drawing commands included in the print data to divide the drawing command for each page, and lays out, when an instruction to change the collection setting has been issued to the print data by the user, the divided drawing commands based on the instruction to change the collection setting.
US09924049B2

A pull print system includes a print server and a print apparatus. The print server performs a raster-image processor (RIP) process based on print data received as job data from an external apparatus to generate printing image data as raster image data. The RIP process performed by the data generating unit is same as the RIP process performed by the print apparatus. The print apparatus requests to the print server the job data for the user whose login is accepted. The print server transmits to the print apparatus the printing image data of the job data as raster image data.
US09924044B2

A method including receiving a request for a service or an application from a user device associated with a customer; determining a type of service or a type of application; providing the service or the application; performing real-time tracking of the customer's usage of the service or the application based on the type of service or the type of application; generating one or more recommendations pertaining to the service or the application based on the real-time tracking; and sending the one or more recommendations to the customer via the user device.
US09924023B2

A method and system for using a voicemail system. A command is received, from a first telephone device connected to the voicemail system after a call from a second telephone device was received by the first telephone device. The command is for the voicemail system to pause a process of recording a voicemail message being spoken by a user using the first telephone device. In response to the receiving the command, the voicemail system is directed to pause the process of recording the voicemail message, which results in the process of recording the voicemail message being paused by a pause/resume invocation system that is remote to the voicemail system.
US09924013B2

A method, and associated system, for determining an automatic action to be performed in response to an unsuccessful communication request. A first set of data, obtained from a first electronic communication device, is transmitted by the first electronic communication device to the computing system in response to a determination by the first electronic communication device that a called user of the first electronic communication device is unable or unwilling to accept a communication request from a calling user of a second electronic communication device. The first set of data is associated with the called user, the first electronic communication device, the second electronic communication device, or combinations thereof. A second set of data is obtained from the second electronic communication device and associated with the calling user, the second electronic communication device, or both. The action to be performed is determined based on the first and second sets of data.
US09924012B2

An apparatus for answering a phone call when a recipient of the phone call decides that it is inappropriate to talk, the apparatus including control means for sending a dedicated command, opening a voice conversation with a caller, putting the apparatus in a message mode and so answering the phone call, and typing a text message; a microphone that is muted after sending the dedicated command for the whole period that the apparatus is in the message mode; an earphone device for listening to the caller; a text-to-speech injection apparatus including a text-to-speech translation apparatus and a database of words for synthesizing the text message into a speech message and transmitting the speech message to the caller during the voice conversation; and a voice-message injection module for sending an alert voice message to the caller saying that the recipient is not talking, but is substituted by the text-to-speech injection apparatus.
US09924009B2

An apparatus for controlling answering a call includes a display unit configured to display an incoming call icon when receiving a call signal, the incoming call icon differing from a call answer icon and a call end icon of a normal incoming call screen, a touch screen configured, upon the display unit displaying the incoming call icon, to receive an input of a predetermined operation with respect to the incoming call icon from a user, and a control unit including a call-permission processing unit configured to compare the predetermined operation with a preset call permission operation set in advance with respect to the incoming call icon and to permit answering the call when the predetermined operation matches the preset call permission operation.
US09924003B2

Disclosed are various embodiments of an electronic device including a key module for hermetically sealing an inside of the device. According to one embodiment, a portable device includes: a front cover; a rear cover; and a bezel that surrounds at least a portion of a space formed between the front and rear covers, and includes a first portion and an opening. Disposed within the space is a display including a screen exposed through the front cover; a plate including a support surface with multiple protrusions and an accommodation hole that provides a pathway leading to the opening; a key; and a first member including a via hole through which a portion of the key passes. When the key is inserted into the pathway and moved in a first direction, the inside space of the electronic device is hermetically sealed from the outside.
US09923991B2

Techniques are provided for automatically creating online accounts based on digital images, such as digital images of business cards. In one technique, multiple data items that have been extracted from a digital image of a business card are identified. A particular data item is contact information of a user associated with (or identified by) the business card. A verification code is sent, based on the particular data item, to a computing device of the user. The verification code is received from the computing device of the user. In response to receiving the verification code an account is created for the user and the account is modified to include a least some of the multiple data items.
US09923989B2

The present application describes methods and systems for improving user communication in a network-based communication system. In one or more embodiments, a datacenter provides a unique connection address network device that connects to the datacenter. By providing a unique connection address, the datacenter can provide customized network-level settings on a per network device basis. In addition, the datacenter can also provide customized network identification on a per network device basis.
US09923988B2

Systems and methods are provided for browser-based games. For example, a data-loading request is received for acquiring resource data and user data related to operations of a next phase of a browser-based game; a present networking state is detected; in response to the present networking state corresponding to an online state, first resource data and first user data are requested from the network-side server; the browser-based game is loaded based on at least information associated with the first resource data and the first user data received from the network-side server; and the first resource data and the first user data are stored in a cache.
US09923985B2

A method, computer program product, and/or system for facilitating communication between an origin machine and a target machine are provided. To facilitate communication, a reference to an original object of the origin machine is constructed within a remote object services level. Then reference is passed within the remote object services level from the origin machine to the target machine. The passing of the reference, in turn, causes a creation of a proxy and an invocation of a target method on the target machine.
US09923984B2

Methods, systems, and computer readable media for remote authentication dial in user service (RADIUS) message loop detection and mitigation are disclosed. One method includes receiving, at a RADIUS proxy node, a RADIUS signaling message. The method further includes determining whether the RADIUS signaling message includes an attribute with a host identifier corresponding to the RADIUS proxy node. In response to determining that the RADIUS signaling message includes the attribute that includes the host identifier corresponding to the RADIUS proxy node, performing a RADIUS loop mitigation action for the RADIUS signaling message.
US09923977B2

Disclosed are various embodiments for transferring cookie data between different domains. A first network data request is obtained from a client through a first domain. The first network data request includes a first cookie set by the first domain. Data from the first cookie is received from a client device along with a unique identifier through a first domain. A second network data request, which presents the unique identifier, is received from the client through a second domain. A second cookie is set in the client through the second domain based at least in part on data from the first cookie.
US09923976B2

A control device includes: a memory; and a processor coupled to the memory and configured to: when detecting a new access from a communication device, based on session information including times of past accesses, compute a time period of a difference between a first time at which the new access is detected and a second time of a last access among the past accesses, and when the time period exceeds a given time interval, determine whether a session established with the communication device is valid for the new access in accordance with another time period over which the communication device is in locked state from the second time to the first time, the locked state not accepting an operation by a user.
US09923960B2

Techniques for partition balancing. Organization identifiers (orgIDs) are acquired for one or more organizations within a multi-organization on-demand services environment having multiple nodes, each of which have one or more partitions. A mapping of the orgIDs to the partitions within the multi-organization on-demand services environment is determined. Resource consumption for the organizations is determined. Resource consumption for the partitions based on the resource consumption of the organization and the mapping of the organization to the partitions is determined. A score for the partitions based on the resource consumption is generated. The partitions are redistributed among the nodes based on the partition scores.
US09923949B2

This invention presents Ecosystems addressing limited capabilities for interactive team design, amidst thrust for improved productivity, enhanced creativity and higher quality. The Ecosystem for Team Design and Collaboration presents apparatus for taking snapshots of whiteboards with sketches from planning, design or brainstorming meetings, using image sensor embedded in a mobile client, for offering a vector representation of the content and hence expediting the preparation of ‘presentable entities’ (eliminating the need to redraw). The Ecosystem for Learning and Team Design outlines a flexible design methodology for automatically assessing the quality of design activities relative to a given design process. It is the only learning tool for computer aided design (CAD) capable of assessing all the five design stages. Its assessment engine, the e-design process, is modular and can be integrated into electronic lab notebooks. Its input, the standardized e-design notebooks, are also quite versatile and can accommodate complex 3D CAD files.
US09923948B2

Disclosed is a method of acquiring vehicle contents, the method including receiving contents from a service provision server, acquiring meta information on the received contents, and acquiring vehicle contents displayable on a web browser on the basis of the received contents and the acquired meta information.
US09923944B2

A system for communicating media is disclosed. Such a system may include, for example, a media broken into a plurality of independent segment files that may represent sequential portions of the media. One of the segment files can be encoded to have a format that is different than the encoded format of another one of the segment files. The formats may be chosen to allow outputting of information in the segments at different rates. A list may include network addresses for the segment files, and a content delivery system may be deployed to distribute media content to remotely located requesting devices by sending the segment files in response to requests for the segment files.
US09923925B2

Systems and techniques for sharing security data are described herein. Security rules and/or attack data may be automatically shared, investigated, enabled, and/or used by entities. A security rule may be enabled on different entities comprising different computing systems to combat similar security threats and/or attacks. Security rules and/or attack data may be modified to redact sensitive information and/or configured through access controls for sharing.
US09923919B2

A computer-implemented method for deflecting abnormal computer interactions includes receiving, at a computer server system and from a client computer device that is remote from the computer server system, a request for web content; identifying, by computer analysis of mark-up code content that is responsive to the request, executable code that is separate from, but programmatically related to, the mark-up code content; generating groups of elements in the mark-up code content and the related executable code by determining that the elements within particular groups are programmatically related to each other; modifying elements within particular ones of the groups consistently so as to prevent third-party code written to interoperate with the elements from modifying from interoperating with the modified elements, while maintain an ability of the modified elements within each group to interoperate with each other; and recoding the mark-up code content and the executable code to include the modified elements.
US09923913B2

Malware detection techniques that detect malware by identifying the C&C communication between the malware and the remote host, and distinguish between communication transactions that carry C&C communication and transactions of innocent traffic. The system distinguishes between malware transactions and innocent transactions using malware identification models, which it adapts using machine learning algorithms. However, the number and variety of malicious transactions that can be obtained from the protected network are often too limited for effectively training the machine learning algorithms. Therefore, the system obtains additional malicious transactions from another computer network that is known to be relatively rich in malicious activity. The system is thus able to adapt the malware identification models based on a large number of positive examples—The malicious transactions obtained from both the protected network and the infected network. As a result, the malware identification models are adapted with high speed and accuracy.
US09923907B2

Methods, computing systems and computer program products implement embodiments of the present invention that include associating a token with a computing device, defining preferences for the computing device, and conveying, by the computing device, the token and the preferences to an event processing system. Upon the event processing system, an event message from a computing system via a one-way firewall and matching the computing device preferences to the event message, the event processing system can convey the token and the event message to a push notification system. In some embodiments, upon the push notification service receiving the token and the event message, the mobile device can be identified based on the token, and the event message can be conveyed to the computing device. The event messages may include a severity level, and the preferences may include a severity threshold and a message detail level.
US09923904B1

The disclosure of the present document can be embodied in a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that cause one or more processors to perform various operations, including, receiving, from a first client device associated with a user account of a first user, a request for sharing a document. The document is associated with a credential of the first user, and the credential is associated with the user account of the first user. The operations include transmitting, in response to the request, a code associated with the document, and receiving, from a second client device, a request to access the document. The request to access the document includes the code associated with the document. The operations include determining, based on the request to access the document, that the second client device is authorized to access the document, and communicating, to the second client device, a message including information about the document.
US09923901B2

The technology disclosed preserves the tenant specificity and user specificity of the tenant data by associating user IDs to complementary special IDs referred to as the integration user(s). In particular, it combines the traceability of user actions, the integration of security models and the flexibility of a service ID into one integration user(s).
US09923886B2

In one embodiment a controller comprises logic configured to define, for display on a region of a display device coupled to the controller, a dialog box, lock the dialog box such that input/output operations conducted in the dialog box are visible to the secure controller and are not visible to an untrusted execution complex communicatively coupled to the secure controller, receive one or more authentication credentials based on a user input to the dialog box, and use the one or more authentication credentials to establish a secure communication session with a remote service. Other embodiments may be described.
US09923881B2

In one embodiment, an apparatus comprises a processor to execute instructions and having at least a first logic to execute in a trusted execution environment, a secure storage to store a platform group credential, and a first logical device comprising at least one hardware logic. The platform group credential may be dynamically provisioned into the apparatus and corresponding to an enhanced privacy identifier associated with the apparatus. The first logical device may have a first platform group private key dynamically provisioned into the first logical device and corresponding to an enhanced privacy identifier associated with the first logical device, to bind the first logical device to the apparatus. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
US09923873B2

Techniques to provide syndicated device and application management are disclosed. In various embodiments, a request associated with accessing a third party service is received, for example, at a device management server or other management system. A third party service configuration data is used to configure the managed device to access the third party service directly from the third party service.
US09923857B2

Embodiments of the disclosure relate to processing email having symbolic variables in the address. Aspects include receiving, by an email server, an email comprising an email address for an intended recipient and determining whether the email address includes a symbolic variable. Based on determining that the email address includes the symbolic variable, the symbolic variable from the email address are extracted, an email address for an additional recipient by querying a database based on the symbolic variable is identified, and the email is transmitted to the email address of the intended recipient and the email address of the additional recipient. Based on determining that the email address does not include the symbolic variable, the email is transmitted to the email address of the intended recipient.
US09923854B2

A microblog information publishing method, a server and a storage medium are described, which pertain to the technical field of networks. The method includes: acquiring information to be published of a first user, which includes information contents and an information notification object account; and publishing the information contents through the information notification object account. The server includes an acquiring module and a publishing module. A service for users to publish a message anonymously is provided, namely, the information is published through an anonymous account without displaying the original publisher, so that the privacy of the user is better protected and the microblog service becomes three-dimensional and diversified.
US09923846B2

The present invention relates to a process that enables nearly real-time exchange of instant simultaneous messages between the users of a digital communication network. Instant Simultaneous Messaging enables “real” simultaneous exchange of contents between the users over a subject. This simultaneous exchange ensures that each user can access other users' contents with exactly the same order, e.g. privilege. Therefore, none of the users within a simultaneous conversion can be affected by other users' messages. The purpose of instant simultaneous messaging is to heal herd mentality by enforcing novelty/originality to the contents that are exchanged between the users. Therefore, while users are communicating over a subject simultaneously, a given user can not learn or get affected by other users' opinions before disclosing its own. The present invention provides a method and its apparatus for Instant Simultaneous Messaging between a sending user and a target user over a digital communication network.
US09923842B2

A network node (bridge, switch, router) and method for traffic interconnection in a communication network. The node includes an interconnection network or switch fabric having ingress and egress ports in communication with the input and output ports of the node. The interconnection network also includes an interconnector having a retiming module, a permutation module, and a re-alignment module. Data arriving at the node input ports is provided to the ingress queues of the interconnection network where it is queued, if necessary, and then processed through the interconnector so that it can be provided to an appropriate egress port. Data at the egress ports is then provided to output ports for transmission toward its intended destination.
US09923841B2

Techniques are described for bandwidth sharing. In one embodiment, a computer program product comprising a computer-readable storage medium has program code embodied therewith. The program code is executable by a computing device to provide a first key to a first user, provide a second key to a second user, receive the second key from the first user and, responsive to receiving the second key from the first user, allocate an amount of bandwidth normally allocated to the first user to the second user.
US09923839B2

Resource configuration to exploit elastic network capability is provided by establishing an elastic network bandwidth allocation level to provide for an application for transfer of data between the application and an elastic network, the application hosted at a data center, then dynamically configuring, for the application, elastic network bandwidth allocation from the network service provider in accordance with the established elastic network bandwidth allocation level, and allocating storage resources of the data center for the application and processing resources of the data center for the application, the allocating being based on the established elastic network bandwidth allocation level and providing storage resources and processing resources to operate at a level commensurate with the established elastic network bandwidth allocation level.
US09923835B1

Techniques include quickly establishing a maximum transmission unit (MTU) for a network path, such as a network tunnel. In one example, data representative of the MTU is included in a header of a packet. If the MTU indicated in the packet is larger than a downstream network interface of a network device, the network device updates the data of the header to indicate the MTU of the downstream network interface, and an egress network device sends the packet back to an ingress network device. In another example, network devices fragment packets, if necessary, such that the fragments satisfy the MTU of the downstream network interface. The egress network device then determines the MTU for the path based on a largest received fragment, reassembles the fragments into a single packet, and returns the reassembled packet to the ingress network device. The packets may comprise echo packets of generic routing encapsulation (GRE).
US09923819B2

An information handling system is provided. The information handling system includes a plurality of forwarding processors, the plurality of forwarding processors each including a memory having a forwarding host table and a forwarding route table. The information handling system also includes at least one switching device coupled to the plurality of forwarding processors, the at least one switching device including a memory having a destination module and port table, a switching device host table and a switching device route table, wherein the at least one switching device is configured to perform an extended lookup in at least one of the switching device host table and switching device route table based on values included in a fabric header of information routed to the switching device to determine a destination of the information. A method for extending lookup tables is also provided that adds lookup tables in a switching device.
US09923818B2

The present disclosure is directed towards systems and methods of steering packets received by a multi-core device serving as a tunnel endpoint. A device including a plurality of cores identifies a core corresponding to a request to transmit to a destination via a tunnel. The tunnel is established between the first tunnel endpoint and a second tunnel endpoint. The device identifies, from a port allocation table, a source port based on the identified core, a first IP address of the first tunnel endpoint, a second IP address of the second tunnel endpoint and the destination port to steer a response to the request to the identified core. The device modifies a packet of the request to include in an outer header of the packet of the request, a first tuple identifying the first IP address, the second IP address, the destination port and the identified source port.
US09923815B2

Service aware network devices coordinate function chains of virtual functions. The network devices are aware of which virtual functions exist and how to interconnect them in the most efficient manner and define and process service graphs that can be maintained, monitored and redirected. The network devices themselves implement and manage the service graphs, as opposed to the virtual servers that host the virtual functions.
US09923809B2

A data transmission and reception system may include: a data transmission apparatus configured to generate N Tx signals having discrete levels using N binary data, and output the N Tx signals to N single-ended signal lines, respectively, where N is a natural number equal to or larger than 2; and a data reception apparatus configured to receive the N Tx signals transmitted in parallel through the single-ended signal lines, and restore the N binary data by comparing the received N Tx signals to each other.
US09923807B2

Concepts and technologies disclosed herein are directed to intelligent signaling routing for machine to machine (“M2M”) communications, such as communications for Internet of things (“IoT”) devices. According to one aspect of the concepts and technologies disclosed herein, a mobility management entity (“MME”) can receive an attach request or a tracking area update (“TAU”) from a device to establish a connection to a network. The MME can extract device identification information from the attach request. The device identification information can identify the device as either a UE or IoT device. The MME can determine an appropriate DIAMETER routing agent (“DRA”) of a plurality of DRAs to which to route signaling traffic associated with the device. The plurality of DRAs can include DRA and an IoT application-specific DRA. The MME can route the signaling traffic to the appropriate DRA of the plurality of DRAs.
US09923801B2

Systems and methods relating to communication within a fabric network are presented. The fabric network includes one or more logical networks that enables devices connected to the fabric to communicate with each other using various profiles known to the devices. A device sending a message may follow a general message format to encode the message so that other devices in the fabric may understand the message regardless of which logical networks the devices are connected to. Within the message format, a payload of data may be included for the receiving device to forward, store, or process the message. The format and the contents of the payload may vary according to a header within the payload that indicates a profile and a message type within the profile. Using the profile and message type, the receiving devices may decode the message to process the message.
US09923798B1

Techniques are describe for establishing an overall label switched path (LSP) for dynamic load balancing of network traffic being sent across a network using the a resource reservation protocol such as Resource Reservation Protocol with Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE). The tunnel may be a single RSVP-TE Label Switched Path (LSP) that is configured to automatically and dynamically load balance network traffic across different sub-paths of the RSVP-TE LSP over the network. The ingress device of the overall multi-path LSP can analyze traffic statistics to determine when a network traffic demand differs from a currently reserved bandwidth of the overall multi-path LSP by at least a threshold amount, and can automatically add or remove a sub-path from the overall multi-path LSP to adjust capacity of the overall multi-path LSP to correspond to the currently reserved bandwidth.
US09923794B2

A method, an apparatus, and a system for identifying an abnormal IP data stream, which are used to improve identification accuracy. The method provided by the embodiments of the present invention includes: receiving Y elements sent by a data collection node; mapping the Y elements to N buckets; acquiring a bucket in the N buckets as a target bucket; acquiring r upper traffic limits of a first object in r buckets within the current time interval, the first object is any object mapped to the target bucket; and identifying, according to a preset abnormal object type and the r upper traffic limits within the current time interval, whether the first object is an abnormal object, where the preset abnormal object type is a heavy hitter or a heavy changer.
US09923793B1

Techniques are provided for measuring user-perceived client-side performance of network documents. Client-side performance data associated with a network document can be collected during the loading of the network document by a web browser of a client device, for example, by a browser-executable script. The collected performance data may include latency information respectively associated with a plurality of digital assets configured to be rendered by the network document. A subset of the collected performance data can be selectively provided. The selectively provided performance data may be associated with a subset of the plurality of digital assets that are configured to be rendered within an active portion of the network document. The active portion of the network document may indicate a current area of interest for a user of the client device such as a viewport. The selectively provided performance data may be used to improve user-perceived performance at the client device.
US09923792B2

Disclosed are systems, methods and devices for obtaining round trip time measurements for use in location based services. In particular implementations, a fine timing measurement request message wirelessly transmitted by a first transceiver device to a second transceiver device may permit additional processing features in computing or applying a signal round trip time measurement. Such a signal round trip time measurement may be used in positioning operations.
US09923784B2

Data transfer using flexible dynamic elastic network service provider relationships is provided. A relationship is dynamically established with an elastic network service provider of multiple available elastic network service providers to transfer a portion of the set of data to the target. Peering policies for each of the multiple elastic network service providers are checked, where a respective peering policy for each elastic network service provider includes respective bandwidth pricing information. Based on the bandwidth pricing information for each of the plurality of elastic network service providers, an elastic network service provider and a schedule are selected to use in transferring the portion to the target. The elastic network service provider is used in transferring the portion to the target, which includes dynamically configuring elastic network bandwidth allocation from the elastic network service provider and initiating transfer of the portion to the target according to the selected schedule.
US09923782B1

A computerized virtual entity pathway visualization method and system provide a virtual entity packet pathway display indicating a packet pathway along which a data packet would travel from between virtual entities (e.g., virtual machines) in a computer system. One implementation includes modeling of a computer system having physical and virtual entities, identifying a packet pathway from a source virtual entity in the computer system to a destination virtual entity in the computer system, and rendering on a computer display screen a packet pathway and an arrangement of plural active icons corresponding to physical and virtual entities included in the packet pathway from the source virtual entity to the destination virtual entity.
US09923778B2

A system and method of managing a network that includes assets are described. The method includes modeling the network as a directed graph with each of the assets represented as a node and determining alternative paths to each node from each available corresponding source of the node. The method also includes computing upstream robustness of each node, computing upstream robustness of the network, and computing downstream criticality of each node. Managing the network and each asset of the network is based on the upstream robustness and the downstream criticality of each node.
US09923769B2

Methods and systems for verifying installation of a networked device are disclosed. Short message service (SMS) messages are used to communicate between an in-field device and a central computer system after an installation of a network device. The in-field device request an installation verification process be executed by the central computer system. The central computer system first requests an installation number from the in-field device, and then contacts a gateway networked to the network device to perform an installation verification test. The results of the test are sent to the in-field device via SMS.
US09923766B2

A data center including a data center management controller and a plurality of floor tiles. Each floor tile includes a tile management controller coupled to the data center management controller. The data center management controller aggregates floor tile information from each floor tile and provides floor tile configuration information to each floor tile.
US09923763B2

A method for communicating content files based on destination priority includes processing a content file to determine a plurality of destination sites to which the content file is to be transmitted, assigning priority levels to the plurality of destination sites, allocating a plurality of bandwidth portions on a communication link to the plurality of destination sites, respectively, based on the priority levels assigned to the plurality of destination sites, and transmitting the content file to the plurality of destination sites using the plurality of bandwidth portions allocated to the plurality of destination on the communication link, respectively.
US09923751B2

Methods and apparatuses are provided to modify existing overlay system architectures in a cost effective manner to meet the growing demand for narrowcast services and to position the existing overlay systems for additional future modifications. The implementations of the improved overlay system of this disclosure re-digitize narrowcast analog signals after they have been QAM modulated and upconverted to RF frequencies and replace the analog narrowcast transmitters with digital narrowcast transmitters. In the fiber nodes, the received narrowcast signals are converted back to analog signals and combined with analog broadcast signals for transmission to the service groups.
US09923749B2

A method and wireless communication device for tracking frequencies of transmitted burst signals. The method includes receiving a burst signal, determining a quality of the burst signal and a carrier frequency of the burst signal, demodulating the burst signal based upon the determined carrier frequency, determining a frequency offset of the burst signal based on the determined carrier frequency, and when the quality of the burst signal exceeds a threshold, calculating a drift window based on the determined frequency offset.
US09923741B2

A signal detection method that allows characterization of a modulated signal to be efficiently determined. The method comprises the steps of receiving a data signal, processing the data signal to determine its value squaring the value of the signal; filtering the squared signal value to remove DC content; evaluating the resulting signal to determine if a single sinusoidal value remains; and determining that the presence of a single sinusoidal value as the resulting signal from the squaring and filtering steps indicates that the received data signal is a phase-shift key signal or conversely that the absence of such after a given number of cycle of squaring and filtering indicates a different modulation technique is present in the signal.
US09923734B2

A home base station system and method for managing data caching. The home base station system includes: a plurality of home base stations used to provide wireless communication to at least one mobile terminal, wherein the plurality of home base stations are connected to a wide area network via a local area network, and wherein the plurality of home base stations are interconnected via a local area network; and a server, wherein the server is connected to the plurality of home base stations via the local area network, and wherein the server is used to manage caching of data in a home base station system.
US09923733B2

A network system that comprises a plurality of communication apparatuses, each of the communication apparatuses being capable of performing a VLAN setting by using a VLAN number set for a connection port, that sets a VLAN number for each of the communication apparatuses, and that performs communication among cars of a train, wherein in a case where a specific type of packet that disables a VLAN setting is a packet of a multicast address, when a distribution target apparatus is connected to a communication apparatus that has received the specific type of packet, the communication apparatus transfers the specific type of packet to the distribution target apparatus and, irrespective of a VLAN number set for another communication apparatus, regards a VLAN different from a VLAN of the communication apparatus as a same network and transfers the specific type of packet to the another communication apparatus.
US09923728B2

In one embodiment, a method includes receiving one or more packets of a communication session from one or more interfaces, such that the interface is a subscriber interface or a network interface. The method further includes associating the communication session to an end user with a source Internet Protocol (IP) address of the packet if the packet is received from the subscriber interface or to an end user with a destination IP address of the packet if the packet is received from the network interface.
US09923724B2

The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for installing a profile, and more specifically, to a method for managing mobile communication subscriber information (profile), such as for remotely installing and uninstalling a profile onto a security module (Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC)) that is embedded inside a terminal and that is not attachable or detachable, thereby replacing UICC. Accordingly, the present invention relates to a method for a server installing a profile, wherein the method for the server installing the profile for a terminal having an embedded security module comprises the steps of: receiving from the terminal a profile installation request including an identifier of the terminal embedded security module; receiving an encrypted profile corresponding to the installation request; and transmitting to the terminal the encrypted profile.
US09923723B2

Disclosed below are representative embodiments of methods, apparatus, and systems for monitoring and using data in an electric power grid. For example, one disclosed embodiment comprises a sensor for measuring an electrical characteristic of a power line, electrical generator, or electrical device; a network interface; a processor; and one or more computer-readable storage media storing computer-executable instructions. In this embodiment, the computer-executable instructions include instructions for implementing an authorization and authentication module for validating a software agent received at the network interface; instructions for implementing one or more agent execution environments for executing agent code that is included with the software agent and that causes data from the sensor to be collected; and instructions for implementing an agent packaging and instantiation module for storing the collected data in a data container of the software agent and for transmitting the software agent, along with the stored data, to a next destination.
US09923718B2

In one aspect, a method comprises the steps of deriving a base point on an elliptic curve in a first processing device, generating authentication information in the first processing device utilizing the base point and a private key of the first processing device, and transmitting the authentication information from the first processing device to a second processing device. The base point on the elliptic curve may be derived, for example, by applying a one-way function to a current time value, or by computation based on a message to be signed.
US09923716B2

For personalizing a smart card (SC) coupled with a communication device (CD) of a user being a subscriber of a first telecommunication network (TN1) and wishing to become a subscriber of a second telecommunication network (TN2), a first international identity (IMSI_1) and a first authentication key (AK_1) being stored in the smart card (SC), the smart card receives a message (MesP) from an application server (AS) connected to the first telecommunication network and the second telecommunication network, the message (MesN) comprising a personalization command (ComP) and an admin code (ACas), after that the application server has received a request (Req) of subscription change comprising an identifier (1dMNO2) of the second telecommunication network (TN2) and has established a secured session with a personalization server (PS) of the second telecommunication network (TN2) identified by the identifier (1dMNO2), and interprets the personalization command (ComP) to establish a secure session with the personalization server (PS) via the application server (AS), if the admin code (ACas) is valid. The smart card negotiates with the personalization server to agree on an second authentication key, by exchanging messages containing values derived from random secrets, receives a message (Mes3) containing an second international identity (IMSI_2) from the personalization server (PS), and replaces the first international identity (IMSI_1) and the first authentication key (AK_1) by the second international identity and the second authentication key.
US09923715B2

An embodiment includes receiving, in a first key management device (KMD) of a first autonomous network associated with a first realm, a request for a group key to enable content to be shared between one or more first devices of the first autonomous network and one or more second devices of a second autonomous network associated with a second realm, the second autonomous network having a second KMD; creating the group key and providing the group key to the one or more first devices from the first KMD; establishing a temporal key to be used to establish a secure channel between the first KMD and the second KMD; and delivering the group key to the second KMD from the first KMD via the secure channel, to enable the second KMD to provide the group key to the one or more second devices. Other embodiments are addressed herein.
US09923704B2

Systems and methods for flexible spectrum, or bandwidth, support in a cellular communications network are disclosed. In one embodiment, a base station for a cellular communications network is configured to transmit a non-standardized bandwidth carrier and information that identifies a standardized bandwidth and additional information that, together with the information that identifies the standardized bandwidth, defines a non-standardized bandwidth of the non-standardized bandwidth carrier. In one embodiment, the additional information defines a bandwidth adjustment for the standardized bandwidth that defines the non-standardized bandwidth. In one embodiment, the bandwidth adjustment is a symmetric bandwidth restriction. In another embodiment, the bandwidth adjustment is an asymmetric bandwidth restriction. In yet another embodiment, the bandwidth adjustment is a symmetric bandwidth expansion. In yet another embodiment, the bandwidth adjustment is an asymmetric bandwidth expansion.
US09923703B2

A system and method for reducing interferences in OFDM networks comprising generating (31) a set of pseudo-random coordination patterns {kin; i=0, . . . , N−1; n=0, . . . , M−1}, wherein kin are integers from 0 to M−1, M is the number of calls in a coordination cluster, N is the number of subcarriers, n is a cell identifier within the coordination cluster, and kin≠kim∀n≠m, i=0, . . . , N−1; generating a randomizing pattern common to all cells within the coordination cluster, comprising an invertible transformation in the time domain of the complex symbols for each subcarrier; spreading (32) the complex symbols over M TTIs: b ⁡ [ i , m ] = M ⁢ ∑ m = 0 T - 1 ⁢ ⁢ a ⁡ [ i , n ] ⁢ exp ⁡ [ - j2π ⁡ ( Mn + k i ) · m / ( M · T ) ] . wherein a[i,n] denotes the symbols prior to the spreading (32), b[i,m] denotes the symbols after the spreading (32), 0≤ki≤M−1, i=0, . . . , N−1, m=0, . . . , T·M−1; scrambling (34) the spread symbols b[i,m] to all the cells within the coordination cluster; and mapping (35) the scrambled symbols over all the N subcarriers in the frequency domain and M consecutive TTis in the time domain.
US09923701B2

Various disclosed embodiments include methods and systems for communication in a wireless communication system. A method comprises receiving a signal corresponding to a plurality of modulated signals, each of the plurality of modulated signals corresponding to a unique electronic device. The method comprises filtering the received signal with a plurality of filters, each of which is matched to a corresponding filter in a respective electronic device to obtain a filtered signal for the respective electronic device. The method comprises performing a fast Fourier transform (FFT) operation on the filtered signal to obtain demodulated data corresponding to the respective electronic device.
US09923693B2

A terminal device capable of providing a method for determining PUCCH resources used for notification of response signals indicating error detection results for downlink line data, when ARQ is applied during communications using an uplink unit band and a plurality of downlink unit bands associated to the uplink unit band and when downlink data allocations are instructed using an ePDCCH. In this device, a control unit (208) determines A/N resources on the basis of whether a channel used for transmitting downlink control information (DCI) is a PDCCH or an ePDCCH.
US09923688B2

The present invention enables efficient transmission/reception of a signal including control information between a base station apparatus and a mobile station apparatus. To realize this, there are provided a receiver configured to receive an enhanced physical downlink control channel from the base station apparatus; a setting unit configured to be able to set, using at least a format of downlink control information included in the received enhanced physical downlink control channel, one of a plurality of possible sets of M, M being the number of first elements that constitute the enhanced physical downlink control channel; and a monitoring unit configured to monitor a search region in which the enhanced physical downlink control channel obtained on the basis of the set possible set of M is possibly mapped.
US09923684B2

A method of executing inter-eNB CoMP JT between a CoMP UE and multiple CoMP eNBs is disclosed. A first CoMP eNB constructs a first set of dynamic control information (DCI). The first set of DCI is independently constructed by the first CoMP eNB. The first CoMP eNB transmits the first set of DCI to the CoMP UE. The first set of DCI includes independent DL assignments allowing the first CoMP eNB to perform independent scheduling of a PDSCH associated with the first CoMP eNB. A second CoMP eNB constructs a second set of DCI. The second set of DCI is independently constructed by the second CoMP eNB. Furthermore, the second CoMP eNB transmits the second set of DCI to the CoMP UE. The second set of DCI includes independent DL assignments allowing the second CoMP eNB to perform independent scheduling of a PDSCH associated with the second CoMP eNB.
US09923677B2

Methods and apparatus for multiplexing many client streams over a single connection. A proxy server establishes multiple TCP connections with respective clients that desire to access a web server connected to the proxy server via a multiplexed TCP connection. TCP packets received from the clients via the TCP connections are separated out based on their TCP connections, a packet payload data is extracted and added to client data streams. Data segments comprising sequential runs of bits from the client data streams and embedded in multiplexed (MUX) TCP packets that are sent over the multiplexed TCP connection. Upon receipt, the web server de-encapsulates the data segments and buffers them in queues allocated for each TCP connection in re-assembled client data streams. This enables the packet flows transported over the multiplexed connection for the TCP connections to be individually controlled. The multiplexed TCP connection may also be used for forwarding packet payload data generated at the web server to the clients via the proxy server and the client's TCP connections.
US09923676B2

A method of data transmission includes determining the number of layers, generating mapping symbols by mapping modulation symbols for a first codeword and modulation symbols for a second codeword to each layer, and transmitting the mapping symbols through a plurality of antennas. At least one of the first codeword and the second codeword is mapped to at least 3 layers and the number of layers is larger than 3.
US09923670B2

A method for transmitting data in a multiple-input-multiple-output space-time coded communication using a mapping table mapping a plurality of symbols defining the communication to respective antennae from amongst a plurality of transmission antennae and to at least one other transmission resource. The mapping table may comprise Alamouti-coded primary segments and may also comprise secondary segments, comprising primary segments. The primary segments in the secondary segments may be defined in accordance to an Alamouti based code pattern applied at the segment level to define a segment-level Alamouti based code.
US09923669B2

A computer-based distributed error correction scheme with an efficient decoding algorithm is disclosed. The efficiency of the corresponding decoding algorithm, based on standard single source Reed-Solomon error correcting codes, makes the practical employment of the DECC feasible. Various implementation examples are also provided.
US09923665B2

A method includes receiving, by a first device from a second device, a plurality of encoded messages on a plurality of transmission time intervals (TTIs), where the plurality of encoded messages are forward error correction (FEC) encoded, and where the FEC spans the plurality of encoded messages and decoding the plurality of encoded messages using FEC. The method also includes determining a plurality of decoding status messages in accordance with decoding the plurality of encoded messages and transmitting, by the first device to the second device, the plurality of decoding status messages less often than once every TTI.
US09923663B2

Logic may enable communication between stations in the presence of interference. Logic may communicate with the station in the presence of interference, the interference from a communication between other stations comprising a first network allocation vector (NAV) reminder, by entering a mode in which a Control Physical layer (PHY) modulation and coding scheme (MCS) is enabled and a Single Carrier PHY MCS is disabled. Logic may enable the Single Carrier PHY MCS in response to receipt of a clear-to-send (CTS) or an expiration of a CTS timeout. Logic may determine an active time remainder during a Contention-based access period. Logic may determine a time to access a channel in response to receipt of the Denial to Send and based upon a predefined, maximum inactivity time. Logic may remain beamformed while the apparatus is in the Control PHY mode.
US09923656B2

A system for testing recovered clock quality includes a test device for operating as a timing synchronization protocol master for communicating with a device under test functioning as a timing synchronization protocol slave or a timing synchronization protocol boundary clock to synchronize a clock of the device under test with a clock of the test device. The system further includes a recovered clock quality tester for receiving, from the device under test, a reverse synchronization message including clock information and for using the clock information to quantify a synchronization error between the clock of the device under test and the clock of the test device.
US09923651B2

In one embodiment, a method includes receiving transmission segments from at least one device over a plurality of channels pursuant to a channel-switching schedule, the channel-switching schedule comprising an iteratively-repeated channel sequence. The iteratively-repeated channel sequence comprises a plurality of channels, the channel-switching schedule specifying an assigned transmission duration for each channel. In addition, the method includes, for at least one channel of the plurality of channels, detecting interference during a time segment of the assigned transmission duration, the time segment comprising at least one of a beginning portion and an ending portion of the assigned transmission duration. Further, the method includes responsive to the detected interference, determining to shift, by a specified quantity of time, a future channel switch indicated by the iteratively-repeated channel sequence.
US09923648B1

Systems and methods for testing and distinguishing ADS-B Out function failures from transponder failures are disclosed. The system may include a transponder configured to: detect a test signal on an electronic interface coupled with the transponder; in response to a detection of the test signal, determine whether the transponder is experiencing a transponder failure or an Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) Out function failure; and for a predetermined period of time starting from the detection of the test signal, report a failure signal to only when it is determined that the transponder is experiencing the transponder failure.
US09923644B2

A method for setting up a medical network for carrying out at least one medical function is disclosed. The medical network comprises network nodes and the network nodes are set up for communicating with one another by an initialization step, wherein the network nodes exchange initialization information that includes information characterizing the network nodes and a self-organization step where the network nodes define their role distribution. A work step where the network carries out the medical function and the two network nodes interact in the role of distribution defined in the self-organization step.
US09923636B2

Disclosed embodiments relate to an interconnect structure for coupling at least one electronic unit for outputting and/or receiving electric signals, and at least one optical unit for converting said electric signals into optical signals and/or vice versa, to a further electronic component. The interconnect structure comprises an electrically insulating substrate and a plurality of signal lead pairs to be coupled between said electronic unit and a front end contact region for electrically contacting said interconnect structure by said further electronic component. A ground plane layer is electrically insulated from said pairs of signal leads, wherein each pair of signal leads has a circuit connecting region for electrically contacting respective terminals of said at least one electronic unit, and wherein in a region adjacent to said terminals of said at least one electronic unit said ground plane layer has a plurality of clearances that are each allocated to one pair of signal leads and separated from a respective neighboring clearance.
US09923631B1

The invention introduces a new RF test and measurement methodology based on optical signal processing that has the capability to measure all of the RF parameters (both amplitude and phase) of an electronic component or system including transmission (S21) and reflection (S11). It can also be applied to measuring the electro-optic properties of electro-optic modulators, both phase modulators and intensity modulators. The basis of the invention is to use the RF information encoded in the optical sidebands generated by an electro-optic modulator to determine all of the relevant parameters of an electronic or electro-optic device. Optical carrier suppression techniques are used to isolate the information carrying optical sidebands from the dominant optical carrier.
US09923630B2

In one embodiment, a system for analyzing optical networks includes a network analyzer optically coupled to a fiber optic network. The network analyzer may transmit a test signal to the fiber optic network, receive a reflected signal in response to transmitting the test signal, wherein the reflected signal is generated in response to the test signal interacting with a defect of the fiber optic network. The analyzer may then analyze a power of the reflected signal, wherein the power of the reflected signal corresponds to the defect in the fiber optic network, calculate a transmit time of the reflected signal, wherein the transmit time corresponds a location of the defect in the fiber optic network, identify a component of the fiber optic network corresponding to the defect and the location of the defect in the fiber optic network, and generate a maintenance report based on the analyzed reflected signal.
US09923627B2

A semiconductor device may include: a conversion value generator suitable for detecting first and second transition factors that are independent of each other, and generating first and second conversion values corresponding to the first and second transition factors, respectively; and a signal converter suitable for generating an output signal by reflecting the first and second conversion values into an input signal.
US09923626B2

A method for capturing ionospheric data is disclosed. In accordance with one embodiment, a plurality of phase-coherent signals transmitted by at least one Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) satellite is received via a mobile multi-frequency GNSS receiver. Respective code phase data and carrier phase data for each of said plurality of phase-coherent signals are derived using a software defined GNSS receiver operating on a processor of a first communication device of the multi-frequency GNSS receiver. Respective code phase data and carrier phase data for each of the plurality of phase-coherent signals is stored in a data storage device. The respective code phase data and carrier phase data is appended with a respective time-stamp and position fix. An ionospheric sample based upon respective code phase data and carrier phase data of said plurality of phase-coherent signals is wirelessly transmitted to a second location.
US09923624B2

A communication system is disclosed. In an embodiment, the communication system includes a user node for receiving data from a remote application program, the data including message data for communication to a central application program operatively associated with the remote application program; plurality of geographically distributed gateway nodes; one or more access nodes for receiving the message data from the user node via a first communications interface, and communicating the message data via a second communications interface to one or more of the plurality of geographically distributed gateway nodes; and a hub for communicating with the one or more of the plurality of geographically distributed gateway nodes to receive the message data for communication to the central application.
US09923617B2

Systems and methods of optimizing communication channels in multi-user communication systems are provided. Coding weights are determined based on communication channel state information for communication channels between a transmitter and multiple receivers. The coding weights are applied to communication signals to be transmitted from the transmitter to the receivers. Each receiver decodes received signals using inverses of the coding weights. Embodiments of the invention support multi-user MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) where each receiver has fewer antennas than the transmitter, and enhance system performance if the total number of antennas at all of the receivers exceeds the number of antennas at the transmitter.
US09923614B2

Embodiments of the present invention disclose a base station, including: a first channel state information acquiring module, configured to acquire channel state information of dimension-reduced channel subspace by means of level-one channel state information measurement; a set determining module, configured to: schedule the user equipment, and determine a set of user equipment involved in multiple-input multiple-output; a second channel state information acquiring module, configured to: perform level-two channel state information measurement on user equipment in the set of user equipment to acquire state information of a dimension-reduced real-time channel; and a data sending module, configured to: process downlink data and a user-specific demodulation reference signal by means of two-level precoding, and send processed downlink data and a processed user-specific demodulation reference signal to the user equipment in the set of user equipment.
US09923605B2

An electronic apparatus includes an antenna that wirelessly receives power; a power circuit that inputs power received by the antenna; a communication circuit that performs communication using the antenna; switches; and a resonant element that resonates with the antenna, wherein the resonant element is arranged between the antenna and one of the power circuit and the communication circuit, and wherein at least one of the switches is arranged between the resonant element and the one circuit, and at least one switch different from the switch is arranged between the other circuit and the antenna.
US09923600B2

The present disclosure relates to wireline communication systems, and in particular to aspects of a method and a line estimation device for estimating a characteristic impedance of a section of a transmission medium. The method comprises determining, by a test equipment having a test port with known impedance Zref, an S11 scattering parameter vector S11ref[f] of the transmission medium, indexed by frequency f. The method also comprises generating, based on Zref and S11ref[f], a model of reflection in the transmission medium corresponding to an observation of the transmission medium via a test port having a test impedance ZT, and also estimating the characteristic impedance of the section as a value of ZT which minimizes a difference between a reflection value of the model of reflection and a respective target reflection value of the section.
US09923592B2

Described herein are technologies related to an implementation of a system to measure and compensate non-linearity (e.g., echo cancellation) in a transceiver circuitry of a device. Particularly, the echo cancellation utilizes reduced number of components for power savings, and further increases efficiency of signal or data packet transmissions in the device. An echo signal is determined by sampling a power amplifier output signal. The output signal is split into signals with different delays. Down conversion and digital interpolation of the signal with the shortest delay is performed. An echo cancellation signal is calculated based on the output signal as received as an input signal to a receive chain. The calculated signal is subtracted from a received echo signal to generate an echo free signal.
US09923588B2

An apparatus includes a piezoelectric sensor, a charge manager, a processor, and a transceiver. The piezoelectric sensor is configured to generate a first electrical signal upon detection of a vibration from a detector. The charge manager is configured to receive the first electrical signal and to generate a second electrical signal if it is determined that the first electrical signal is above a threshold. The processor is configured to receive the second electrical signal and to provide an instruction to transmit an alarm signal based at least in part on receipt of the second electrical signal. The transceiver is configured to receive the instruction and to transmit the alarm signal.
US09923579B2

Aspects include techniques for implementing a clock path technique for using on-chip circuitry to generate a correct encode pattern to test the on-chip circuitry for encoding and correction of a chip. A computer-implemented method may include initializing a scan of the chip including data and a set of check bits protecting the data; applying a global control bit to a latch on the chip; and applying an additional clock to the latch so the check bits are updated using the on-chip circuitry.
US09923568B2

An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that uses voltage-based signal processing and time-based signal processing to convert an analog input signal to a digital output signal is disclosed. In some embodiments, the ADC has a voltage-based signal processing element configured to receive an input signal and to generate a first digital signal having a plurality of most significant bits and a residue voltage. A residue offset circuit is configured to provide a residue offset voltage to the residue voltage. A voltage-to-time conversion element is configured to convert a sum of the residue voltage and the residue offset voltage to a time domain representation, and a time-based signal processing element is configured to convert the time domain representation to a second digital signal having a plurality of least significant bits.
US09923565B2

A phase-frequency detector (PFD) is electrically coupled to a charge pump of a phase-locked-loop (PLL). The PFD includes a first differential latch electrically coupled to the charge pump. The first differential latch drives a differential pair of increment signals to the charge pump in response to differential pairs of both reference clock signals and reset signals. The PFD also includes a second differential latch electrically coupled to the charge pump. The second differential latch drives a differential pair of decrement signals to the charge pump in response to differential pairs of both feedback clock signals and reset signals. The PFD also includes a differential AND gate electrically coupled to both the first differential latch and the second differential latch. The differential AND gate drives the differential pair of reset signals to both of the differential latches in response to the differential pairs of both increment signals and decrement signals.
US09923561B2

Main memory access from a CPU is reduced, and thus an increase in speed of data processing is achieved. Provided is a reconfigurable device (20) connected to a main memory (600). The reconfigurable device (20) includes a plurality of logic sections connected to each other by an address line or a data line. Each of the logic sections includes a plurality of address lines, a plurality of data lines, an address decoder that decodes addresses input from part of the plurality of address lines, and a memory cell array unit that includes a plurality of memory cells specified by decode lines of the address decoder, and outputs data read from the specified memory cells to the data lines. An address line of the memory cell array unit is connected to a data output line (RD1) of the main memory.
US09923557B2

A first switching element and a gate of a voltage-driven switching element are connected by a gate turn-on wiring through a first resistor. The gate of the voltage-driven switching element and a second switching element are connected by a gate turn-off wiring through a second resistor. A charge pump unit has a first capacitor, and a second capacitor configured to output a negative voltage. A resistor unit is arranged in at least one of a first wiring configured to connect the gate turn-on wiring and the first capacitor and a second wiring configured to connect the gate turn-off wiring and the first capacitor, and is configured to charge the first capacitor through the first wiring when the first switching element is turned on and to discharge the first capacitor through the second wiring when the second switching element is turned on.
US09923554B2

A wireless power transmitter includes an amplifier configured to amplify a power; a transmitter configured to resonate the power amplified by the amplifier; and a reference signal provider configured to provide a reference signal to the amplifier and change a frequency of the reference signal.
US09923553B2

A non-volatile flip flop integrated circuit includes a master latch circuit, a slave latch circuit coupled to the master latch circuit, and a non-volatile memory array coupled to the slave latch circuit. The non-volatile memory array includes a first pair of memory cells coupled to the slave latch circuit, and a second pair of memory cells coupled to the slave latch circuit in parallel with the first pair of memory cells. The first and second pair of memory cells are configured to store data from the slave latch circuit, and to restore data to the slave latch circuit.
US09923551B2

The invention is a method that combines the following components: a high pass filter designed to have sufficiently small phase delay and roll-off value in transition band as well as sufficiently good attenuation; a distortion detection and reconstruction introduced by the application of the high pass filter by extraction the significant frequency components in relevant frequency band; a signal compensation that reshapes the output of the high pass filter by matching the filter's phase delay and attenuation characteristics so as to approximate low frequency component extraction that would be produced by an ideal filter (very sharp frequency transition and no delay); a time-domain detection and correction method that addresses special circumstances under which the compensation would be inaccurate to achieve real-time estimate in normal circumstances, and a time-domain correction method during and immediately after sudden changes in composite signal (spike) is detected.
US09923542B2

A radio-frequency module component includes a splitter/combiner and a shield case. The splitter/combiner includes a multilayer body, a common input/output electrode, a low-band input/output electrode, a high-band input/output electrode, and outer ground electrodes. The multilayer body includes insulating layers and electrode patterns stacked on each other, and side surfaces opposed to each other. The common input/output electrode is disposed on one of the side surfaces and a bottom surface of the multilayer body. The low-band input/output electrode and the high-band input/output electrode are disposed on another of the side surfaces and the bottom surface of the multilayer body. An additional side surface of the multilayer body opposes a side surface of the shield case in the closest proximity to each other.
US09923536B2

Volume leveler controller and controlling method are disclosed. In one embodiment, A volume leveler controller includes an audio content classifier for identifying the content type of an audio signal in real time; and an adjusting unit for adjusting a volume leveler in a continuous manner based on the content type as identified. The adjusting unit may configured to positively correlate the dynamic gain of the volume leveler with informative content types of the audio signal, and negatively correlate the dynamic gain of the volume leveler with interfering content types of the audio signal.
US09923524B2

Certain aspects of the present disclosure relate to methods and apparatus for power amplifier control. A power amplifier network includes a first path comprising a first power amplifier. The power amplifier network further includes a second path comprising a second power amplifier. The power amplifier network further includes a common input path to both the first path and the second path. The power amplifier network further includes a first power control network for controlling a first signal applied to the first power amplifier. The power amplifier network further includes a second power control network for controlling a second signal applied to the second power amplifier, wherein the first power control network is different from the second power control network.
US09923513B2

A cleaning mechanism having a water spray function adapted for cleaning photovoltaic panel is provided, which includes a cleaning rack, a cleaning member and a sweeping member. Cleaning rack includes several connecting rods detachably connected; Cleaning member is detachably mounted between the connecting rods and used for stripping off adhesive materials on photovoltaic panel; the sweeping member being detachably mounted on connecting rods and used for sweeping the adhesive materials away from the photovoltaic panel. A water spray device is detachably mounted on the cleaning rack used for wetting adhesive materials. The water spray device includes a water spray pipe and a water storage tank, and a spray nozzle atomizing water. A cleaning member power unit is detachably connected with the cleaning member and is used for driving the cleaning member to rotate; and the cleaning member power unit comprises a self-locking device used for preventing cleaning member from idling.
US09923512B2

The present disclosure provides clamps used to assemble photovoltaic (PV) arrays with frameless PV modules. The clamp includes a clamp cover configured to fit within a clamp grip such that when the clamp cover is fitted to the clamp grip pockets are formed to receive portions of PV modules. A base of the clamp cover may include one or more legs that act as a stop to prevent over tightening the clamp.
US09923503B2

A closed-loop system may include a plant (an elctric machine requiring control) and a fractional-order proportional-resonant controller. The fractional-order proportional-resonant controller may have an order greater than zero and less than or equal to one. The order for the fractional-order proportional-resonant controller may be selected to yield a target amplitude and target slope for frequency response. The frequency response may be such that a steady-state error associated with a speed of the electric machine is inversely proportional to the target amplitude and less than a predetermined threshold. The order of the controller may be 0.9.
US09923495B2

A motor control device to control rotation of an electric motor configured to conduct opening/closing of an opening/closing body provided in a vehicle includes a control unit configured to generate a regenerating brake force to the electric motor until a predetermined time passes, in a case where it is determined that the opening/closing body reaches a full open position.
US09923493B2

A drive circuit for a synchronous motor including a rotor having ten magnetic poles formed by a permanent magnet, and a stator in which a winding is wound in a concentrated manner around nine teeth facing the rotor, the drive circuit including: an inverter including a plurality of switching elements in bridge connection; and a control unit that controls the inverter in such a manner that a square-wave-shaped current flows to the winding, wherein the control unit operates in such a manner that an energization phase at which to pass the square-wave-shaped current falls within a range of electric angles of −10° to +5° from an energization phase at which the current is minimum when a target torque of the synchronous motor is generated.
US09923490B2

An electric motor gives regenerative braking force to a hybrid vehicle by regenerative control. A regeneration level selector selects regenerative braking force of the electric motor by a driver's operation. When an ECO mode is applied, an ECU increases the regenerative braking force selected by the regeneration level selector as compared with the time when the ECO mode is not applied.
US09923488B2

A method, system, and computer-readable medium facilitate a soft switching technique for operating an inverter. In a full bridge inverter, a one of first set of transistors in the inverter may be rapidly activated and deactivated in pulses while one of a second set of transistor may be activated during a switching time period where the inverter matches the voltage and frequency of an AC grid. During a blanking time period between switching time periods, one of the second set of transistors may be primed before the other is activated during the next switching time period to prevent generating noise in the AC output of the inverter due to a hard switch.
US09923486B2

An electric power conversion circuit includes: first through fourth port terminals; first through fourth switches that are connected with each other in a bridge configuration; fifth through eighth switches that are respectively connected in parallel with the first through fourth switches; first through eighth diodes that are respectively connected in series with the first through eighth switches; a first bootstrap circuit that is connected to control terminals of the first, second, fourth, and sixth switches; and a second bootstrap circuit that is connected to control terminals of the third, fifth, seventh, and eighth switches.
US09923485B2

A system comprises a first T-type inverter connected to a dc power source, a second T-type inverter connected to the dc power source, wherein the second T-type inverter is configured to operate with a first phase shift from the first T-type inverter, a third T-type inverter connected to the dc power source, wherein the third T-type inverter is configured to operate with a second phase shift from the second T-type inverter, a coupled inductor having a first input, a second input and a third input connected to the first T-type inverter, the second T-type inverter and the third T-type inverter respectively and an output filter coupled to the output of the coupled inductor.
US09923484B2

A controller for operating a multilevel electric power inverter circuit. The controller is configured to generate and apply to the plurality of switching elements switch signal waveforms, the switch signal waveforms comprising a first control signal for causing an energy storage device to be series connected with a direct current source and a load or an alternating current source and charged to a predetermined value proportional to a voltage of the direct current source, and a second control signal for causing the energy storage device to be disconnected from the direct current source and series connected with the load or the alternating current source, thereby causing the energy storage device to be discharged.
US09923479B2

A power supply includes a boost converter, a capacitor, a step-down converter and a control unit. The boost converter, when activated, converts an input voltage into a boost voltage. The capacitor has a bulk voltage which is equal to the boost voltage when the boost converter is activated. The step-down converter converts the boost voltage into a step-down voltage for output. While the boost converter is deactivated, the control unit samples the input voltage and the bulk voltage, calculates an estimated value, and determines a calibration parameter. While the boost converter is activated, the control unit calculates a calibration value for enabling the boost converter to convert the input voltage with reference to the calibration value.
US09923477B2

A PWM rectifier includes a main circuit unit carrying out AC-DC power conversion by PWM-control, a PWM control unit PWM-controlling the main circuit unit, a DC voltage detection unit detecting a DC voltage across a smoothing capacitor connected to the DC-side of the main circuit unit, a DC voltage storage unit storing respective DC voltages at the start and end times of an initial boost period during which the smoothing capacitor having been charged to an AC voltage peak value is further charged to a higher voltage, an input power calculation unit calculating input power flowing in from the AC-side based on an AC voltage and current, an integral power calculation unit calculating integral power from the input power over the initial boost period, and a capacitance calculation unit calculating the capacitance of the smoothing capacitor based on the respective DC voltages and the integral power.
US09923473B2

In a power supply apparatus, one of a transformer and a first semiconductor device is stacked on the other thereof to constitute a stack assembly. The stack assembly, a second semiconductor device, and a choke coil are located on the major surface. A primary direct-current wire, which connects the first semiconductor device to a direct-current power source, is drawn out from a first predetermined portion of the stack assembly. A primary alternating-current wire, which connects the first semiconductor device and the transformer, is drawn out from a second predetermined portion of the stack assembly. The primary direct-current wire and the primary alternating-current wire are located to be separated from each other via at least a part of the stack assembly.
US09923470B2

The present disclosure includes a high voltage electrical system that may include a power source, a power source control module that may be electrically connected to the power source, and a controller. The power source control module may include a switch and a converter. The converter may be disposed electrically in parallel with the switch. The controller may be configured to control operation of the switch and the converter. The controller may be configured to selectively electrically connect the power source with an electrical load via the switch and the converter.
US09923468B2

A power conversion circuit has multiple phases wherein each of the phases has an inductor coupled to a power switch circuit and is coupled to an output node. A power conversion controller controls the switching of one or more of the phases to yield a regulated voltage on the output node. The controller uses a variable inductor current limit for one or more designated phases, and temporarily increases the variable inductor current limit during a transient condition. Other embodiments are also described and claimed.
US09923464B1

A switching device includes first and switching elements connected in series, a capacitor connected to a gate of the first switching element, a diode having an anode connected between the capacitor and the gate of the first switching element and a cathode connected to a source of the first switching element. A capacitance of the capacitor is equal to or greater than a value calculated by a predetermined expression.
US09923462B2

A DC-DC converter includes: a switching circuit to change a voltage value of an input voltage, and to generate an output voltage; a feedback circuit connected between an output terminal to which the output voltage is supplied and a source of a first power, and to generate a feedback voltage corresponding to the output voltage; a gate pulse generator to generate a gate pulse to be supplied to the switching circuit by utilizing the feedback voltage; a current protector to control the switching circuit by utilizing the feedback voltage and the gate pulse; and a voltage protector to control the switching circuit by utilizing the feedback voltage.
US09923460B2

Circuits, devices and methods for achieving small duty cycles in switching regulators. In some embodiments, a method for generating a low duty cycle output voltage can include setting a ramp signal to a first level substantially with a first edge of a clock signal, and ramping the ramp signal from the first level towards a second level such that voltage level of the ramp signal crosses a compensation level, with the ramping beginning at a time before a second edge of the clock signal. The method can further include starting an output pulse substantially with the second edge of the clock signal, and ending the output pulse substantially with an edge of a pulse-width modulation (PWM) signal that results from the ramp signal crossing the compensation level during the ramping.
US09923446B2

A method of controlling a multilevel converter, a computer program and a controller for a converter is provided. The method includes determining a transition voltage from a control period to a following control period, analyzing the switching cells of each phase leg, selecting capacitors to provide the transition voltage and synthesize the output voltage for the following control period, and connecting the selected capacitors during the following control period. The analyzing of each switching cell includes analyzing a first switching leg and a second switching leg of the switching cell. The method includes determining whether a change of state of the first switching leg would contribute to the direction of the transition voltage, and determining whether a change of state of the second switching leg would contribute to the direction of the transition voltage, and determining the internal conditions of each of the first and the second switching leg that are determined as contributing to the transition. Thus, the two legs of the H-bridge are analyzed separately. The selecting of capacitors is performed by selecting the capacitors of the switching legs of the phase leg for the transition voltage on the basis of the determined internal conditions of the switching legs, including comparing the internal conditions of all the switching legs of the phase leg. A controller is configured to control the multilevel converter by performing the method.
US09923439B2

A hybrid induction motor includes a fixed stator, an independently rotating Hybrid Permanent Magnet/squirrel Cage (HPMSC) outer rotor, and a Squirrel Cage (SC) inner rotor fixed to a motor shaft. The HPMSC rotor has spaced part permanent magnets and sets of first bars between consecutive permanent magnets. The SC rotor has groups of second bars, and slots in an outer surface between consecutive groups of the second bars. The HPMSC rotor is initially accelerated by cooperation of the stator with the first bars. The permanent magnets create a rotating magnetic field cooperating with the second bars to accelerate the SC rotor. As the HPMSC rotor accelerates towards synchronous RPM, the stator field reaches into the HPMSC rotor and cooperates with the permanent magnets to transition to synchronous operation. Salient poles created by cooperation of the permanent magnets with the slots lock the two rotors at synchronous RPM.
US09923429B2

An electric motor includes a stator, a shaft rotatable with respect to the stator, and a lamination stack mounted on the shaft and having radially extending teeth forming slots therebetween. An end insulator is provided at an end of the lamination stack having forming slots therebetween. Motor coils are wound in the lamination stack slots and the end insulator slots. A fan having blades attached to a fan ring and mounted to an end of the lamination stack. The fan ring includes longitudinally-extending tongues arranged to be mounted at the end of the lamination stack and the end insulator includes longitudinally-extending notches corresponding to the tongues of the fan ring to allow the tongues to be in direct contact with the end of the lamination stack.
US09923425B2

A preformed coil (20) to produce a self-supporting air-gap skewed winding of a small electric motor consisting of at least two preformed coils (20) positioned overlapping on a circumference of a winding (6) and a method and device for producing the coil. Two preformed coil sides (24a, 24b) lying in different radial planes are formed which are connected on their front ends (26a, 26b) by front connections. The front connections feature the radial plane offset from the winding offset sections (28) bridging the preformed coil sides (24a, 24b). The preformed coil sides (24a, 24b) are formed curved with a circular shape around a longitudinal axis (16), and the radius of curvature of the one radial outer preformed coil side (24a) is greater than the radius of curvature of the radial inner preformed coil side (24b).
US09923420B2

A motor includes a stator and a rotor. The stator includes an inner circumference stator section and an outer circumference stator section. The inner circumference stator section and the outer circumference stator section each include two stator cores and a coil. The two stator cores each include claw poles and are coupled to each other. The coil is arranged between the two stator cores. The rotor includes an inner circumference magnet and an outer circumference magnet. The inner circumference magnet, which is arranged at an inner circumferential side of the inner circumference stator section, opposes the claw poles in the radial direction. The outer circumference magnet, which is arranged at an outer circumferential side of the outer circumference stator section, opposes the claw poles in the radial direction. The inner circumference stator section and the inner circumference magnet form an inner circumference motor unit. The outer circumference stator section and the outer circumference magnet form an outer circumference motor unit.
US09923413B2

A method for controlling an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) having a polyphase power input and an input power circuit coupled to the polyphase power input includes determining to reduce a load on a first phase of the polyphase power input, and in response thereto, controlling the input power circuit to reduce a first input current drawn from the first phase by a first amount and increase a second input current drawn from a second phase of the polyphase power input by a second amount. The UPS may determine to reduce the load on the first phase in response to a request from a smart grid to reduce the load on the first phase or in response to a local determination to reduce the load on the first phase.
US09923410B2

A pre-charging circuit for charging an intermediate circuit capacitor is provided having a first electronic component, a second electronic component and a diagnostic circuit. The diagnostic circuit is designed for functional testing of the first electronic component and/or of the second electronic component and comprises an energy source with a terminal voltage. A voltage drop can be induced on the first electronic component by the energy source, as a result of which the functional performance of the first electronic component and/or of the second electronic component can be tested. The diagnostic circuit has a diagnosis switch via which the energy source can be connected to the first electronic component in such a manner that the dropping voltage on the first electronic component corresponds to the terminal voltage.
US09923409B2

A rectification and regulation circuit for a wireless power receiver includes a coil for magnetically coupling to a primary coil of a power transmitter, a full-wave rectifier circuit separate from the power transmitter and a control unit separate from the power transmitter. The full-wave rectifier has a first pair of controllable rectifiers including a first transistor connected to a first terminal of the coil and a second transistor connected to a second terminal of the coil. The control unit is operable to control switching of the transistors of the full-wave rectifier so that the full-wave rectifier (a) generates a rectified output for charging a battery of the wireless power receiver by rectifying current through the coil or voltage across the coil, and (b) regulates the rectified output.
US09923407B2

Various embodiments of the present disclosure relate to an apparatus and method for controlling a differential signal of a wireless power transmitter. For example, an apparatus for controlling a differential signal of a wireless power transmitter may include a converter configured to convert a single signal into differential signals; an amplifier operably coupled to the converter and configured amplify power of the differential signals, thereby providing amplified differential signals; a gauge operably coupled to the amplifier and configured to measure a phase difference and amplitude between the amplified differential signals; and a controller for converting a pulse width of the differential signals by controlling the converter according to measurements by the gauge. Further, various embodiments of the present disclosure also include other embodiments other than the aforementioned embodiments.
US09923405B2

Exemplary implementations are directed to wireless power in-band signaling by load generation. An apparatus for communicating with a wireless power transmitter is provided. The apparatus comprises a receiver configured to generate a voltage based on wirelessly received charging power from the transmitter. The apparatus comprises a load configurable to be coupled to and decoupled from the receiver. The apparatus comprises a switching circuit configured to encode a communication to the transmitter by adjusting an average power dissipated by the load detectable by the transmitter. The average power is based on a duty cycle with which the switching circuit couples and decouples the load from the receiver under control of a control signal.
US09923403B2

The present invention relates to low-heat wireless power receiving device and method for charging a battery with low heat by receiving a wireless power signal from a wireless power transmitting device. When a power receiving coil receives a wireless power signal, a control unit matches impedance by controlling an impedance matching/controlling unit, determines a charging load state of a power receiving unit in accordance with a time-lapse of charging the power receiving unit and a current level detected by a current detecting unit, and selectively turns on a low-heat transforming unit and a high-heat transforming unit in accordance with the selected charging load state, thereby charging the power receiving unit with minimum heat generation.
US09923401B2

Provided is an electronic device including a battery and a processor configured to charge the battery at a second charging rate that is lower than a first charging rate set for the battery according to a battery charging condition. Various embodiments of the present disclosure may also include other embodiments.
US09923389B2

A robot cleaner including a driving unit configured to move the robot cleaner; a charging unit disposed on an upper surface of the robot cleaner, and configured to wirelessly charge a mobile terminal; and a control unit configured to control the driving unit to move the robot cleaner to a position of the mobile terminal corresponding to a sensed preset signal, control the robot cleaner to execute a wireless charging of the mobile terminal placed on the charging unit according to a charging command, and output a feedback signal when the wireless charging of the mobile terminal is completed.
US09923388B2

A wireless power transmitter according to an embodiment includes a coil and a capacitor which resonate with a wireless power receiver. The coil includes a plurality of cell groups and a core which connects the cell groups with each other. Each of the cell groups includes a plurality of cells. Each of the cells is configured such that magnetic field generated by currents flowing through the cells are formed in a same direction. Each of the cell groups is adjacent to at least one cell group. Each of the cell groups and the core are configured as one conductive wire.
US09923382B2

Methods, devices, and integrated circuits are disclosed for efficiently receiving a wireless power transfer. In one example, a device configured for receiving a wireless power transfer includes an active rectifier, rectifier input nodes, and a controller. The controller is operatively coupled to the active rectifier and configured to control the active rectifier to modify the impedance at the rectifier input nodes.
US09923379B2

A string inverter for use with a photovoltaic array includes at least one string-level DC input channel for receiving DC power from the photovoltaic array, and at least one input-output channel for connecting the string inverter to a battery pack. The string inverter also includes a DC to AC inverter having an AC output, and a switch configured to control a flow of power through the string inverter. When the switch is in a first state, AC power can flow from the string inverter to a load side of a customer utility meter and one or more back-up loads, in a second state, power can flow from the load side of a customer utility meter to the one or more back-up loads bypassing the string inverter, and in a third state, all circuits coupled to the output of the string inverter are electrically disconnected from the string inverter.
US09923378B2

Technologies effective to control a distribution of energy from an energy source to a first device and to a second device are generally described. In some examples, a controller may receive first device data and second device data, from the first device and the second device, respectively. The first device data may indicate first energy consumption by the first device and a first current energy quantity of the first device. The second device data may indicate second energy consumption by the second device and a second current energy quantity of the second device. The controller may control a first switch and a second switch, based on the first and second device data, to allow a first transmission of first energy from the energy source to the first device, and to interrupt a second transmission of second energy from the energy source to the second device.
US09923371B1

A ring bus Shared Resource electrical System (SRS) has at least an essential electrical power ring bus and a critical electrical power ring bus as well as multiple SRS electrical power distribution platforms. Each SRS distribution platform includes one or more interconnected essential switchboards and two or more interconnected critical switchboards. Each essential switchboard is coupled through the essential electrical power ring bus to essential switchboards of two other SRS distribution platforms, and each critical switchboard is coupled through the critical electrical power ring bus to critical switchboards of two other SRS distribution platforms. Each SRS distribution platform directs power to one nominal load group and as well is configured to distribute power to a load group nominally supplied by another SRS distribution platform. One or more controller in each SRS distribution platform synchronizes the output voltage of SRS distribution platforms.
US09923370B2

A computer program product and system are disclosed including but not limited to supplying a voltage waveform from a higher power electrical bus to a lower power electrical bus; sensing on the lower power electrical bus, a deviation from a sinusoidal voltage waveform in the voltage waveform supplied from the higher power electrical bus; generating a correction current to adjust the deviation in the voltage on the lower power bus to a substantially sinusoidal voltage waveform; and filtering the correction current to substantially attenuate the correction current from propagating through the filter from the lower power electrical bus to the higher power electrical bus.
US09923367B2

Provided are an anti-islanding method for a distributed generator in a direct current distribution grid and an anti-islanding device therefor. The method includes: feeding an alternating voltage component into an output end of the AC/DC interface transverter, a frequency of the alternating voltage component being less than the power frequency; sampling a first voltage signal of an output end of the DC/DC transverter; extracting a first effective value of an alternating signal included in the first voltage signal; comparing the first effective value with a first preset voltage; and controlling the distributed generator to stop operation, in a case that it is determined that the first effective value is less than the first preset voltage, which indicates that islanding occurs for the distributed generator.
US09923363B2

An audio signal that is output from a sound source circuit (14) is caused to flow through a coil (16) in a transducer for vibrating a soundboard, and the vibration of the soundboard generates an acoustic signal. A microcomputer (30) calculates a temperature of the coil (16) with high accuracy by inputting an ambient temperature (Ta) detected by an ambient temperature sensor (21) and a voltage (V) applied to the coil (16) and executing computation based on a thermal equivalent circuit of an acoustic signal converter using the ambient temperature and the voltage that are input thereto, the computation including calculation of an amount of electric power consumed in the coil (16) using the input voltage.
US09923361B2

The present invention relates to a 3 phase electric leakage current circuit breaker with electric shock protection having a first function of detecting a leakage current and operating a circuit breaker to break an electric path if a leakage current exceeds a tolerance and a second function of detecting a leakage current every half cycle intervals of a power source, subtracting two leakage currents detected before and after a half cycle interval from each other as a vector calculus to compute a leakage current change, and operating a circuit breaker to break an electric path if the leakage current change exceeds a tolerance. The former case corresponds to protection against a normal leakage current which gradually increases, and an allowable leakage current is several hundreds of mA. The latter case is for protection against electric shock to a human body when a leakage current abruptly changes due to electric shock to a human body or the like, and an allowable leakage current is several tens of mA. Therefore, along the 3 phase electric path, the electric leakage current circuit breaker of the present invention may operate without any malfunction with respect to the normal leakage current change while protecting the human body from the electric shock.
US09923360B2

An electronic apparatus includes: a power supply circuit that supplies power supply voltage to a load; an overcurrent detection circuit that performs output of detection information indicating the direction of current at a power supply path for the load in the power supply circuit when overcurrent occurs in the power supply path; and a determination circuit that performs output of notification information indicating whether or not a location at which a failure occurs exists within the power supply circuit or outside the power supply circuit, based on the detection information.
US09923353B2

A cable suspension may allow a cable to be pivoted about a pivot axis that passes through a thickness of a cable. A bend radius of the cable entering and exiting the cable suspension may be increased and/or the degree of bend by a cable entering and exiting the cable support may be decreased. The cable may comprise insulated electrical cables, non-insulated electrical cables (e.g., conductors), shielded cables, non-electrical signal cables (e.g., optical cables), and/or assemblies thereof.
US09923345B2

An enhanced apparatus and method for securing a wire to a pulling cable for pulling wire. Specifically, the pulling cable and wire are attached via a pulling head body. The wire is inserted into an end of the pulling head body and secured by crimping the pulling head body against the wire. Further, crimp zone indicators positioned on the outer surface of the pulling head body indicate the optimal zone of crimping to achieve substantial contact between the pulling head body and the wire. A pulling cable is secured to the pulling head body via a ball swage that comprises a tapped surface.
US09923337B2

A quantum cascade laser includes a laser structure including laser waveguide structures and a first terrace region; first electrodes; pad electrodes; and wiring metal conductors. The laser structure includes first, second and third regions arranged in a direction of a first axis. The third region is disposed between the first and second regions. The first region has a first end facet disposed at a boundary between the first and third regions. The first end facet extends in a direction intersecting with the first axis. The second region has a second end facet disposed at a boundary between the second and third regions. The second region includes the laser structure. The pad electrodes are disposed on the first terrace region. The first electrodes are disposed on the laser waveguide structures. Each of the pad electrodes is connected to one of the first electrodes through one of the wiring metal conductors.
US09923335B1

A laser includes a reflective gain medium (RGM) comprising an optical gain material coupled with an associated reflector. The RGM is coupled to a spot-size converter (SSC), which optically couples the RGM to an optical reflector through a silicon waveguide. The SSC converts an optical mode-field size of the RGM to an optical mode-field size of the silicon waveguide. A negative thermo-optic coefficient (NTOC) waveguide is fabricated on top of the SSC. In this way, an optical signal, which originates from the RGM, passes into the SSC, is coupled into the NTOC waveguide, passes through the NTOC waveguide, and is coupled back into the SSC before passing into the silicon waveguide. During operation, the RGM, the spot-size converter, the NTOC waveguide, the silicon waveguide and the silicon mirror collectively form a lasing cavity for the athermal laser. Finally, a laser output is optically coupled to the lasing cavity.
US09923321B2

A composite connection socket includes a metal housing, an insulative main body, a first row conductive terminal and a second row conductive terminal. The metal housing includes an accommodating space formed therein, and the insulative main body is received inside the accommodating space. The insulative main body includes a first side plate, a second side plate and a base; the first side plate and the second side plate are arranged corresponding to each other and protrude from the base. The first row conductive terminal is arranged on the first side plate and complies with a micro USB communication protocol interface. The second row conductive terminal is arranged on the second side plate and complies with a lightning standard interface. The composite connection socket is able to commonly accommodate two cable connectors of different standards of a micro USB connector or a lightning connector inserted therein.
US09923316B1

A device and system and method for connecting powered accessories to a model railroad layout using an electronic interface device (EID). The EID includes a terminal for interfacing with an accessory control device that is configured to control features of model railroad accessories, and a connection jack configured to accept an accessory cable plug that is connected to two or more wires of an accessory cable. The connection jack places at least one of the two or more wires of the accessory cable in electrical contact with the terminal of the EID such that, when the accessory control device is electrically connected to the terminal, the at least one of the two or more wires of the accessory cable are placed in electrical communication with the accessory control device, when the plug of the accessory cable is plugged into the connection jack.
US09923314B2

An assembly of mated coaxial connectors includes: a first connector with a first central conductor extension and a first outer conductor extension having a free end portion; and a second connector with a second central conductor extension and a second outer conductor extension having an outer body and an inner body with a gap therebetween. The first central conductor extension engages the second central conductor extension. The free end portion of the first outer conductor extension fits within the gap of the second outer conductor extension, such that the inner body applies radially outward pressure to the first outer conductor extension. At least one of the first outer conductor extension and the second outer conductor extension includes a flex member that deflects during axial engagement of the first and second connectors to apply axial pressure to the other of the first outer conductor extension and the second outer conductor extension.
US09923311B2

A safety system for high current applications, having a high current circuit breaker and a housing enclosing the high current circuit breaker. The housing forms a plug connector for electrical contact and mechanical connection to a mating plug connector, and the high current circuit breaker can also be accommodated in a permanently closed manner.
US09923307B2

It is proposed to design a retaining frame (1) for retaining plug-in connector modules (40) in such a way that retaining means (41) of the plug-in connector modules (40) can be retained in recesses (11) of the retaining frame (1) in a play-free manner. To this end, the retaining frame (1) is designed in two pieces, wherein a slot (2/3) between the two retaining frame pieces (2/3) extends through the recesses (11). By under-sizing the recesses (11) in relation to the dimension of the retaining means (41) of plug-in connector modules (40), a press-fit of the retaining means (41) in the recesses (11) is effected by the assembly of the retaining frame parts (2, 3).
US09923288B2

An Ethernet cable assembly including a cable with nine elongated conductors, a first connector and a second connector located on opposing ends of the cable, and a coupler for electrically coupling with one or both of the connectors. The connectors may each include nine pin receptacles electrically coupled with one of the elongated conductors. The nine receptacles may be arranged with one center receptacle surrounded by eight outer receptacles, symmetrically arranged about a line of symmetry passing through the center receptacle, such that when identical first or second connectors of another cable faces one of the first and second connectors, complementary crossover pairs of the receptacles match up with positive receptacles matching positive receptacles and negative receptacles matching negative receptacles. To couple these identical Ethernet connectors with each other, the coupler may have pins simply passing from one side of the coupler housing to another, without any crossover hardware required therein.
US09923287B1

An electrical device includes a power connector coupleable to a cable. The power connector includes a body defining a first opening and an interior space. The power connector is arranged to receive the cable into the interior space through the first opening. The electrical device also includes a barrier coupled to the power connector to at least partially cover the first opening. The barrier includes a wall defining a second opening. The wall contacts the body. The second opening is arranged to receive the cable therein when the cable is coupled to the power connector.
US09923283B2

A method and an apparatus for forming a beam in an antenna array are disclosed. The method for forming a beam in an antenna array comprises the steps of: forming a first beam pattern in a first band on the basis of a single-band antenna aggregation and a multi-band antenna aggregation; and forming other beam patterns in bands other than the first band on the basis of the multi-band antenna aggregation, wherein the single-band antenna aggregation includes a plurality of single-band antennas which operate only in the first band, the multi-band antenna aggregation includes multi-band antennas which operate in a plurality of bands including the first band, and the antenna array may be arranged in a two-dimensional plane such that distances between the plurality of single-band antennas and the plurality of multi-band antennas are constant.
US09923279B2

Multi-band antennae used for television reception of at least two different frequency bands enable multi-band reception with an electrically small antenna. The designs are applicable to individual antenna elements, two dimensional arrays, three dimensional arrays, and arrays constructed for high volumetric efficiency. By using the multi-band element, greater frequency reception is achieved with greater density possible in the antenna arrays.
US09923270B1

The Active Electronically Scanned Lens Array design for a phased array reduces the cost of the phased array with minimal sacrifice to array performance. The design replaces transmit/receive (T/R) modules at the front end of the array with low cost and low lost phase shifters. A tradeoff in this design is a periodic phase quantization error that leads to quantization lobes. To reduce quantization lobes, a phase addition approach is presented to break up with the periodicity. In the presented approach, a phase offset is added at a T/R module and then corrected for at each radiating element in the array. The applied phase offset can be either deterministic or random.
US09923262B2

A mobile device includes a ground plane, an antenna element, and one or more ring resonators. The ground plane has a first region and a second region. The antenna element is disposed on the first region. The ring resonators are disposed on the second region. Each of the ring resonators includes a first loop structure and a second loop structure. The ring resonators are configured to enhance the radiation gain of the antenna element in a zenith direction.
US09923260B2

The disclosure concerns a low-profile mounting apparatus for use with installation and aesthetic positioning of distributed antenna systems (DAS) and other similar antenna modules. The mounting apparatus is used to minimize the exposed profile of an installed antenna module.
US09923257B2

The present disclosure is directed to a balun circuit adapted to operate at a frequency of between about 5 GHz to about 110 GHz. The balun circuit includes first and second output striplines and an input stripline formed on a first surface of the substrate, and a slotline formed on a second surface of the substrate opposite the first surface. The slotline has first and second ends, the first end overlapping the first output stripline and the second end overlapping the second output stripline, and the input stripline overlapping the slotline midway between the first end and the second end.
US09923256B2

In an example embodiment, a waveguide combiner/divider comprises: a first waveguide including a first major ridge extending to a waveguide junction; a second waveguide including a second major ridge extending to the waveguide junction, the second major ridge connected to the first major ridge at a major ridge junction within the waveguide junction; and a third waveguide including a third major ridge extending to the waveguide junction, the third major ridge connected to the major ridge junction via a major ridge transition section, the major ridge transition section having a major ridge transition section height within the waveguide junction that is less than heights of the first major ridge and second major ridge.
US09923254B2

A radio-frequency filter comprises an input terminal and an output terminal. A signal line is galvanically connected or capacitively coupled firstly to the input terminal and secondly to the output terminal. The signal line, with the formation of a capacitive inner conductor and/or resonator coupling, runs past the relevant inner conductor through the resonators of the radio-frequency blocking filter. The signal line has at least one galvanic isolation location in the form of a capacitive isolation location. The capacitive isolation location is spaced apart from the inner conductors and capacitively coupled thereto. The resonators and/or the inner conductors capacitively coupled to the signal line.
US09923250B2

A heat quantity control device has a heat flux sensor arranged between first and second heating elements arranged adjacently to each other, and a control section for controlling a heat quantity of the first and second heating elements. The heat flux sensor has an insulation board made of thermoplastic resin, first and second via holes formed in the insulation board penetrating in a thickness direction thereof. First and second layer connection members are embedded in the first and second via holes, respectively. The first and second layer connection members are made of different metals and alternately connected in series. The control section controls a heat quantity generated in the first and second heating elements based on the electromotive force generated in the heat flux sensors so that a heat flux flowing between the first and second heating elements becomes not more than a predetermined value.
US09923246B2

Provided is an electrolytic solution including a nonaqueous solvent and an alkali metal salt. The alkali metal salt is dissolved in the nonaqueous solvent. The nonaqueous solvent contains a perfluoropolyether and a fluorinated phosphate. Also provided is a battery including the electrolytic solution, a positive electrode containing a positive electrode active material that can occlude and release an alkali metal cation, and a negative electrode containing a negative electrode active material that can occlude and release the alkali metal cation.
US09923243B2

The present invention relates to silicone epoxy compositions, methods for making same and uses therefore. In one embodiment, the silicone epoxy ether compositions of the present invention are silane epoxy polyethers that contain at least one epoxy functionality. In another embodiment, the silicone epoxy ether compositions of the present invention are siloxane epoxy polyethers that contain at least one epoxy functionality. In still another embodiment, the present invention relates to silicone epoxy polyether compositions that are suitable for use as an electrolyte solvent in a lithium-based battery, an electrochemical super-capacitors or any other electrochemical device.
US09923239B2

The purpose of the present invention is to provide a lithium-ion battery that exhibits excellent long-term life properties, does not suffer from rapid capacity degradation, and exhibits excellent charging/discharging characteristics in low-temperature environments. The present invention is directed to a lithium ion battery comprising: a negative electrode which comprises a negative electrode active material containing at least one of a graphite and an amorphous carbon, conductive additives containing a graphite, and a binder; a nonaqueous electrolyte solution; and a positive electrode containing a positive electrode active material capable of occluding and releasing lithium. The negative electrode active material has a spherical or massive shape, the conductive additives have a platy shape, and a part of an edge surface of the conductive additives contacts a surface of the negative electrode active material. The nonaqueous electrolyte solution contains a solvent, and an additive which reductively decomposes at a voltage lower than a reduction voltage of the solvent.
US09923237B2

A polymer to be used as a binder for sulfur-based cathodes in lithium batteries that includes in its composition electrophilic groups capable of reaction with and entrapment of polysulfide species. Beneficial effects include reductions in capacity loss and ionic resistance gain.
US09923236B2

Perfluoropolyether electrolytes terminated with polar substituents such as cyclic carbonates show enhanced ionic conductivities when formulated with lithium bis(trifluoromethane)sulfonimide, making them useful as electrolytes for lithium cells.
US09923231B2

An optimal architecture for a polymer electrolyte battery, wherein one or more layers of electrolyte (e.g., solid block-copolymer) are situated between two electrodes, is disclosed. An anolyte layer, adjacent the anode, is chosen to be chemically and electrochemically stable against the anode active material. A catholyte layer, adjacent the cathode, is chosen to be chemically and electrochemically stable against the cathode active material.
US09923229B2

According to an embodiment, an assembly for use in a fuel cell includes a manifold having at least one inlet and at least one surface configured to facilitate fluid flow from the inlet along a direction in the manifold. A baffle is situated generally parallel to the direction of flow. The baffle has a first portion, a second portion and a third portion. The first portion is closer to the inlet than the second portion. The second portion is closer to the inlet than the third portion. The first portion has a first width situated generally perpendicular to the flow direction. The second portion has a second width situated generally perpendicular to the flow direction. The second width is less than the first width. The third portion has a third width situated generally perpendicular to the flow direction. The third width is greater than the second width.
US09923226B2

The description relates to fuel cells and fuel cell systems. One example includes at least one multi cell membrane electrode assembly (MCMEA). Individual MCMEAs can include multiple serially interconnected sub-cells.
US09923209B2

A negative electrode and a lithium battery including the same, the negative electrode including nanotubes including a Group 14 metal/metalloid, disposed on a conductive substrate.
US09923203B2

A positive electrode active material includes LiMn1-xMxPO4 (wherein M represents at least one element selected from Mg, Fe, Ni, Co, Ti, and Zr; and 0≤x<0.5) and has an average pore diameter of 8 nm or more and not more than 25 nm and a total pore volume of 0.05 cm3/g or more and not more than 0.3 cm3/g.
US09923200B2

A method for making a sulfur-graphene composite material is provided. In the method, an elemental sulfur solution and a graphene dispersion are provided. The elemental sulfur solution includes a first solvent and an elemental sulfur dissolved in the first solvent. The graphene dispersion includes a second solvent and graphene sheets dispersed in the second solvent. The elemental sulfur solution is added to the graphene dispersion, a number of elemental sulfur particles are precipitated and attracted to a surface of the graphene sheets to form the sulfur-graphene composite material. The sulfur-graphene composite material is separated from the mixture.
US09923191B2

Provided is a design method of a secondary battery, including: calculating temperature profile per position of a battery in a stacked direction of a stack-type secondary battery in which cathodes and anodes are alternately stacked with separators interposed therebetween at the time of charging and discharging the stack-type secondary battery; and selecting cathode active materials used for cathodes per corresponding positions by the temperature profile per position.
US09923182B2

An embodiment of the present disclosure provides a structure that contributes to increasing the capacity density. A secondary cell according to an embodiment of the present disclosure includes a plurality of periodic unit structures that are arranged on a first surface. Each of those periodic unit structures includes a positive electrode layer and a negative electrode layer, each of which projects away from the first surface, and a solid electrolyte interposed between the positive electrode and negative electrode layers.
US09923178B2

A sealing member 40 to seal an opening of a battery can, the sealing member being used to configure a tube-shaped battery provided with a bottomed tube-shaped battery can and a power generating element that has been arranged inside the battery can, the sealing member 40 includes an electrode terminal that is to be electrically connected to the power generating element, a sealing plate 41, insulating gaskets 42a, 42b, and a washer 44. An inserting part 43b extending from the electrode terminal 43 is inserted through these elements so that the elements are integrally tightened. The insulating gasket 42a is provided with a protruding part 42a1 having an appropriate horizontal section shape, and the sealing plate 41 adjacent to the insulating gasket is provided with a recess part 41a that has been formed in a shape corresponding to the protruding part 42a1.
US09923177B2

Designs, strategies and methods to improve biocompatibility of energization elements are described. In some examples, the biocompatible energization elements may be used in a biomedical device. In some further examples, the biocompatible energization elements may be used in a contact lens.
US09923155B2

Tetradentate platinum complexes of Formulas I and II suitable for phosphorescent or delayed fluorescent and phosphorescent emitters in display and lighting applications.
US09923150B2

The present disclosure provides a nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compound having general formula (I) and an organic photoelectric apparatus thereof. where A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7, and A8 are independently selected from a hydrogen atom, at least one compound having the general formula (II) and at least one compound having the general formula (III), where Y1, Y2, and Y3 are independently selected from C and N; R3 and R4 are independently selected from C6-30 aromatic group and C2-30 heterocyclic aromatic group, wherein X is selected from any one of oxyl group (—O—), sulfhydryl group (—S—), substituted or non-substituted imino group, substituted or non-substituted methylene group, and substituted or non-substituted silicylene group; R5, R6, R7, R8, R9, R10, R11, and R12 are independently selected from hydrogen, deuterium, C1-30 alkyl group, C6-30 aromatic group, or C2-30 heterocyclic aromatic group.
US09923148B2

Disclosed are electroluminescent devices that comprise organic layers that contain certain organic compounds containing one or more pyrimidine moieties. The organic compounds containing one or more pyrimidine moieties are suitable components of blue-emitting, durable, organo-electroluminescent layers. The electroluminescent devices may be employed for full color display panels in for example mobile phones, televisions and personal computer screens.
US09923144B2

The present specification relates to a photoactive layer comprising an electron acceptor, an electron donor, and a compound comprising a functional group decreasing surface energy, an organic photovoltaic cell comprising the same, and a manufacturing method thereof.
US09923142B2

A method and structure for providing uniform, large-area graphene by way of a transfer-free, direct-growth process. In some embodiments, a SAM is used as a carbon source for direct graphene synthesis on a substrate. For example, a SAM is formed on an insulating surface, and a metal layer is formed over the SAM. The metal layer may serve as a catalytic metal, whereby the SAM is converted to graphene following an annealing process. The SAM is deposited using a VPD process (e.g., an ALD process and/or an MLD process). In some embodiments, a CNT having a controlled diameter may be formed on the surface of a nanorod by appropriately tuning the geometry of the nanorod. Additionally, in some embodiments, a curved graphene transistor may be formed over a curved oxide surface, thereby providing a band gap in a channel region of the graphene transistor.
US09923139B2

Methods, systems, and devices for memory arrays that use a conductive hard mask during formation and, in some cases, operation are described. A hard mask may be used to define features or components during the numerous material formation and removal steps used to create memory cells within a memory array. The hard mask may be an electrically conductive material, some or all of which may be retained during formation. A conductive line may be connected to each memory cell, and because the hard mask used in forming the cell may be conductive, the cell may be operable even if portions of the hard mask remain after formation.
US09923137B2

A device and a method of forming a device are presented. A substrate is provided. The substrate includes circuit component formed on a substrate surface. Back end of line processing is performed to form an upper inter level dielectric (ILD) layer over the substrate. The upper ILD layer includes a plurality of ILD levels. A magnetic tunneling junction (MTJ) stack is formed in between adjacent ILD levels of the upper ILD layer. The MTJ stack comprises a free layer, a tunneling barrier layer and a fixed layer. The fixed layer includes a polarizer layer, a composite texture breaking layer which includes a ruthenium layer and a synthetic antiferromagnetic (SAF) layer.
US09923135B2

A light-emitting assembly includes a first substrate, a first electrode layer, a light-emitting layer, a second electrode layer, a second substrate, a first conductive member and a second conductive member. The first electrode layer, the light-emitting layer and the second electrode layer are sequentially disposed on the first substrate. An area of the second electrode layer is entirely located within an area of the light emitting layer. The second electrode layer is located between the second substrate and the light-emitting layer. The first and second conductive members are disposed between the first and second substrates. The first electrode layer is electrically connected to a first circuit on the second substrate through the first conductive member. The second electrode layer is electrically connected to a second circuit on the second substrate through the second conductive member. The second conductive member is located within the area of the second electrode layer.
US09923133B2

A substrate includes an anchor area physically secured to a surface of the substrate and at least one printable electronic component. The at least one printable electronic component includes an active layer having one or more active elements thereon, and is suspended over the surface of the substrate by electrically conductive breakable tethers. The electrically conductive breakable tethers include an insulating layer and a conductive layer thereon that physically secure and electrically connect the at least one printable electronic component to the anchor area, and are configured to be preferentially fractured responsive to pressure applied thereto. Related methods of fabrication and testing are also discussed.
US09923131B2

There is proposed an illuminating device, comprising (a) a luminous element, (b) a support, and (c) a primary optical element, characterized in that (i) said luminous element (a) is present on the support (b), and (ii) said primary optical element (c) is arranged on the composite of luminous element (a) and support (b) in such a way that it takes up, directs and emits the radiation emerging from the luminous element in the desired light distribution, wherein (iii) said primary optical element (c) is fabricated from a high refractive index glass and (iv) attached to the support by direct bonding.
US09923129B2

Various embodiments may relate to a method for producing an LED module, including providing a housing implemented as a hollow body, having an opening on a light exit side of the LED module, wherein the housing has a base side, arranged opposite to the light exit side, arranging a circuit board having one LED on the base side of the housing, pouring in one first base layer made of a curable material in a non-cured state through the opening into the housing, and pouring in a scattering layer made of a curable material in a non-cured state through the opening into the housing. The scattering layer is poured in onto the first base layer. The first base layer is not cured during the pouring in of the scattering layer, and after the pouring in of the scattering layer, the one first base layer and the scattering layer are cured.
US09923128B2

Provided are a light emitting device package in which lens tilting is prevented to reduce luminance and color deviations and a backlight unit having the same. The light emitting device package includes an encapsulation material disposed on a substrate to surround a light emitting device and a guide member disposed on the encapsulation material to guide an assembly path of a lens. The guide member includes a first inclined surface having a first inclination to guide a light incident part of the lens and a second inclined surface having a second inclination greater than the first inclination to further guide the light incident part of the lens.
US09923120B2

A method of producing a semiconductor light emitting element includes providing a semiconductor stack including a first semiconductor layer, an active layer, a second semiconductor layer, and a first insulating layer. An upper surface of the first insulating layer is partially covered with a mask. The semiconductor stack is etched to expose the first semiconductor layer in a region not covered by the mask. The mask is removed. A second insulating layer covering from the upper surface of the first insulating layer to an exposed region of the first semiconductor layer is provided. The second insulating layer is etched without masking to remove at least a portion of the second insulating layer covering the exposed region to expose the exposed region. A first conducting layer covering from the exposed region of the first semiconductor layer to a region above the upper surface of the first insulating layer is provided.
US09923119B2

A white LED chip includes a P-type layer, a tunneling structure, an N-type layer, an N-type electrode, and a P-type electrode. The tunneling structure is disposed over the P-type layer. The tunneling structure includes a first barrier layer, an active layer and a second barrier layer. The first barrier layer includes a first material layer, the active layer includes a second material layer, and the second barrier layer includes a third material layer. The N-type layer is disposed over the tunneling structure. An energy gap of the second material layer is lower than an energy gap of the first material layer and an energy gap of the third material layer. Each of the first material layer, the second material layer and the third material layer is a metal oxide layer, a metal nitride layer or a metal oxynitride layer.
US09923110B2

A solar cell module having a good appearance after lamination and a method for producing such a solar cell module are provided by specifying the combination guideline for encapsulants capable of bettering the appearance after lamination. The solar cell module contains an upper protective material (A), an encapsulant (B) for use on the side of the upper protective material (A), a solar cell device (C), an encapsulant (D) for use on the side of a back sheet (E), and the back sheet (E), wherein the encapsulant (B) and the encapsulant (D) satisfy the following requirement (P), and the production method produces the solar cell module. Requirement (P): The flow beginning temperature (TB) (° C.) of the encapsulant (B) and the flow beginning temperature (TD) (° C.) of the encapsulant (D), as measured under a load of 1 kgf/cm2, have the following relationship: TB−TD>0 (° C.).
US09923106B2

A method for fabricating a photosensitive device, comprising: a first step of preparing, on a substrate, at least a first photosensitive portion, active within a range of wavelengths, the first portion being surrounded by a second portion that is inactive. A material, covering the first portion, is selectively arranged into a hydrophilic layer by an electrochemical process. The second portion comprises a hydrophobic material on an upper surface opposite the substrate. The method further comprises the following steps: spraying on the upper surfaces of the first and second portions a liquid comprising a transparent material, and forming a converging lens containing the material, above the first portion.
US09923102B2

A solar cell includes a semiconductor substrate, a passivation layer, a back electrode layer, and several bus bars. The semiconductor substrate has an upper surface and a lower surface opposite with each other. The passivation layer is disposed at the lower surface and includes several blank regions and several first openings. Each first opening is not located in the blank regions. The bus bars are respectively disposed on the blank regions of the passivation layer. The back electrode layer is disposed on the passivation layer and electrically connected to the semiconductor substrate through the first openings. The back electrode layer includes several second openings corresponding to the bus bars, respectively. The size of each second opening is not greater than the size of the corresponding bus bar, so that the back electrode layer is electrically connected to the bus bars.
US09923099B2

A method for manufacturing a thin-film transistor (TFT) is provided, including the following steps. A gate is formed on a substrate. A gate insulating layer is formed on the gate. A patterned semiconductor layer is formed on the gate insulating layer. A source is formed on the patterned semiconductor layer. The peripheral portion of the source is oxidized to form an oxide layer, wherein the oxide layer covers the source and a portion of the patterned semiconductor layer. A protective layer and hydrogen ions are formed, wherein the protective layer covers the oxide layer and the patterned semiconductor layer. The patterned semiconductor layer not covered by the oxide layer is doped with the hydrogen ions to form a drain. A TFT is also provided.
US09923089B2

The switching device includes an electron transport layer; an electron supply layer provided on the electron transport layer and being in contact with the electron transport layer by heterojunction; a source electrode being in contact with the electron supply layer; a drain electrode being in contact with the electron supply layer at a position spaced from the source electrode; and a first gate electrode provided above the electron supply layer, and provided between the source electrode and the drain electrode when viewed in a plan view from above. The first gate electrode is electrically connected above the electron supply layer to the drain electrode. An on-resistance of the switching device is lower than an electric resistance between the first gate electrode and the drain electrode.
US09923087B2

Embodiments include high electron mobility transistors (HEMT). In embodiments, a gate electrode is spaced apart by different distances from a source and drain semiconductor region to provide high breakdown voltage and low on-state resistance. In embodiments, self-alignment techniques are applied to form a dielectric liner in trenches and over an intervening mandrel to independently define a gate length, gate-source length, and gate-drain length with a single masking operation. In embodiments, III-N HEMTs include fluorine doped semiconductor barrier layers for threshold voltage tuning and/or enhancement mode operation.
US09923081B1

A device comprising Si:As source and drain extensions and Si:As or Si:P source and drain features formed using selective epitaxial growth and a method of forming the same is provided. The epitaxial layers used for the source and drain extensions and the source and drain features herein are deposited by simultaneous film formation and film etching, wherein the deposited material on the monocrystalline layer is etched at a slower rate than deposition material deposited on non-monocrystalline location of a substrate. As a result, an epitaxial layer is deposited on the monocrystalline surfaces, and a layer is not deposited on non-monocrystalline surfaces of the same base material, such as silicon.
US09923074B2

A semiconductor device includes a gate disposed over a substrate; a source region and a drain region on opposing sides of the gate; and a pair of trench contacts over and abutting an interfacial layer portion of at least one of the source region and the drain region; wherein the interfacial layer includes boron in an amount in a range from about 5×1021 to about 5×1022 atoms/cm2.
US09923073B2

A semiconductor device of the present invention includes a semiconductor layer of a first conductivity type having a cell portion and an outer peripheral portion disposed around the cell portion, and a surface insulating film disposed in a manner extending across the cell portion and the outer peripheral portion, and in the cell portion, formed to be thinner than a part in the outer peripheral portion.
US09923072B2

A semiconductor component includes a semiconductor body having a surface and a cutout in the semiconductor body. The cutout extends from the surface of the semiconductor body into the semiconductor body in a direction perpendicular to the surface. The cutout has a base and at least one sidewall. The component further includes a layer on the surface of the semiconductor body and in the cutout. The layer forms a well above the cutout. The well has a well base, a well edge and at least one well sidewall. The at least one well sidewall forms an angle α in the range of 20° to 80° with respect to the surface of the semiconductor body. The layer has at least one edge which, proceeding from the well edge, extends in the direction of the surface of the semiconductor body.
US09923068B2

An array substrate includes an oxide semiconductor layer; an etch stopper including a first contact hole exposing each of both sides of the oxide semiconductor layer; source and drain electrodes spaced apart from each other with the oxide semiconductor layer therebetween; a first passivation layer including a contact hole exposing each of both ends of the oxide semiconductor layer and each of ends of the source and drain electrode that oppose the both ends of the oxide semiconductor layer, respectively; and a connection pattern at the second contact hole contacting both the oxide semiconductor layer and each of the source and drain electrodes.
US09923066B2

A semiconductor device includes a source zone electrically connected to a first load terminal, a contiguous zone isolating the source zone from a drift zone, and a trench extending into a semiconductor body along a vertical direction and including a first electrode electrically connected to a control terminal and an insulator in contact with the contiguous zone and which isolates the first electrode from the semiconductor body. The insulator has, at a trench bottom region, a first thickness along the vertical direction, and, at a trench top region, a second thickness along a lateral direction, the first thickness being greater than the second thickness by a factor of at least 1.5. The contiguous zone is arranged in contact with the insulator and extends further along the vertical direction than the trench, and the trench bottom region and the contiguous zone overlap along the lateral direction.
US09923062B2

An infrared ray absorbing film is selectively formed on a surface of a silicon carbide semiconductor substrate in a predetermined area. The infrared ray absorbing film is composed of one of a multi-layered film of titanium nitride and titanium, a multi-layered film of molybdenum nitride and molybdenum, a multi-layered film of tungsten nitride and tungsten, or a multi-layered film of chromium nitride and chromium. An aluminum film and a nickel film are sequentially formed in this order on the silicon carbide semiconductor substrate in an area excluding the predetermined area in which the infrared ray absorbing film is formed. The silicon carbide semiconductor substrate is thereafter heated using a rapid annealing process with a predetermined heating rate to form an electrode. The rapid annealing process converts the nickel film into a silicide and, with the aluminum film, provides an electrode having ohmic contact.
US09923058B2

Provided is a semiconductor device. The semiconductor device includes a fin disposed on a substrate along a first direction. A sacrificial layer is disposed on the fin. An active layer is disposed on the sacrificial layer. A gate insulating layer and a gate electrode are disposed along a second direction intersecting the first direction. The gate insulating layer covers substantially entire top, side and bottom surfaces of the active layer. A source or drain region is disposed on at least one side of the gate electrode on the substrate. A first concentration of germanium in a first region and a second region of the active layer is higher than a second concentration of germanium in a third region disposed between the first region and the second region.
US09923054B2

A hard mask etch stop is formed on the top surface of tall fins to preserve the fin height and protect the top surface of the fin from damage during etching steps of the transistor fabrication process. In an embodiment, the hard mask etch stop is formed using a dual hard mask system, wherein a hard mask etch stop layer is formed over the surface of a substrate, and a second hard mask layer is used to pattern a fin with a hard mask etch stop layer on the top surface of the fin. The second hard mask layer is removed, while the hard mask etch stop layer remains to protect the top surface of the fin during subsequent fabrication steps.
US09923053B2

A SIC transistor device includes a silicon-carbide semiconductor substrate having a plurality of first doped regions laterally spaced apart from one another and beneath a main surface of the substrate, a second doped region extending from the main surface to a third doped region that is above the first doped regions, and a plurality of fourth doped regions in the substrate extending from the main surface to the first doped regions. The second doped region has a first conductivity type. The first, third and fourth doped regions have a second conductivity type opposite the first conductivity type. A gate trench extends through the second and third doped regions. The gate trench has sidewalls, a bottom and rounded corners between the bottom and the sidewalls.
US09923046B1

A resistor body is separated from a doped well in a substrate by a resistor dielectric material layer. The doped well is defined by at least one doped region and can include a dopant gradient in the doped well to reduce parasitic capacitance of the resistor structure while retaining heat dissipation properties of the substrate. The resistor body is formed in a cavity in a dielectric layer deposited on the substrate, which deposition can be part of a concurrent fabrication, such as part of forming shallow trench isolations, and the cavity can be lined with the resistor dielectric material.
US09923038B2

Provided is a display device including a pixel. The pixel has: a conductive film; an interlayer insulating film over the conductive film; a first electrode over the interlayer insulating film; an insulating film over the first electrode; an organic layer over the first electrode and the insulating film; and a second electrode over the organic layer. The interlayer insulating film has a first opening portion overlapping with the conductive film. The insulating film covers the first opening portion. A first region of the organic layer in contact with the first electrode surrounds the insulating film. An area defined by a periphery of the first region has at least two symmetry axes in a direction parallel to a surface of the substrate.
US09923036B2

Disclosed is a display device that may include a thin film transistor array substrate that includes a plurality of first sub-pixels and a plurality of second sub-pixels, wherein one of the plurality of first sub-pixels includes a first emission region and a first non-emission region, and one of the plurality of second sub-pixels includes a second emission region and a second non-emission region; a first bank pattern in the first and second non-emission regions, the first bank pattern including a hydrophilic material; and a second bank pattern on an upper surface of the first bank pattern, the second bank pattern includes a hydrophobic material.
US09923031B2

An organic light-emitting diode (OLED) array substrate and a display apparatus are provided. The OLED array substrate includes a plurality of OLEDs; the OLED includes an anode, a light-emitting layer and a cathode which are provided sequentially; the light-emitting layers are divided into a plurality of types by color (that is, the light-emitting layers are configured for emitting light of a plurality of colors), and are made of a host material and a guest material doped in the host material; and the OLED further includes an exciton blocking layer provided between the cathode and the light-emitting layer and in contact with the light-emitting layer, which is made of a host material of one light-emitting layer, and the host material of the one light-emitting layer has the biggest highest occupied molecular orbital energy level and the biggest triplet state energy level in the host materials of all light-emitting layers.
US09923027B2

A memory cell array structure includes memory cells arranged in m rows and n columns on a substrate, and n columns of first and second well regions with different conductivity types alternatively arranged along the column direction. Each of the memory cells includes first and second diodes. The first diode formed of a first doped region in the same column is disposed in the first well region. The second diode formed of a second doped region in the same column is disposed in the second well region. A third doped region having the conductivity type of the first well region is disposed in the first well region and is connected to the reset line of the same column. A fourth doped region having the conductivity type of the second well region is disposed in the second well region and is connected to the bit line of the same column.
US09923025B2

A magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) die may include a plurality of MRAM cells, and a magnetic field sensing structure. The magnetic field sensing structure may include a movable portion and a magnetic material attached to the movable portion. The movable portion may move in response to exposure of the magnetic material to an external magnetic field.
US09923023B2

At least one of a passivation film extending from a pixel circuit region to a peripheral circuit region and a member disposed between a semiconductor layer and the passivation film in the peripheral circuit region contains hydrogen. The passivation film in the peripheral circuit region has a portion overlapping one conductive line of the plurality of conductive lines in a direction perpendicular to a main surface of the semiconductor layer, the one conductive line being closest to the passivation film among the plurality of conductive lines. The passivation film in the peripheral circuit region has a through-hole, the through-hole including a portion not overlapping the one conductive line in the direction perpendicular to the main surface of the semiconductor layer.
US09923016B2

A pixel including a photodiode having a first pole coupled through a transfer MOS transistor to a node for sensing charges of a first type stored in the photodiode, and having a second pole connected to a storage capacitor and to a circuit for reading charges of a second type sent to the storage capacitor.
US09923010B2

The present technology relates to a solid-state imaging device, manufacturing method of a solid-state imaging device, and an electronic device, which can provide a solid-state imaging device having further improved features such as reduced optical color mixing and the like. Also, an electronic device using the solid-state imaging device thereof is provided. According to a solid-state imaging device having a substrate and multiple photoelectric converters that are formed on the substrate, an insulating film forms an embedded element separating unit. The element separating unit is configured of an insulating film having a fixed charge that is formed so as to coat the inner wall face of a groove portion, within the groove portion which is formed in the depth direction from the light input side of the substrate.
US09923009B1

An image sensor includes a plurality of photodiodes disposed in a semiconductor material between a first side and a second side of the semiconductor material. The image sensor also includes a plurality of hybrid deep trench isolation (DTI) structures disposed in the semiconductor material, where individual photodiodes in the plurality of photodiodes are separated by individual hybrid DTI structures. The individual hybrid DTI structures include a shallow portion that extends from the first side towards the second side of the semiconductor material, and the shallow portion includes a dielectric region and a metal region such that at least part of the dielectric region is disposed between the semiconductor material and the metal region. The hybrid DTI structures also include a deep portion that extends from the shallow portion and is disposed between the shallow portion and the second side of the semiconductor material.
US09923008B2

A wafer-level array camera includes (i) an image sensor wafer including an image sensor array, (ii) a spacer disposed on the image sensor wafer, and (iii) a lens wafer disposed on the spacer, wherein the lens wafer includes a lens array. A method for fabricating a plurality of wafer-level array cameras includes (i) disposing a lens wafer, including a plurality of lens arrays, on an image sensor wafer, including a plurality of image sensor arrays, to form a composite wafer and (ii) dicing the composite wafer to form the plurality of wafer-level array cameras, wherein each of the plurality of wafer-level array cameras includes a respective one of the plurality of lens arrays and a respective one of the plurality of image sensor arrays.
US09922999B2

A liquid crystal device which is used as an electro-optical device according to the present embodiment includes at least five capacitance electrodes that are stacked on a substrate in a state where dielectric films are interposed therebetween. Two capacitance electrodes which are stacked on odd-numbered layers among the at least five capacitance electrodes are electrically connected to a capacitance line through a contact hole that is a common contact hole.
US09922993B2

A transistor includes an active region supported by a substrate and having a source region, a channel region and a drain region. A gate stack extends over the channel region and a first sidewall surrounds the gate stack. A raised source region and a raised drain region are provided over the source and drain regions, respectively, of the active region adjacent the first sidewall. A second sidewall peripherally surrounds each of the raised source region and raised drain region. The second sidewall extends above a top surface of the raised source region and raised drain region to define regions laterally delimited by the first and second sidewalls. A conductive material fills the regions to form a source contact and a drain contact to the raised source region and raised drain region, respectively.
US09922986B2

A method includes providing a semiconductor structure having a gate structure arrangement provided over a substrate. The gate structure arrangement includes one or more first gate structures and has a first sidewall and a second sidewall on opposite sides of the gate structure arrangement. A second gate structure is formed including a first portion at the first sidewall, a second portion at the second sidewall and a third portion connecting the first and second portions. Each of the first, second and third portions of the second gate structure includes a first part over the gate structure arrangement and a second part over a portion of the substrate adjacent the gate structure arrangement. After the formation of the second gate structure, one or more sections of the second gate structure are removed, wherein the first and second portions of the second gate structure are separated from each other.
US09922985B2

A method is provided for fabricating a semiconductor memory device. The method includes providing a substrate and forming a stacked layer on the substrate, where the stacked layer includes a tunneling dielectric layer and a floating gate layer sequentially formed on the substrate. The method also includes forming a plurality of stacked structures by etching the stacked layer and the substrate, where the spacing between the adjacent stacked structures forms a plurality of parallel first trenches. In addition, the method includes forming a plurality of second trenches and forming a plurality of third trenches. Moreover, the method includes forming a second dielectric layer on the floating gate layer and the side wall and bottom of the third trenches and forming a control gate layer on the second dielectric layer. Further, the method includes forming a plurality of fourth trenches and removing the sacrificial layer along the fourth trenches.
US09922982B1

An electric fuse structure is disclosed. The electric fuse preferably includes a substrate and a stacked capacitor on the substrate. Preferably, the stacked capacitor further includes: two or more bottom electrodes on the substrate; a capacitor dielectric layer on the two or more bottom electrodes; and a top electrode on the capacitor dielectric layer.
US09922981B2

An integrated circuit including a link or string of semiconductor memory cells, wherein each memory cell includes a floating body region for storing data. The link or string includes at least one contact configured to electrically connect the memory cells to at least one control line, and the number of contacts in the string or link is the same as or less than the number of memory cells in the string or link.
US09922980B2

A method of manufacturing a semiconductor device includes providing a semiconductor substrate, forming a diamond film on the substrate, etching the diamond film to form a first trench that extends to the substrate, epitaxially growing a first semiconductor material in the first trench to form a first semiconductor fin structure, and removing an upper portion of the diamond film to expose an upper portion of the first semiconductor fin structure.
US09922968B1

A process for making and using a semiconductor wafer includes instantiating first and second designs of experiments (DOEs), each comprised of at least two fill cells. The fill cells contain structures configured to obtain in-line data via non-contact electrical measurements (“NCEM”). The first DOE contains fill cells configured to enable non-contact (NC) detection of side-to-side shorts, and the second DOE contains fill cells configured to enable NC detection of chamfer shorts. The process may further include obtaining NC measurements from the first and/or second DOE(s) and using such measurements, at least in part, to selectively perform additional processing, metrology or inspection steps on the wafer, and/or on other wafer(s) currently being manufactured.
US09922964B1

A package structure and method for forming the same are provided. The package structure includes a substrate, and a device die formed over the substrate. The device die has a first height. The package structure includes a dummy die formed over the substrate and adjacent to the device die, and the dummy die has a second height. The second height is smaller than the first height. The package structure also includes a package layer formed between the device die and the dummy die.
US09922963B2

A light-emitting device includes a substrate, a light-emitting component, a wavelength conversion component, an adhesive and a reflective layer. The light-emitting component is disposed on the substrate. The wavelength conversion component includes a high-density phosphor layer and a lower-density phosphor layer. The adhesive is formed between the light-emitting device and the high-density phosphor layer. The reflective layer is formed above the substrate and covers a lateral surface of the light-emitting component, a lateral surface of the adhesive and a lateral surface of the wavelength conversion component.
US09922959B2

A semiconductor device includes a package substrate having a plurality of external connection terminals disposed on a first surface thereof and a plurality of internal connection terminals disposed on a second surface thereof and electrically connected with corresponding one of the external connection terminals, a first semiconductor chip stacked over the second surface of the package substrate and having a first flag pad for providing first information and a first internal circuit for adjusting a parameter by a first correction value in response to the first information provided from the first flag pad, and a second semiconductor chip stacked over the first semiconductor chip and having a second flag pad for providing second information and a second internal circuit for adjusting the parameter by a second correction value in response to the second information provided from the second flag pad.
US09922956B2

A microelectromechanical system (MEMS) bond release structure is provided for manufacturing of three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D IC) devices with two or more tiers. The MEMS bond release structure includes a MEMS sacrificial release layer which may have a pillar or post structure, or alternatively, a continuous sacrificial layer for bonding and release.
US09922950B2

A method for wafer-level packaging includes providing a substrate having a conductive metal pad formed on the surface of the substrate; forming a metal core on the top of the conductive metal pad with the metal core protruding from the surface of the substrate; then, forming an under bump metal layer on the top surface and the side surface of the metal core; and finally, forming a bump structure on the top of the under bump metal layer.
US09922946B2

A method of manufacturing a semiconductor device package includes placing a semiconductor chip on a carrier, covering the semiconductor chip with an encapsulation material to form an encapsulation body, providing a microwave component having at least one electrically conducting wall structure integrated in the encapsulation body, and forming an electrical interconnect configured to electrically couple the semiconductor chip and the microwave component.
US09922945B2

A packaged semiconductor device includes a communication pad formed in a side surface, which is operatively coupled to a communication circuit so as to enable the establishing of a wireless communication channel to an adjacently positioned packaged semiconductor device. The communication pad may be formed upon cutting a block including the packaged semiconductor device and an appropriately positioned and dimensioned conductor.
US09922942B2

A nanowire device includes a first component formed on a substrate and a second component disposed apart from the first component on the substrate. A nanowire is configured to connect the first component to the second component. An anchor pad is formed along a span of the nanowire and configured to support the nanowire along the span to prevent sagging.
US09922925B2

An electronic component housing package includes an insulating base including an upper surface, the insulating base including a first cut-out portion and a second cut-out portion which are provided on a lower surface of the insulating base. The first cut-out portion is formed by cutting into a lower part of a side surface of the insulating base and cutting out from the lower part to a lower surface of the insulating base. On the first cut-out portion are formed wiring conductors which are led from the lower surface of the insulating base and come to the upper surface of the insulating base through the insulating base via an inside wall surface of the first cut-out portion. The second cut-out portion is provided between the wiring conductors and extends from the inside wall surface of the first cut-out portion to the lower surface of the insulating base.
US09922917B2

The present disclosure relates to a semiconductor package. In an embodiment, the semiconductor package includes a substrate having a lateral surface and an upper surface, a semiconductor device mounted to the substrate, and a molding compound covering the lateral surface and the upper surface of the substrate and at least a portion of the semiconductor device. A surface of the semiconductor device is substantially coplanar with a surface of the molding compound.
US09922913B2

A semiconductor package includes terminals, each having an exposed surface that is flush with a bottom surface of the semiconductor package, and a layer of interconnection routings disposed within the semiconductor package. At least one interconnection routing is electrically coupled with a terminal and extends planarly therefrom. The semiconductor package also includes at least one die coupled with the layer of interconnection routings. In some embodiments, the semiconductor package also includes one or more additional intermediary layers. Each intermediary layer includes a via layer and an associated routing layer. The associated routing layer includes associated routings. At least one associated routing is electrically coupled with a terminal and extends planarly therefrom. Each via layer couples two routing layers. The semiconductor package also includes a locking mechanism for fastening a package compound with the interconnection routings and the terminals.
US09922912B1

In some examples, a device comprises a first leadframe segment, a second leadframe segment, and a first transistor, wherein the first transistor is electrically connected to the first leadframe segment. The device further comprises a second transistor, wherein the second transistor is electrically connected to the second leadframe segment. The device further comprises a conductive element, wherein the conductive element is electrically connected to the first transistor and the second transistor. The device further comprises a capacitor, wherein a first end of the capacitor is electrically connected to the first leadframe segment and a second end of the capacitor is electrically connected to the second leadframe segment.
US09922904B2

A semiconductor device includes a planar first lead frame including a die pad, a semiconductor chip coupled to the die pad, and a second lead frame coupled to the first lead frame. The second lead frame includes leads arranged such that the die pad is downset with respect to the leads.
US09922901B2

A thermally conductive sheet including a sheet body that is a cured product of a thermally conductive resin composition including a binder resin and carbon fibers covered with insulating coating films, wherein the carbon fibers exposed on a surface of the sheet body are not covered with the insulating coating films and are covered with a component of the binder resin.
US09922898B2

The present disclosure relates to a thermally enhanced semiconductor package, which includes a module substrate, a thinned flip chip die over the substrate, a first mold compound component, and a thermally enhanced mold compound component. The first mold compound component resides over the module substrate, surrounds the thinned flip chip die, and extends above an upper surface of the thinned flip chip die to form a cavity over the upper surface of the thinned flip chip die. The thermally enhanced mold compound component includes a lower portion filling a lower region of the cavity and residing over the upper surface of the thinned flip chip die, and an upper portion filling an upper region of the cavity and residing over the lower portion. A first average thermal conductivity of the lower portion is at least 1.2 times greater than a second average thermal conductivity of the upper portion.
US09922895B2

A method includes forming a polymer layer covering a metal via in a wafer, grooving the wafer to form a trench, wherein the trench extends from a top surface of the polymer layer into the wafer, and performing a die-saw on the wafer to separate the wafer into a plurality of device dies. A kerf passes through the trench. One of the device dies is placed over a carrier. An encapsulating material is dispensed over and around the device die. The method further includes pressing and curing the encapsulating material. After the encapsulating material is cured, a sidewall of the polymer layer is tilted. A planarization is performed on the encapsulating material until the polymer layer and the metal via are exposed. A redistribution line is formed over and electrically coupled to the metal via.
US09922891B2

A semiconductor package may include a first output test pad and a second output test pad disposed on a first surface of an insulating film, and a semiconductor chip disposed between the first output test pad and the second output test pad on a second surface opposing to the first surface of the insulating film.
US09922889B2

A susceptor is preheated through light irradiation by a halogen lamp before the first semiconductor wafer of a lot as a processing target is transferred into a chamber. The temperature of the susceptor is measured by a radiation thermometer. A control unit is configured to control the output of the halogen lamp so that the temperature of the susceptor reaches a stable temperature based on a result of the measurement of the temperature of the susceptor by the radiation thermometer. The stable temperature of the susceptor is the temperature of the susceptor when the temperature of the susceptor is risen to a constant temperature by continuously performing light irradiation heating on a plurality of semiconductor wafers in the chamber without heating the susceptor.
US09922882B1

A manufacturing method of a semiconductor structure includes the following steps. A substrate is provided, and an epitaxial structure is formed on the substrate. A first dielectric layer covering the epitaxial structure and the substrate is formed. A patterned hard mask layer is formed on the first dielectric layer. A second dielectric layer is formed on the patterned hard mask layer and the first dielectric layer. A patterned photoresist layer is formed on the second dielectric layer. A dry etching process is performed with the pattern hard mask layer and the patterned photoresist layer as masks. The dry etching process forms a contact opening in the first dielectric layer, and the contact opening exposes at least a part of the epitaxial structure. A wet etching process is performed after the dry etching process, and the wet etching process removes the patterned hard mask layer and the second dielectric layer together.
US09922881B2

A method for fabricating a semiconductor device structure is shown. A gate dielectric layer is formed on a substrate. A portion of the gate dielectric layer, which is located on a part of the substrate in which an S/D region is to be formed, is removed. A gate electrode is formed on the remaining gate dielectric layer. A spacer is formed on the sidewall of the gate electrode and the sidewall of the gate dielectric layer. The S/D region is then formed in the part of the substrate beside the spacer.
US09922878B2

A method for making a tri-gate FinFET and a dual-gate FinFET includes providing a semiconductor on insulator (SOI) wafer having a semiconductor layer over an insulator layer. The method further includes forming a hard mask on the semiconductor layer and patterning the hard mask to form first and second cap portions. The method also includes etching the semiconductor layer to form first and second fins using the first and second cap portions as an etch mask. The method also includes removing the second cap portion to expose the top surface of the second fin and forming a gate dielectric layer on the first and second fins. The method further includes forming a conductive layer over the gate dielectric layer, selectively etching the conductive layer to form first and second gate structures, forming an interlayer dielectric layer over the gate structures, and planarizing the interlayer dielectric layer using the first cap portion as a polish stop.
US09922862B2

A device for detaching a first substrate from a second substrate in a detaching direction (L) with: at least two elements guided crosswise to the detaching direction (L) and in a radial direction (R) to the first substrate for clamping the first substrate crosswise to the detaching direction (L), a substrate holding device for holding the second substrate, and detaching means for detaching the first substrate from the second substrate by moving the first substrate, attached by the clamping elements, in the detaching direction (L) and/or by moving the substrate holding device opposite to the detaching direction (L). In addition, this invention relates to a corresponding method.
US09922856B2

The present invention relates to a support comprising: an electrically conductive biased table (10) connected to a high voltage power supply (12) and supported on an electrically insulating stand (40); an electrically insulating substrate carrier (20) in the form of a cylinder, its top face presenting a bearing plane designed to receive a substrate (50); legs (15) standing on the biased table (10) in order to support the bottom face of the substrate carrier (20); and at least one electrically conductive connection (201, 202, 203, 31, 30) for connecting the bearing plane to the biased table (10). The support is remarkable in that the substrate carrier (20) incorporates a heating resistance (26).
US09922852B2

The invention simplifies airbag calibration. A pressure calibration jig calibrates pressure to be applied to a plurality of airbags disposed inside a top ring for holding and pressing a wafer against a polishing pad. The pressure calibration jig includes a plurality of first passages capable of communicating with the plurality of airbags, respectively; a second passage which combines and connects the plurality of first passages to a pressure calibration sensor; and a flow control portion configured to allow a fluid to flow through the first passage of the plurality of first passages, which first passage corresponds to an airbag selected for pressure calibration, in a direction from the selected airbag toward the second passage, and also configured to prevent the fluid from flowing through the first passages other than the first passage corresponding to the selected airbag in a direction from the second passage toward the airbags.
US09922851B2

A wafer bonding method includes placing a top wafer on a top bonding framework including a plurality of outlet holes around a periphery of the top bonding framework. A bottom wafer is placed on a bottom bonding framework that includes a plurality of inlet holes around a periphery of the bottom bonding framework. The top bonding framework is in overlapping relation to the bottom bonding framework such that a gap exist between the top wafer and the bottom wafer. A gas stream is circulated through the gap between the top wafer and the bottom wafer entering the gap through one or more of the plurality of inlet holes and exiting the gap through one or more of the plurality of outlet holes. The gas stream replaces any existing ambient moisture from the gap between the top wafer and the bottom wafer.
US09922848B2

A rinsing liquid adheres to a substrate subjected to a cleaning process. The rinsing liquid on the substrate is first replaced with IPA liquid. While the substrate covered with the IPA liquid is held in a dryer chamber, liquid carbon dioxide is supplied to the surface of the substrate. Liquid nitrogen is supplied to cool down the interior of the dryer chamber. This solidifies the liquid carbon dioxide on the substrate into solid carbon dioxide. Thereafter, the pressure in the dryer chamber is returned to atmospheric pressure, and gaseous nitrogen is supplied into the dryer chamber. Thus, the temperature in the dryer chamber increases. The solid carbon dioxide on the surface of the substrate is sublimated, and is hence removed from the substrate. All of the steps are performed while carbon dioxide is not in a supercritical state but in a non-supercritical state.
US09922846B2

A method of manufacturing a semiconductor package includes preparing a package substrate including a semiconductor chip mounting region. A semiconductor chip is mounted in the semiconductor chip mounting region. A dam surrounding the semiconductor chip is formed. The formation of the dam includes depositing a first solution having a temperature below a set first temperature. A region under the semiconductor chip and a region defined by the dam are filled with an underfill by depositing the first solution having a temperature equal to or higher than the set first temperature.
US09922844B2

The invention provides a semiconductor package and a method for fabricating a base for a semiconductor package. The semiconductor package includes a base. The base has a device-attach surface. A radio-frequency (RF) device is embedded in the base. The RF device is close to the device-attach surface.
US09922840B2

Methods of selectively etching an exposed portion of a patterned substrate relative to a second exposed portion are described. The etching process is a gas phase etch which uses an oxidizing precursor unexcited in any plasma prior to combination with plasma effluents formed in a remote plasma from an inert precursor. The plasma effluents may be combined with the oxidizing precursor in a plasma-free remote chamber region and/or in a plasma-free substrate processing region. The combination of the plasma effluents excites the oxidizing precursor and removes material from the exposed portion of the patterned substrate. The etch rate is controllable and selectable by adjusting the flow rate of the oxidizing precursor or the unexcited/plasma-excited flow rate ratio.
US09922838B2

Methods for facilitating fabricating semiconductor structures are provided which include: providing a multilayer structure including a semiconductor layer, the semiconductor layer including a dopant and having an increased conductivity; selectively increasing, using electrochemical processing, porosity of the semiconductor layer, at least in part, the selectively increasing porosity utilizing the increased conductivity of the semiconductor layer; and removing, at least in part, the semiconductor layer with the selectively increased porosity from the multilayer structure. By way of example, the selectively increasing porosity may include selectively, anodically oxidizing, at least in part, the semiconductor layer of the multilayer structure.
US09922835B2

A Plating method includes a first plating process S21 of supplying a first plating liquid to a substrate 2 having a recess 12 and forming a first plating layer 13; and a second plating process of supplying a second plating liquid to the substrate 2 and forming a second plating layer 14 on the first plating layer 13 after the first plating process S21. Here, a concentration of an additive contained in the first plating liquid is different from that in the second plating liquid. The first plating process S21 includes a process of forming the first plating layer of a discontinuous film or a particle shape on the substrate 2 by rotating the substrate 2 at a first speed and a process of rotating the substrate 2 at a second speed and at a third speed repeatedly.
US09922833B2

Semiconductor devices and methods of manufacturing such devices are described herein. According to embodiments, the semiconductor device can be made by forming a dielectric layer at a first region and at a second region of a semiconductor substrate. A gate conductor layer is disposed over the dielectric formed in the first and the second regions of the semiconductor substrate, and the second region is masked. A split gate memory cell is formed in the first region of the semiconductor substrate with a first gate length. The first region is then masked, and the second region is etched to define a logic gate that has a second gate length. The first and second gate lengths can be different.
US09922830B2

Techniques for forming dual III-V semiconductor channel materials to enable fabrication of different device types on the same chip/wafer are provided. In one aspect, a method of forming dual III-V semiconductor channel materials on a wafer includes the steps of: providing a wafer having a first III-V semiconductor layer on an oxide; forming a second III-V semiconductor layer on top of the first III-V semiconductor layer, wherein the second III-V semiconductor layer comprises a different material with an electron affinity that is less than an electron affinity of the first III-V semiconductor layer; converting the first III-V semiconductor layer in at least one second active area to an insulator using ion implantation; and removing the second III-V semiconductor layer from at least one first active area selective to the first III-V semiconductor layer.
US09922829B2

In a silicon carbide semiconductor device having a trench type MOS gate structure, the present invention makes it possible to inhibit the operating characteristic from varying. A p-type channel layer having an impurity concentration distribution homogeneous in the depth direction at the sidewall part of a trench is formed by applying angled ion implantation of p-type impurities to a p−type body layer formed by implanting ions having implantation energies different from each other two or more times after the trench is formed. Further, although the p-type impurities are introduced also into an n−-type drift layer at the bottom part of the trench when the p-type channel layer is formed by the angled ion implantation, a channel length is stipulated by forming an n-type layer having an impurity concentration higher than those of the p-type channel layer, the p−-type body layer, and the n−-type drift layer between the p−-type body layer and the n−-type drift layer. By those measures, it is possible to inhibit the operating characteristic from varying.
US09922826B2

Embodiments of the present disclosure are directed towards an integrated circuit (IC) die. In embodiments, an IC die may include a semiconductor substrate, a group III-Nitride or II-VI wurtzite layer disposed over the semiconductor substrate, and a plurality of buffer structures at least partially embedded in the group III-Nitride or II-VI wurtzite layer. In some embodiments, each of the plurality of buffer structures may include a central member disposed over the semiconductor substrate, a lower lateral member disposed over the semiconductor substrate and extending laterally away from the central member, and an upper lateral member disposed over the central member and extending laterally from the central member in an opposite direction from the lower lateral member. The plurality of buffer structures may be positioned in a staggered arrangement to terminate defects of the group III-Nitride or II-VI wurtzite layer. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed.
US09922823B1

An apparatus and method for creating nanometric delta doped layers in epitaxial diamond includes providing a dummy gas load with gas impedance equivalent to the reactor, and switching gas supplied between the reactor and the gas dummy load without stopping either flow, thereby enabling rapid flow and rapid gas switching without turbulence. An atomically smooth, undamaged substrate can be prepared, preferably in the (100) plane, by etching the surface after polishing to remove subsurface damage. A gas phase chemical getter reactant such as hydrogen disulfide can be used to suppress incorporation of residual boron into the intrinsic layers. Embodiments can produce interfaces between doped and mobile layers that provide at least 100 cm2/Vsec carrier mobility and 1013 cm−2 sheet carrier concentration.
US09922815B2

Embodiments of the present disclosure generally relate to an improved adapter for simplified lamps for use as a source of heat radiation in a rapid thermal processing (RTP) chamber. In one embodiment, a lamp assembly is provided. The lamp element includes a capsule having a filament disposed therein, a press seal extending from the capsule, and an adapter having a receptacle contoured to receive at least a portion of the press seal, wherein the press seal is removably engaged with the adapter.
US09922810B2

The present disclosure provides methods and systems for improved detection and/or quantification of selenium (Se) and/or silicon (Si) in samples. In certain embodiment, the methods and systems feature the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a reaction gas in a reaction cell chamber, such as a dynamic reaction cell (DRC), of an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS). It is found that the use of CO2 as a reaction gas effectively eliminates (or substantially reduces) interfering ionic species for the analytes Se and Si, particularly in samples with complex matrices, and/or in samples with low levels of analyte, thereby enabling more accurate detection of analyte at lower detection limits and in samples having complex matrices.
US09922806B2

An etching method is provided. In the etching method, a silicon oxide film is etched by using plasma in a first condition. In the first condition, a surface temperature of a substrate is controlled to have a temperature lower than −35 degrees C., and the plasma is generated from a hydrogen-containing gas and a fluorine-containing gas by using first radio frequency power output from a first radio frequency power source and second radio frequency power output from a second radio frequency power source. Next, the silicon oxide film is etched by using the plasma in a second condition. In the second condition, the output of the second radio frequency power from the second radio frequency power source is stopped. The silicon oxide film is etched by using the plasma alternately in the first condition and in the second condition multiple times.
US09922803B2

The invention provides a plasma processing device, wherein the upper electrode and the lower electrode are in the vacuum chamber. The chip is placed in the lower electrode. The first plate is placed between the upper electrode and the lower electrode, and the first plate includes a plurality of first voids. The second plate is placed between the first plate and the lower electrode, and the second plate includes a plurality of second voids. The high frequency power is provided by the upper electrode and the lower electrode in the vacuum chamber, and the plasma is generated between the third plate and the upper electrode. The plasma is filtered by the third void, the first void, and the second void.
US09922802B2

A power supply system 90 includes high frequency power supplies 92 and 93 that supply a high frequency power for plasma generation; a DC power supply 91 that supplies a DC voltage to be applied to an electrode; and control unit 94 that controls the high frequency power supplies 92 and 93 and the DC power supply 91 including a first DC power supply unit 101 that supplies a first negative DC voltage V1, a second DC power supply unit 102 that supplies a second negative DC voltage V2 having a higher absolute value than the first negative DC voltage V1, and a selecting circuit 103 that selectively connects the first DC power supply unit 101 and the second DC power supply unit 102 to the electrode; and a discharging circuit 104 connected with a node 109 between the first DC power supply unit 101 and the selecting circuit 103.
US09922789B2

A fuse (1) includes a fuse element (10) having a fusible portion (13) provided between opposed inner edges (11a, 12a) of flat plate portions (11, 12), and an insulating housing (50) covering the inner edge sides of the flat plate portions and the fusible portion in a state in which outer edge (11c, 12c) sides of the flat plate portions are protruded outward from slits at respective end walls (55, 58) of the insulating housing (50). The outer edge sides of the flat plate portions are formed as terminal portions (21, 22) each having a thickness twice as large as the thickness of the flat plate portion, and protrusions (11b, 12b) provided on upper and lower edges of the flat plate portions abut against inner surfaces of the end walls (55, 58) of the insulating housing (50).
US09922783B2

A method is for making an electronic device including forming a multilayer circuit board having a non-planar three-dimensional shape defining a membrane switch recess therein, the multilayer circuit board including at least one liquid crystal polymer (LCP) layer, and at least one electrically conductive pattern layer thereon defining at least one membrane switch electrode adjacent the membrane switch recess to define a membrane switch. The method also includes filling the membrane switch recess with a compressible dielectric material, and positioning at least one biasing member in the membrane switch recess.
US09922776B2

The present invention is a polymer supercapacitor and method for making such a supercapacitor. The supercapacitor is formed by loading a flexible electrode plate of a high surface area material with metal oxide particles, then encasing the electrode plate in a coating of a polymer electrolyte. The electrode plate is then folded in half and flexible plates attached to the upper and lower surfaces to form the supercapacitor.
US09922773B2

The present invention provides an ionic polymer membrane prepared by irradiating the compound represented by formula 1 and an ionic polymer. The ionic polymer membrane of the present invention has the advantage of excellent processability, low production costs, high ion exchange capacity and high durability. Also, the method for preparing the ionic polymer membrane of the invention not only facilitates the production of the ionic polymer membrane in a 3-dimensional network structure which has high ion exchange capacity and high dimensional stability but also makes it easy to produce membranes in various forms and sizes by using the composition itself as a coating solution with using the commercialized inexpensive ionic polymer without additional high-risk multi-step introduction process of ionic exchange group. In the aspect of preparation process, the simplicity of the process and suitable for the mass-production, and the production cost is reduced by saving the processing time as much as minimum 1/15 (56 min.) in comparison to the processing time of the conventional thermal-crosslinking (1 hour).
US09922769B2

Three-phase electrical can capacitor with three star-connected capacitances in a housing, characterized in that two polymer film capacitor coils (10, 12), which each have a hollow capacitor coil core (14) and are provided on the end sides with in each case one end contact layer (16, 18 and 20, 22), are arranged one above the other in the form of a column in the housing, wherein one (10) of the two polymer film capacitor coils (10, 12) has one individual capacitance and the other (12) of the two polymer film capacitor coils has two individual capacitances, and all of the individual capacitances are equal in size.
US09922761B2

A device for transmitting data includes a transmitting coil configured to receive and transmit the data signal and to generate a magnetic field, and a magnetic material provided on one surface of the transmitting coil. A ratio of a residual magnetic flux density and a saturation magnetic flux density of the magnetic material is greater in a direction that the material is magnetized than in a direction the material is not magnetized.
US09922759B2

A unibody magnetic structure having layers of variably magnetized material is disclosed. The unibody magnetic structure can be formed by way of additive manufacturing, such as by a stereolithographic (SLA) process or a selective laser sintering (SLS) process. The SLA process can involve forming the structure from a molten pool of polymer material, with the material having a magnetic component dissolved therein. The SLS process can involve sintering the structure from a powder having a magnetic component. As each layer is formed, the layer can be selectively magnetized with a given polarity and strength. The magnetization of each formed layer can vary, such that the final structure comprises numerous layers having different shapes and sizes, as well as different levels and polarities of magnetization.
US09922750B2

An electrical insulating paper having 40-80 wt % of aramid fibrid, 10-50 wt % of aramid pulp, and 10-50 wt % of aramid short-cut. The aramid pulp is para-aramid pulp with a length of 0.5-6 mm and has a Schopper Riegler value of 15-85; the aramid fibrid is para-aramid fibrid; and the aramid short-cut is para-aramid short-cut. The paper shows a high dielectric strength and tensile index. A method for manufacturing the paper and an insulated conductor that includes the paper.
US09922745B2

An aggregate of carbon nanotubes has an acid adsorption amount equal to or greater than 0.6 mass % and equal to or less than 12 mass %, which is obtained by subjecting a starting material composition containing carbon nanotubes to a two-stage wet oxidation treatment. A method of producing an aggregate of carbon nanotubes includes a primary oxidation treatment step, wherein a starting material composition containing carbon nanotubes is subjected to a wet oxidation treatment to give a primary treated aggregate of carbon nanotubes having a ratio (G/D ratio) of the height of G band to that of D band in Raman spectroscopic analysis at 532 nm wavelength equal to or greater than 30; and a secondary oxidation treatment step of performing a wet oxidation treatment under an oxidizing condition stronger than that of the primary oxidation treatment step.
US09922742B2

A method of using hydrogen- or lithium-containing manganese oxide having a spinel crystal structure as a tritium adsorbent to trap tritium from tritium-containing water makes it possible to inexpensively separate tritium from water.
US09922735B2

The invention relates to a device for closing a pipe opening, opening upwards, of a drive casing pipe accommodating the control rod drive of a boiling water reactor, said device comprising a closure plug with a plug housing, opening downwards, a sealing element guided axially so as to be movable within the plug housing, which element has a sealing face providing a sealing contact with an annular counter face defining the pipe opening, a locking element provided to fix the plug housing on the drive casing pipe, and a spring, which is supported by the upper end thereof on the plug housing and by the lower end thereof on the sealing element and holds said element in a lower end position.
US09922729B2

Apparatus and methods for soft post package repair are disclosed. One such apparatus can include memory cells in a package, volatile memory configured to store defective address data responsive to entering a soft post-package repair mode, a match logic circuit and a decoder. The match logic circuit can generate a match signal indicating whether address data corresponding to an address to be accessed matches the defective address data stored in the volatile memory. The decoder can select a first group of the memory cells to be accessed instead of a second group of the memory cells responsive to the match signal indicating that the address data corresponding to the address to be accessed matches the defective address data stored in the volatile memory. The second group of the memory cells can correspond to a replacement address associated with other defective address data stored in non-volatile memory of the apparatus.
US09922725B2

In accordance with the present description, a device includes an internal defect detection and repair circuit which includes a self-test logic circuit built in within the device and a self-repair logic circuit also built in within the device. In one embodiment, the built in self-test logic circuit may be configured to automatically identify defective memory cells in a memory. Upon identifying one or more defective memory cells, the built in self-repair logic circuit may be configured to automatically repair the defective memory cells by replacing defective cells with spare cells within the memory. In one embodiment, data patterns are generated as a function of memory addresses and periodic address offsets.
US09922721B2

An anti-fuse type one-time programmable (OTP) memory cell array includes a plurality of unit cells which are respectively located at cross points of a plurality of rows and a plurality of columns, a well region shared by the plurality of unit cells, a plurality of anti-fuse gates respectively disposed in the plurality of columns to intersect the well region, a plurality of source/drain regions respectively disposed in portions of the well region between the plurality of anti-fuse gates, and a plurality of drain regions respectively disposed in portions of the well region located at one sides of the anti-fuse gates arrayed in a last column, which are opposite to the anti-fuse gates arrayed in a first column. Each of the unit cells includes one anti-fuse transistor having a MOS transistor structure without a selection transistor.
US09922714B1

Apparatuses and techniques are described for temperature dependent erase in non-volatile storage. In one aspect, select gate voltage magnitude depends on temperature. This temperature dependent select gate voltage may be applied to a control gate of a select transistor while applying an erase voltage to a bit line and/or source line coupled to the select transistor. This can help assure that there is sufficient GIDL current for efficient erase at lower temperatures. In one aspect, a control circuit increases the duration of the erase voltage that is applied to the source line and/or the bit line at lower temperatures. In one aspect, the magnitude of the first erase voltage in a sequence depends on the present temperature.
US09922713B2

Provided is an electronic device, such as a flash memory device and/or a write-once-read-once memory device, where the device has a polyoxometallate that is capable of providing and/or accepting one or more electrons. The polyoxometallate may have a Wells-Dawson structure and the polyoxometallate may comprise a cage and optionally one or more guests. Also provided is a method of using the memory device, the method comprising the step of providing to or accepting from the polyoxometalate one or more electrons to provide a polyoxometalate in a reduced or oxidized state.
US09922712B2

A non-volatile memory cell includes a selection transistor having an insulated selection gate embedded in a semiconducting substrate region. A semiconducting source region contacts a lower part of the insulated selection gate. A state transistor includes a floating gate having an insulated part embedded in the substrate region above an upper part of the insulated selection gate, a semiconducting drain region, and a control gate insulated from the floating gate and located partially above the floating gate. The source region, the drain region, the substrate region, and the control gate are individually polarizable.
US09922709B2

Methods for reducing leakage currents through unselected memory cells of a memory array during a memory operation are described. In some cases, the leakage currents through the unselected memory cells of the memory array may be reduced by setting an adjustable resistance bit line structure connected to the unselected memory cells into a non-conducting state. The adjustable resistance bit line structure may comprise a bit line structure in which the resistance of an intrinsic (or near intrinsic) polysilicon portion of the bit line structure may be adjusted via an application of a voltage to a select gate portion of the bit line structure that is not directly connected to the intrinsic polysilicon portion. The intrinsic polysilicon portion may be set into a conducting state or a non-conducting state based on the voltage applied to the select gate portion.
US09922703B2

A multiport memory includes an address control circuit, a memory array, a data input-output circuit and a control circuit and first and second address signals and a clock signal are input through two ports. The address control circuit includes first and second latch circuits, a selection circuit, a decode circuit and a word line drive circuit. The first address signal input through one port is input into the first latch circuit and the second address signal input through the other port is input into the selection circuit. The selection circuit selects one of the first and second address signals, the second latch circuit latches and outputs the selected address signal to the decode circuit. The word line drive circuit drives a word line on the basis of an output signal from the decode circuit.
US09922702B1

Described is an apparatus which comprises: a pass-gate; a sleep transistor configured as a diode-connected device controllable by the pass-gate; and a word-line driver coupled to the sleep transistor and the pass-gate.
US09922694B2

An apparatus includes a first word line, a second word line and a control. The second word line is contiguous to the first word line. The control circuit includes a first defective address storing circuit and a first detection circuit. The first defective address storing circuit stores first enable information along with first defective address. The first enable information indicates whether or not the second word line is functional. The first detection circuit provides a first signal when the first word line is accessed. The first signal indicates whether or not the second word line is functional. The control circuit activates the second word line when the first signal indicates that the second word line is functional and does not activate the second word line when the first signal indicates that the second word line is not functional.
US09922685B2

A semiconductor device includes: a source line; a bit line; a word line; a memory cell connected to the bit line and the word line; a driver circuit which drives a plurality of second signal lines and a plurality of word lines so as to select the memory cell specified by an address signal; a potential generating circuit which generates a writing potential and a plurality of reading potentials to supply to a writing circuit and a reading circuit; and a control circuit which selects one of a plurality of voltages for correction on a basis of results of the reading circuit comparing a potential of the bit line with the plurality of reading potentials.
US09922680B2

There are disclosed various methods, apparatuses and computer program products for video encoding. According to an embodiment, an encoding method comprises including a static media item into a container file; including one or more media tracks into the container file; indicating, in the file, that the static media item and one or more entities form a group; and indicating, in the file, a grouping type for the group. According to an embodiment, a decoding method comprises parsing, from a container file, that a static media item and one or more entities form a group; parsing, from the container file, a grouping type for the group; determining a processing for the static media item and the one or more of the entities based on the group and the grouping type.
US09922674B2

A magnetic recording and reproducing device according to an embodiment includes a magnetic recording medium and a controller. The magnetic recording medium includes in sequence a substrate, a storage layer, an exchange layer, and a surface recording layer. The controller executes following steps (1) to (6): (1) magnetically recording first information on the surface recording layer; (2) transferring the first information recorded on the surface recording layer to the storage layer; (3) magnetically recording second information on the surface recording layer; (4) magnetically reproducing the second information from the surface recording layer; (5) transferring the first information recorded on the storage layer to the surface recording layer; and (6) magnetically reproducing the first information transferred to the surface recording layer.
US09922672B1

A magnetic read apparatus has an air-bearing surface (ABS) and includes a read sensor and a rear magnetic bias structure. The read sensor includes first and second free layers, a spacer layer and a rear surface opposite to the ABS. The spacer layer is nonmagnetic and between the first and second free layers. The read sensor has a track width in a cross track direction parallel to the ABS. The rear magnetic bias structure magnetically biases the read sensor a stripe height direction perpendicular to the ABS. The read sensor is between the ABS and the rear magnetic bias structure. The rear magnetic bias structure has a width in the cross track direction and a length in the stripe height direction. The length is greater than the width. The width of the rear magnetic bias structure is substantially equal to the track width of the read sensor.
US09922670B1

A data reader may have a magnetoresistive stack consisting of at least magnetically free and magnetically fixed structures with the magnetically fixed structure set to a first magnetization direction by a pinning structure separated from an air bearing surface by a front shield portion of a magnetic shield. The pinning structure can meet the front shield portion with a planar sidewall angled at 10° or less with respect to the ABS.
US09922662B2

A method comprising: receiving an utterance, an original pitch contour of the utterance, and a target pitch contour for the utterance, wherein the utterance comprises a plurality of consecutive frames, and wherein at least one of said frames is a voiced frame; calculating an original intensity contour of said utterance; generating a pitch modified utterance based on the target pitch contour; calculating an intensity modification factor for each of said frames, based on said original pitch contour and on said target pitch contour, to produce a sequence of intensity modification factors corresponding to said plurality of consecutive frames; calculating a final intensity contour for said utterance by applying said intensity modification factors to said original intensity contour; and generating a coherently modified speech signal by time dependent scaling of the intensity of said pitch modified utterance according to said final intensity contour.
US09922659B2

Several embodiments include a remote tracker for a videography drone. The remote tracker can include a spatial information sensor and a microphone configured to capture audio data surrounding the remote tracker. The remote tracker can also include a logic control component configured to decorate the audio data with location-based metadata or temporal metadata. A network interface of the remote tracker can communicate with the videography drone, including streaming the audio data captured by the microphone to the videography drone.
US09922653B2

Systems and methods of validating transcriptions of natural language content using crowdsourced validation jobs are provided herein. In various implementations, a transcription pair comprising natural language content and text corresponding to a transcription of the natural language content may be gathered. A group of validation devices may be selected for reviewing the transcription pair. A crowdsourced validation job may be created for the group of validation devices. The crowdsourced validation job may be provided to the group of validation devices. One or more votes representing whether or not the text accurately represents the natural language content may be received from the group of validation devices. Based on the one or more votes received, the transcription pair may be stored in a validated transcription library, which may be used to process end-user voice data.
US09922647B2

A method for reducing response time in a speech interface including constructing a partially completed word sequence from a partially received utterance from a speaker received by an audio sensor, modeling a remainder portion using a processor based on a rich predictive model to predict the remainder portion, and responding to the partially completed word sequence and the predicted remainder portion using a natural language vocalization generator with a vocalization, wherein the vocalization is prepared before a complete utterance is received from the speaker and conveyed to the speaker by an audio transducer.
US09922640B2

The disclosure describe a system and method for detecting one or more segments of desired speech utterances from an audio stream using timings of events from other modes that are correlated to the timings of the desired segments of speech. The redundant information from other modes results in a highly accurate and robust utterance detection.
US09922633B2

A device for reading waveform data of a musical tone from a primary storage device and transferring the read waveform data to a secondary storage device for tone reproduction includes a processor configured to perform: retrieving, for each waveform of a plurality of waveforms that represent a musical tone stored in the primary storage device, segment group information from the primary storage device; retrieving the plurality of waveforms that represent the musical tone from the primary storage device, the waveform group retrieval process retrieving a waveform or waveforms, among the plurality of waveforms, that have the same segment group information as a group; and writing, as a single group, the waveform or waveforms, among the plurality of waveforms, that have the same segment group information onto one of prescribed storage segments that are storage regions of prescribed sizes in the secondary storage device.
US09922629B1

An improved apparatus for displaying sheet music is an electronic tablet having the ability to upload and download sheet music to the device as well as having the ability to provide a music composer with the tools to put the music easily and conveniently in printed form. Sound recognition allows the tablet to recognize audio sequences of music and locate the place in the electronic music sheets on the tablet to keep the proper location displayed for the user-performer, including automatically turning electronic pages during the playing of a piece of music.
US09922628B1

A vibrato assembly for a keyboard percussion instrument comprises a motor and a vibrato fan or disc assembly. A motor (510) is responsive to a controller (1000), a run/stop switch (1035), and a potentiometer (1020). Pulleys (100A, 100B′, 515) and a timing belt (520) couple rotation of the motor to an assembly of resonator or vibrato fans (720) via one or more magnets (120) or magnetically susceptible members to isolate vibrations. A sensor is activated by one of the magnets to sense the rotational position of a pulley when the fans are oriented vertically. When a run/stop switch 1035 is in a “stop” condition, sensor 525 signals controller 1000 to stop the motor, thereby leaving the fans vertical so that resonant tubes (725) are in an open condition when the vibrato function is stopped.
US09922619B2

Disclosed herein is a computing device configured to send display data to a display through a near-field communication (NFC) interface. The computing device includes a chassis, a primary display, and a near-field communication interface to transmit display data to a secondary display.
US09922614B2

A source driver circuit includes a receiver, a plurality of amplifying buffers, and a control logic circuit. The receiver receives a data signal and a control signal through an input terminal. Each of the amplifying buffers outputs a driving signal generated based on the image data signal through an output terminal. The control logic circuit controls the receiver and the plurality of amplifying buffers based on the control signal. When a power-down signal is provided to the receiver, the control logic circuit is to turn off at least one of the receiver and the plurality of amplifying buffers.
US09922608B2

An electronic device may generate content that is to be displayed on a display. The display may have an array of liquid crystal display pixels for displaying image frames of the content. The image frames may be displayed with positive and negative polarities to help reduce charge accumulation effects. A charge accumulation tracker may analyze the image frames to determine when there is a risk of excess charge accumulation. The charge accumulation tracker may analyze information on gray levels, frame duration, and frame polarity. The charge accumulation tracker may compute a charge accumulation metric for entire image frames or may process subregions of each frame separately. When subregions are processed separately, each subregion may be individually monitored for a risk of excess charge accumulation.
US09922596B2

The OLED voltage of a selected pixel is extracted from the pixel produced when the pixel is programmed so that the pixel current is a function of the OLED voltage. One method for extracting the OLED voltage is to first program the pixel in a way that the current is not a function of OLED voltage, and then in a way that the current is a function of OLED voltage. During the latter stage, the programming voltage is changed so that the pixel current is the same as the pixel current when the pixel was programmed in a way that the current was not a function of OLED voltage. The difference in the two programming voltages is then used to extract the OLED voltage.
US09922592B2

In one example, a method for controlling a display with a digital signal includes detecting a binary value from a timing controller, the binary value corresponding to a portion of an image to be displayed. The method can also include determining a previous binary value from the timing controller and calculating a difference between the binary value from the timing controller and the previous binary value from the timing controller. Furthermore, the method can include generating an encoded signal based on the difference and transmitting the encoded signal to a display panel.
US09922587B2

This disclosure provides a pixel structure and a driving method thereof, a display panel and a display device. The pixel structure comprises: a plurality of repeating groups; each repeating group comprising three sub-pixels of different colors arranged in row direction; positions of repeating groups of adjacent rows being staggered for one and a half sub-pixels in column direction. In the above pixel structure, three sub-pixels constitute two pixels, which can, under a relatively low physical resolution, realize a relatively high resolution through sharing sub-pixels by a plurality of pixel units.
US09922584B2

The present invention relates to a three-dimensional smart messenger envelope comprising: a main body having contents accommodated therein, and a cover integrally formed with the main body to cover the opening of the main body, wherein the main body and the cover have an overlap portion therebetween when being sealed with each other, the main body includes an advertisement means on the overlap portion, and the advertisement means has a cutoff line formed therearound and includes an advertisement display part that has both side surfaces formed to be cut away or torn off and therefore folded toward the interior of the main body. While the advertisement display part is folded toward the interior of the main body and the cover is sealed, when the cover is open, the advertisement means is located on the inner surface of the cover, and the folded advertisement display part protrudes toward the front of a receiver by repulsive force.
US09922567B2

A system and method is described in which vehicles are configured to collect driver and vehicle event data, selectively compress and encode the collected driver and vehicle event data, and communicate the compressed and encoded data wirelessly to one or more telematics service providers. Servers poll this driver event data periodically, process it, and present multiple methods to end users by which they are able to view and analyze it. The present system permits fleet managers to use this driver event data, received through a report or notification, or pulled directly from a web-based portal, to monitor, correct or reward driver behavior, and to implement driver education and training programs.
US09922566B1

A road type module, based on a present location of the vehicle, determines whether the vehicle is traveling on a single lane road. The single lane road includes passing zones and no passing zones. The single lane road has only a first lane designated for travel in one direction and a second lane designated for travel in an opposite direction. A passing zone module, when the vehicle is traveling on the single lane road, determines whether the vehicle is located in one of the passing zones or in one of the no passing zones. A display module selectively displays at least one of: a driving distance to a next one of the passing zones on the single lane road in a direction of travel of the vehicle; and an estimated driving period to the next one of the passing zones.
US09922558B2

A driving support device is connected with a control device, a positioning unit and a driver-state detection device, and communicates with dangerous-spot analysis device, the control device outputting a behavior signal indicating that a dangerous behavior of a vehicle occurred, the dangerous-spot analysis device outputting driver information indicating a state of a driver of the vehicle, the dangerous-spot analysis device. The driving support device includes: a dangerous-spot notification unit; a state judgment unit that acquires the driver information from the driver-state detection device and that judges whether the state of the driver is a state of increasing a risk, based on the driver information; and a warning unit that warns in a case where there is a possibility of passing through the risky spot specified by the dangerous-spot analysis device and where the state judgement unit judges that the state of the driver is the state of increasing the risk.
US09922557B2

Apparatus whereby one or more vehicle nodes are configured for use in a vehicular communications network which provides for exchange of data between a plurality of vehicle nodes, the vehicle node comprising at least one on-board computing unit which is operable to broadcast identity messages to, and to receive identity messages from the plurality of neighboring vehicle nodes on at least one roadway and the at least one on-board computing unit further comprising a transmitter and a receiver, transmitting operational vehicle event messages notifying the plurality of neighboring vehicle nodes of impending operational vehicle events that includes at least one of acceleration, brake application, lane mergers, turn or lane changes, or passing of neighboring vehicles.
US09922554B2

A driving environment risk determination apparatus includes a driver status acquisition module that acquires a status of a driver who drives another vehicle running in the vicinity of a subject vehicle that is equipped with the driving environment risk determination apparatus, an other-vehicle status acquisition module that acquires a driving status of the another vehicle, a driving environment acquisition module that acquires a driving environment in the vicinity of the subject vehicle, a risk determination module that calculates a degree of risk from information acquired through the driver status acquisition module, the other-vehicle status acquisition module, and the driving environment acquisition module and thereby determines whether the degree of risk is minor or major.
US09922547B2

The invention relates to a remote control unit for intelligent digital audiovisual reproduction systems, comprising storage means, payment means, a sound control circuit, display means and a metal chassis wherein said remote control unit comprises a distant radio frequency transmitter that is associated with a radio frequency receiver connected to the sound control circuit of the audiovisual reproduction system.
US09922546B2

Provided are a remote control system and method for controlling portable terminals. The remote control system includes a control terminal which is a portable terminal that performs a remote control operation, a target terminal which is a portable terminal that is subject to the remote control operation performed by the control terminal, and a remote control management server which determines whether the control terminal and the target terminal are heterogeneous, and if the two terminals are heterogeneous, converts messages respectively transmitted from the control terminal and the target terminal to a format conforming to corresponding receiving terminals.
US09922542B2

An improved fire detector test device and methods for conducting field sensitivity and functionality testing of a fire detector in-situ are provided. The test device can include ambient condition or stimulus generating devices and a programmable processor, wherein the programmable processor can identify information about a detector under test, wherein the programmable processor can obtain a configuration file based on the identified information about the detector under test, wherein the configuration file can identify a combination, level, or rate of a plurality of stimuli that cause an alarm in the detector under test, and wherein the programmable processor can execute the configuration file to cause the ambient condition or stimulus generating devices to generate and emit the plurality of stimuli in the combination and at the level and the rate identified in the configuration file.
US09922530B2

The disclosure relates to a method and device for generating information. The method includes acquiring first information related to an amount of at least one food item remaining in a refrigerator; acquiring a rate of consumption of the at least one food item; calculating a number of meal servings of the at least one food item based on the first information and the rate of consumption; and generating a reminder message when the number of meal servings is less than a threshold number of meal servings.
US09922525B2

A monitoring system for monitoring an environment and generating data in response to the presence of at least one chemical hazardous to human health in the environment. The monitoring system is configured to communicate the data to an associated personal communication device or the like for processing. The monitoring system can be in the form a selectively attachable component.
US09922520B2

A new and improved electronic monitoring home units and associated installation methods. The present disclosure provides for an electronic monitoring home unit capable of automated confirmation of location and method of automated confirmation of location when a home unit has been installed. The present disclosure provides for a home unit capable of intelligent inclusion zone setting for a home unit and a method of such inclusion zone setting. The present disclosure also provides for a streamlined installation method with automated communication between a home unit and central monitoring system.
US09922517B2

A pre-smoke detector and system for use in early detection of developing fires whereby vapors of marker chemicals generated during the melting and/or smoldering of common household materials are detected before detection by conventional smoke detectors. Vapors resulting from heating and resultant vaporization of substances are detected as well as vapors resulting from their breakdown, decomposition, or pyrolysis during the pre-combustion stage. Conventional smoke detectors focus on particle detection and are most effective after a developing fire has produced smoke. To minimize false alarms caused by common household odors, the pre-smoke detectors focus on detecting medium temperature pyrolysis products using sensor coatings that can be consistent with a 10-year operational lifetime and multiple orthogonal detection processes. Since virtually all marker chemicals of interest for pre-smoke detection are heavier than air, a system is described that appropriately integrates with smoke detector alarm systems present in most homes.
US09922516B2

The present invention is directed to providing a method and system that enables a first responder police Incident Commander to take command and control of a building having an active suspect ongoing event. Using the method and system herein, the Police Incident Commander is able to clearly distinguish the positions of his building entry teams (BETs) in the building relative to the position of the suspect through a graphic display of Friend and Foe designation whereupon he can precisely direct their maneuver to close with the suspect. The incident commander communicates to a Command and Control Center to arm non-lethal chemical canisters pre-located in “Hot Zones” for use in remotely incapacitating the intruders. When the intruders, boxed in by the BETs, enter a “Hot Zone” the incident commander gives the command to release the non-lethal chemical/smoke, ammonia spray that disorients and blinds the intruders allowing the BETs to safely end the incident.
US09922512B2

Embodiments are directed to a security panel configured to interface with virtual sensors. The security panel includes a sensor subsystem configured to receive sensor input from a plurality of physical sensors. A virtual sensor subsystem is configured to receive a virtual sensor input from an enrolled virtual sensor source as a virtual sensor and provide the virtual sensor input to the sensor subsystem. A monitoring subsystem is configured to provide an alert based on detection of an alert condition associated with at least one of the physical sensors and to provide the alert based on detection of a virtual alert condition associated with the virtual sensor.
US09922511B2

The invention relates to a system for detecting and locating an attempted intrusion into a perimeter defined by a fence. The invention comprises a management unit (UG), impact or vibration detectors (D), and a station (P) for processing data (UG). According to the invention: each detector is connected on one side to another detector and on the other side either to another detector or a management unit; each detector transmits data to the detector(s) and/or management unit to which it is directly connected; each detector receives data from the detector(s) and/or management unit to which it is connected; and a detector that receives data on one side transmits said data to the detector or management unit to which it is connected on the other side, in addition to transmitting data about events that it has detected.
US09922499B2

Embodiments of the present invention are directed to gaming systems that allow customers to wager, or “trade-in” an object of value or winning situation for a chance to win an even more valuable award. The chance for valuable award may be a bonus game or chance to win a bonus game. Bonus awards are “funded” by the savings achieved from the players trading in their wins in the base game, which would otherwise be paid. Players who do not trade-in see no changes from the base game paytable, while those players who participate in the trade-in bonus have a different gaming experience.
US09922497B2

Various embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to a gaming system and method providing a reel-based game and employing an award evaluation for a symbol based on a total quantity of reels in a set of reels each displaying an instance of that symbol and a total quantity of instances of that symbol displayed on the reels of the set. When performing the award evaluation of the present disclosure, the gaming system determines any award for a symbol regardless of the relative position of the displayed instances of that symbol on the reels and also regardless of the particular quantity of instances of that symbol displayed by any individual reel.
US09922488B2

Systems, apparatus, and methods for kiosk accessibility via a mobile device. In some embodiments, a wireless mobile device has input features such as voice-control and GUI-based buttons that assist visually impaired people to send wireless messages for accessing features of a kiosk. The kiosk is equipped with wireless communication hardware and or software to receive messages from the mobile device for performing various kiosk-related operations, such a renting, vending, and or returning a product.
US09922485B2

A coin processing apparatus determines an authenticity and a type of a received coin, holds a coin, which is determined to be an authentic coin, and then sorts and stores the coin for each type of coin and that further pays a stored coin in response to a coin drawing command. The coin processing apparatus includes a conveyor that conveys the coin. The conveyor includes a screw-type conveying member including a cylindrical shaft section, and a blade section provided on an outer circumference of the cylindrical shaft section in a helical fashion and protruding in a radial direction. The screw-type conveying member is rotated around a central axis of the shaft section so that a coin is conveyed.
US09922483B2

A queue monitoring system for monitoring persons queuing to use electronic transaction apparatus, wherein the apparatus comprises at least one user interface, the system comprising one or more cameras for providing data relating to persons queuing and processing apparatus configured to process the data to determine one or more parameters of the queue, wherein the processing apparatus is additionally configured to receive from the electronic apparatus information that is conveyed to the user interface and to use this information in processing the data.
US09922481B2

A system allows dwelling access to third parties. An intelligent door lock system at the dwelling includes a device configured to be coupled to a drive shaft of a lock device, with the device sensing movement of the drive shaft to assist in locking and unlocking a lock of a lock device. The intelligent door lock system is configured to be in communication with a server. An occupant/or owner, or end-dwelling user of the dwelling communicates with the server to grant a third party secured access to a dwelling, which can by programmatic.
US09922470B2

A Method and System for Tuning the Effect of Vehicle Characteristics on Risk Prediction is disclosed. The system many incorporate many of those driver risk assessment system features previously disclosed by Assignee's Prior Applications. The present system provides a major functional distinction from those prior systems by adding the feature of real-time tuning of the risk assessment/prediction/analysis system in response to ongoing changes in vehicle motion characteristics. Specifically, system monitors the vehicle center of gravity for changes on a real-time basis, and then adjusts the risk prediction/assessment/analysis system responsively. The system executes an initialization feature that implements an initial, or series of initial vehicular motion profiles at the commencement of either a driving trip of the system being powered up. A catalog or index of “standardized” motion profiles are accessible for initial comparison to actual vehicle motion characteristics in order to streamline the tuning of the driver risk analysis system. The system determines if and when an offset in Center of Gravity (i.e. from where initialized) has occurred, after which the system responsively tunes the driver risk assessment/prediction/analysis/reporting system.
US09922449B2

An apparatus and method are described for dynamic polygon or primitive sorting for improved culling. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: a rasterization unit to receive a plurality of polygons to be rasterized in an original ordering; and depth test evaluation logic to determine whether a current polygon is fully visible, partially visible or occluded; and reordering logic to incrementally alter the original ordering by swapping each occluded polygon with another polygon positioned relatively lower in the original ordering and by swapping each fully visible polygon with another polygon positioned relatively higher in the original ordering.
US09922447B2

A technique for 3D registration of three or more 3D models using parallel computing. The technique treats the pairwise 3D registration problem as an atomic sub-problem, and solves in parallel a plurality of pairwise 3D registration. The initial guess for the pairwise 3D registration is calculated based on the, possibly incomplete, information available at the moment the calculation is made. At each point the available pairwise transformations are examined based on current available information. Transformations that are identified as outliers or as inaccurate are marked for repeated pairwise 3D registration when additional information relevant for the calculation of the initial guess becomes available.
US09922443B2

The disclosure describes systems and methods of selecting colors to points in a digital three-dimensional (3D) model representing a scanned object, based on points and color images associated with the 3D model. Certain embodiments involve selecting from the images a patch for each point in the 3D model, and determining a quality of the patches. The selected patches are analyzed to determine an overall score, representing aggregated quality of the patches and an aggregated smoothness indicating variation between patches selected for neighboring points. In some examples, multiple sets of selected patches are analyzed and scored, and the scores are compared to determine a representative patch set that optimizes the quality and the smoothness. Colors are assigned to the points of the digital model based on the representative set of patches.
US09922439B2

A method for of playing an animation image, the method including: obtaining a plurality of images; displaying a first image of the plurality of images; detecting a first event as a trigger to play the animation image for a first object of the first image; and playing the animation image for the first object using the plurality of images.
US09922434B2

A method for presenting data and device thereof related to the field of information technology are provided, to improve a presenting efficiency for data and reduce operational complexity for a user. The method includes: firstly obtaining data to be presented; then allocating corresponding initialization playing parameters for the data; formatting, after a playing trigger instruction for the data is received, data corresponding to each frame based on the data formatting function, to generate visualization data corresponding to each frame; finally continuously playing the visualization data corresponding to each frame in sequence from the playing start frame.
US09922432B1

Systems and methods for providing convolutional neural network based image synthesis using localized loss functions is disclosed. A first image including desired content and a second image including a desired style are received. The images are analyzed to determine a local loss function. The first and second images are merged using the local loss function to generate an image that includes the desired content presented in the desired style. Similar processes can also be utilized to generate image hybrids and to perform on-model texture synthesis. In a number of embodiments, Condensed Feature Extraction Networks are also generated using a convolutional neural network previously trained to perform image classification, where the Condensed Feature Extraction Networks approximates intermediate neural activations of the convolutional neural network utilized during training.
US09922423B2

An image angle variation detection means 81 detects an image angle variation of a imaging device from videos shot by the imaging device based on fixed point information including the position of a fixed point specified by an image angle of the imaging device and the features indicating the characteristics of the fixed point, and a situation determination means 82 determines that the image angle of the imaging device is varied when a change in the image angle variation is stable for a certain period of time.
US09922413B2

Systems for monitoring an inventory condition of objects based on captured images are described. An exemplary system includes at least one storage drawer, each storage drawer including a plurality of storage locations for storing objects; and a data storage device storing reference data for each storage drawer. The reference data includes, for each region of interest corresponding to each respective storage drawer, at least one of a reference image signature representing attributes of the region of interest when a stored object is present, and a reference image signature representing attributes of the region of interest when the stored object is not present. A data processor of the system is configured to derive an image signature representing attributes of a region of interest corresponding to a drawer using a captured image of the drawer; and determine an inventory condition of the drawer according to the stored reference data corresponding to the region of interest and the derived image signature representing attributes of the captured image of the region of interest.
US09922411B2

Systems and methods are disclosed for weighting the image quality prediction of any visual-attention-agnostic quality metric with a saliency map. By accounting for the salient regions of an image or video frame, the disclosed systems and methods may dramatically improve the precision of the visual-attention-agnostic quality metric during image or video quality assessment. In one implementation, a method of saliency-weighted video quality assessment includes: determining a per-pixel image quality vector of an encoded video frame; determining per-pixel saliency values of the encoded video frame or a reference video frame corresponding to the encoded video frame; and computing a saliency-weighted image quality metric of the encoded video frame by weighting the per-pixel image quality vector using the per-pixel saliency values.
US09922405B2

A method for agronomic and agricultural monitoring includes designating an area for imaging, determining a flight path above the designated area, operating an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) along the flight path, acquiring images of the area using a camera system attached to the UAV, and processing the acquired images.
US09922402B2

A character attribute determination section 1 determines a attribute of a character on the basis of a character attribute database 2. A blur intensity decision section 5 acquires a blur intensity for each character attribute on the basis of legibility control knowledge 3, and decides the blur intensity for the target character corresponding to the character attribute determined by the character attribute determination section 1. A blurring process execution section 6 performs a blurring process to the character with the blur intensity decided by the blur intensity decision section 5.
US09922387B1

Media capture apparatus and methods for obtaining metadata. Metadata may be collected and stored in a container independent of audio and/or image (media) content. Some container implementations may be configured to store metadata for a given interval, and media content for a portion of the interval. In action camera implementations, metadata may provide a context related to time, physical conditions of a person, location, surroundings of the video capture. In event recording applications, the metadata container may provide information related to a timeline of the event, environmental conditions, proximity of other capture devices. Metadata may be utilized for processing, viewing, and/or sharing of media content. Individual capture devices may communicate and/or combine metadata to one another in order to expand metadata content. Metadata, video and/or images may be shared between users and/or devices using a container.
US09922376B1

Systems, methods and articles of manufacture for determining impact chains from a calculation graph for calculating taxes. The system includes a computing device, a data store in communication with the computing device and a tax preparation software application executable by the computing device. The tax preparation software application has a tax calculation engine, a tax calculation graph, and an impact chain engine. The tax calculation engine is configured to perform a plurality of tax calculation operations based on a tax calculation graph. The impact chain engine is configured to analyze the tax calculation graph and determine an impact chain for each of a plurality of nodes in the graph, wherein an impact chain for a respective node consists of one of (a) each of the other nodes which are affected by the respective node, or (b) each of the other nodes which affect the respective node.
US09922371B1

Systems and methods are provided for linking a customer's preexisting financial account to a merchant issued payment vehicle. If an account number associated with the preexisting financial account changes, the linking of the merchant issued payment vehicle is updated with an updated account number.
US09922366B1

Disclosed herein is a system that includes an order processing subsystem and a delivery processing subsystem comprising at least one database and one or more processors. The one or more processors of the delivery processing subsystem is configured to receive a request for a user to access the delivery processing subsystem and a scanning device, authenticate the user by verifying the request with user credentials stored in the at least one database, provide the user with access to the delivery processing subsystem and the scanning device, receive scanned data from the scanning device, retrieve package data regarding a package for an inmate based on the scanned data from the scanning device, and generate, based on the package data, a route in the correctional facility for delivery of the package to the inmate in the correctional facility, wherein the route does not include an identity of the inmate.
US09922355B2

There is provided, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, a system, platform and method to provide shared order management based on a shared order platform used by buyers and suppliers. In some embodiments the order management platform includes an order server in a communications cloud, coupled to an order database; a shared order platform adapted to facilitate usage by one or more authorized buyers and/or suppliers, wherein the shared order platform includes a shared structured document with order related data layers; and a tokenized link with an address linking to the shared order platform, where the tokenized link is adapted to allow entry into the shared order platform via entering a page defined within the tokenized link.
US09922345B2

A system, method and article of manufacture are provided for a first business entity to provide a network-based supply chain framework for collaborative order management between at least a second and a third independent business entity, such as a service provider, vendor, reseller, manufacturer and the like. A request for an order is received over a network with an automated system, from at least a second business entity. The order is transmitted over a network, with an automated system, to at least the third business entity. Information is received from the third business entity relating to a status of completion of the order by the third business entity using a network. The progress in completing the order is tracked based on the information received from the third business entity. Progress reports from the tracking are generated periodically; and transmitted to the second business entity using the network.
US09922338B2

To automate the redemption of offer benefits, data associating offers and payment accounts is stored in the data warehouse of a first transaction handler. If a payment account to which an offer is associated is in the payment processing network of a second transaction handler separate from the first transaction handler, the system uses a payment processor that is in both the payment processing network of the first transaction handler and the payment processing network of the second transaction handler to communicate with the first transaction handler to detect the authorization request in the payment account that satisfies the benefit redemption requirements of the respective offer and apply the offer benefit to the transaction when the authorization request is detected.
US09922337B2

A system and method for assigning a value to an electronic communications action by a user based on the social media profile of the user in the initiation of transactions based on some electronic communications action by a user, such as updating their social status with their mobile device. The value of the reward or distribution is variable as it is determined in real time from a calculation using the user's social media influence. The components of Applicant's invention include a system monitor, a validation module, and a redemption module, which work in concert to provide a user with a tangible and immediately usable reward of some value, or credit towards the same, in response to the user publishing or sending certain social status updates, messages, or posts with their mobile device, with the value awarded determined in real time.
US09922334B1

Methods and systems for providing an advertisement based on a minimum number of exposures may include receiving selection criteria to specify a device identifier that meets the selection criteria, receiving a minimum number of exposures to the advertisement and an interval of time for the minimum number of exposures to occur, and a maximum aggregate bid value for each device identifier that is exposed to the advertisement for the minimum number of exposures, determining a probability that the device identifier reaches the number of exposures within the interval of time and within the maximum aggregate bid value, selecting a bid for each exposure for the device identifier based on the determined probability and the maximum aggregate bid value; and based on the selection of the bid, providing display data indicative of the advertisement.
US09922330B2

A system for advertising on a Peer-to-Peer network detects a search request of a node in a Peer-to-Peer network. After detecting a search request, the system prepares an unsolicited response (e.g., advertisement) to the search request of the node. Once the unsolicited response is prepared, the system sends the unsolicited response to the node. For example, a Peer-to-Peer network node issues a search request and a system prepares an advertisement (e.g., an unsolicited response). After preparing the advertisement, the system sends the advertisement to the Peer-to-Peer network node that issued the search request. The process of sending advertisements can be made to each node issuing a search request without discrimination. In one example, the system detects a search request of a node in a Peer-to-Peer network; prepares an advertisement in response to the search request of the node based on a predetermined search criteria; and sends the advertisement to the node for advertising on the Peer-to-Peer network.
US09922318B2

The disclosed embodiments include methods and systems for providing payment token transactions by a mobile device. The mobile device may be operable to obtain a payment token, where the payment token is associated with one or more payment token parameters and the mobile device may be configured to communicate with a financial service provider system over a first network when connectivity to the first network is available to the mobile device. The mobile device may provide the payment token to a contactless payment terminal (CPT) associated with a merchant, during a purchase transaction involving a product provided by the merchant, where the mobile device may communicate the payment token to the CPT over a local network that is different from the first network such that connectivity between the mobile device and the first network is not required.
US09922288B1

Systems and methods for checking the consistency of established facts within internal works according to the present disclosure operate by identifying established facts within the internal works and determining whether any of the established facts are contradictory to one another. Facts may be established and conflicts may be identified by any means, such as by determining associations between words of the internal work, or by consulting one or more external resources. If a contradiction between established facts is identified, then an author of the internal work or other user may be notified, and a change to the internal work may be recommended to the author or user, or requested from the author or user.
US09922287B2

The present principles are directed to identifying and classifying web traffic inside encrypted network tunnels. A method includes analyzing network traffic of unencrypted data packets to detect packet traffic, timing, and size patterns. The detected packet, timing, and size traffic patterns are correlated to at least a packet destination and a packet source of the unencrypted data packets to create at least one of a training corpus and a model built from the training corpus. The at least one of the corpus and model is stored in a memory device. Packet traffic, timing, and size patterns of encrypted data packets are observed. The observed packet traffic, timing, and size patterns of the encrypted data packets are compared to at least one of the training corpus and the model to classify the encrypted data packets with respect to at least one of a predicted network host and predicted path information.
US09922286B1

Techniques for detecting and correcting anomalies in computer-based reasoning systems are provided herein. The techniques can include obtaining current context data and determining a contextually-determined action based on the obtained context data and a reasoning model. The reasoning model may have been determined based on multiple sets of training data. The techniques may cause performance of the contextually-determined action and, potentially, receiving an indication that performing the contextually-determined action in the current context resulted in an anomaly. The techniques include determining a portion of the reasoning model that caused the determination of the contextually-determined action based on the obtained context data and causing removal of the portion of the model that caused the determination of the contextually-determined action, to produce a corrected reasoning model. Subsequently, second context data is obtained, a second action is determined based on that data and the corrected reasoning model, and the second contextually-determined action can be performed.
US09922278B2

For ensuring the integrity of a physical document, an apparatus is disclosed. A system, method, and program product also perform the functions of the apparatus. The apparatus for ensuring the integrity of a physical document includes a processor, a memory that stores code executable by the processor. The processor identifies an integrity symbol within a physical document, the first integrity symbol representative of content of the physical document, and converts the integrity symbol into an integrity map having at least two values, the integrity symbol being a symbolic representation of the integrity map suitable for printing. The processor compares content of the physical document to the integrity map to verify integrity of the physical document.
US09922271B2

Object detection and across disparate fields of view are provided. A first image generated by a first recording device with a first field of view, and a second image generated by a second recording device with a second field of view can be obtained. An object detection component can detect a first object within the first field of view, and a second object within the second field of view. An object classification component can determine first and second level classification categories of the first object. Object components can correlate the first object with the second object based on the descriptor of the first object or a descriptor of the second object, and can determine a characteristic or the first object or the second object based on the correlation.
US09922269B2

Defect classification includes acquiring one or more images of a specimen including multiple defects, grouping the defects into groups of defect types based on the attributes of the defects, receiving a signal from a user interface device indicative of a first manual classification of a selected number of defects from the groups, generating a classifier based on the first manual classification and the attributes of the defects, classifying, with the classifier, one or more defects not manually classified by the manual classification, identifying the defects classified by the classifier having the lowest confidence level, receiving a signal from the user interface device indicative of an additional manual classification of the defects having the lowest confidence level, determining whether the additional manual classification identifies one or more additional defect types not identified in the first manual classification, and iterating the procedure until no new defect types are found.
US09922261B2

A method of machine vision includes identifying contours of fruits in a first image and a second image and performing two-way matching of contours to identify pairs of matched contours, each pair comprising a respective first contour in the first image that matches a respective second contour in the second image. For each pair of matched contours, a respective affine transformation that transforms points in the respective second contour to points in the respective first contour is identified. The second image is mapped to the first image using the affine transformations to form a composite image and the number of fruits in the composite image is counted.
US09922251B2

Described are methods, systems and computer-readable media storing executable instructions for computing, on a per material and per hyperspectrally imaged scene basis, an optimal set of spectrally filtering pass bands for detecting target materials in the scenes, and cueing multispectral imaging of the scenes with the set of pass bands.
US09922250B2

Methods and apparatuses are provided for capturing an image in a portable terminal. An image is received at the portable terminal. An eye region is detected in the image. An eye center of the eye region is determined. It is determined whether a reflection region is detected in the eye region. When the reflection region is detected, a shape of the reflection region is determined, and guide information for preventing the reflection region is output based on the shape of the reflection region.
US09922246B2

A three dimensional map of a designated area that includes location data and relative height data of vantage points, points of interest, and objects, within the designated area, is received. A line-of-sight view from the vantage points to the points of interest is determined by calculating an angle, a distance, and a direction between a vantage point and a point of interest based, at least in part, on the location data and relative height data associated with the three dimensional map of the designated area. Obstructions of the line-of-sight view between the vantage points and the points of interest are determined, based on the line-of-sight view, the location data, and the relative height data, and responsive to determining that the line-of-sight view is free of obstruction, identifying each point of interest viewable from each vantage points, within the designated area.
US09922240B2

In multilevel clustering for a face recognition process, the first stage clustering is performed on each computing node, using the first x vector coefficients. From the resulting k clusters created in the first stage, a limited number of clusters are selected on which the second stage clustering is performed, using the next y vector coefficients. The search for a matching image is then limited to these selected clusters. Computational costs are reduced at the first stage clustering by using just the first x vector coefficients. Computational costs for the second stage clustering are also reduced by performing the second stage only with the limited number of clusters on a limited number of computing nodes. In this manner, the overall computational costs in the face recognition process is significantly reduced while maintaining a desired level of accuracy.
US09922237B2

A face authentication system of an example of the present invention includes: a first face area detection unit configured to detect a first face image from a first captured image captured by a camera; a first deformation unit configured to deform the first face image non-linearly using a template face image; a face image recording unit configured to record the deformed first face image as a registered face image; a second face area detection unit configured to detect a second face image from a second captured image captured by a camera; a second deformation unit configured to deform the second face image non-linearly using the template face image; and a face image matching unit configured to compare the deformed second face image with the registered face image.
US09922234B2

A biometric identification method comprising the steps of comparing a candidate print with a reference print and validating identification as a function of a number of characteristics that are common in the two prints and of a predetermined validation threshold, the method being characterized in that it comprises the steps of altering the biometric characteristics of one of the two prints prior to comparison and of taking the alteration into account during validation.
US09922230B2

A fingerprint information detection circuit comprises an amplification unit, a source follower unit, a reset unit, and a feedback unit. The amplification unit is coupled to the source follower unit. The reset unit is coupled to both the feedback unit and the amplification unit. The feedback unit and the amplification unit are coupled. The reset unit includes a first transistor and a reset transistor, wherein source and drain electrodes of the first transistor are coupled, wherein one of source and drain electrodes of the reset transistor is coupled to the source and drain electrodes of the first transistor.
US09922229B2

A button assembly for an electronic device is disclosed. The button assembly integrates a biometric sensor below a top surface of the button. The button assembly is positioned relative to a secondary display of an electronic device. The secondary display can be positioned relative to a keyboard, such as above a top row of keys of the keyboard.
US09922227B2

An apparatus for implementing touch control and fingerprint identification includes: a fingerprint identification sensor including a plurality of sub-sensors and configured to transmit a signal generated by detection of a plurality of sub-sensors to a fingerprint identification circuit when a combination switch is open circuited, and to combine the signal generated by the detection of the plurality of sub-sensors into a touch signal and transmit the touch signal to a touch control circuit when the combination switch is closed. The fingerprint identification circuit is configured to process the signal generated by the detection of the plurality of sub-sensors; and the touch control circuit is configured to determine presence of a touch operation according to the combined touch signal. Accordingly, the functions of fingerprint identification and touch control can be implemented by sharing a fingerprint identification sensor, so that integration level of an electronic device is improved.
US09922218B2

A read chamber device is disclosed for use within a radio frequency identification (RFID) scanning enclosure which provides a means of reading a plurality of cartons moving through the enclosure via a conveyor belt. The enclosure is positioned over a section of the conveyor belt, such that the plurality of cartons on the conveyor belt pass directly through the enclosure. The read chamber device is positioned centrally to the enclosure and projects a read zone via an antenna positioned in-line with the flow of the conveyor which allows the read chamber to read a large variety of inlays without changing the configuration settings of the device. The RFID scanning enclosure also utilizes dynamic power indexing (DPI) to combine parameter inputs to create a smarter reader that can anticipate changes. The reader is then manipulated in real-time to adapt to the needs of each carton and the tunnel scanning environment.
US09922211B2

Methods and devices for providing a private page are provided. A method includes operations of entering a security mode based on a user input; extracting the private page that corresponds to the security mode; and providing both the private page and a normal page that is provided during a normal mode, wherein the private page includes at least one object that is selected by a user so as to be provided during the security mode. A device includes a user input configured to receive a user input; a controller configured to enter a security mode based on the received user input, and extracting a private page that corresponds to the security mode; and a display configured to provide both the private page and a normal page that is provided during a normal mode, wherein the private page comprises at least one object that is selected by a user so as to be provided during the security mode.
US09922206B2

A system and method to exchange data among applications are disclosed. A request for information that includes private information is received from a user application. A respective indicator for each private information field within the requested information is determined. A protected set of information is provided to the user application. The protected set of information comprises the requested information with the respective indicator replacing the private information in each private information field of the requested information. At least one indicator is received from the user application. The original data corresponding to the received at least one indicator is determined.
US09922201B2

Nested namespaces for selective content sharing are provided. In a content management system, content is stored for a plurality of users. The content includes a plurality of content items and a plurality of folders arranged in a plurality of hierarchies. A plurality of root namespaces is established. Each root namespace is rooted to a root folder of an account. A first namespace rooted to a first folder selected from the plurality of folders is established. First permissions are maintained for the first namespace, granting access to a first set of users. A request to share a second folder is received. The second folder is a child of the first folder in a particular hierarchy. A second namespace rooted to the second folder is established. Second permissions are maintained for the second namespace, granting access to a second set of users.
US09922200B2

Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media are provided for securely storing and accessing content within a public cloud. A processor manufacturer provides processors having secure enclave capability to a cloud provider. The provider makes available a listing of processor identifiers (CPUIDs) for processors available for storing content and having secure enclave capability. A content owner provides CPUIDs for desired processors from the listing to the manufacturer which provides the content owner with a processor-specific public code encryption key (CEK) for encrypting content to be stored on each processor identified. Each processor is constructed such that content encrypted with the public CEK may only be decrypted within a secure enclave thereof. The content owner encrypts the desired content with the public CEK and returns the encrypted content and the CPUID for the appropriate processor to the cloud provider. The cloud provider then stores the encrypted content on the particular processor.
US09922197B2

Methods, systems, and computer program products are provided that address issues related to data privacy by enabling users to elect various levels of data sharing. A user of a user device is enabled to indicate their comfort level with sharing, transmitting, or otherwise exposing individual activity records (data entities) with respect to various activity categories. The exposure of activity records may be controlled with respect to on-device and off-device components. Furthermore, privacy profiles may be automatically generated for the user, and the privacy profiles may be automatically activated in corresponding situations.
US09922195B2

An image processing apparatus and control method are provided. An image processing apparatus including: a storage configured to store data which is divided into a plurality of units of code; a random access memory (RAM) configured to be loaded with the data; a central processing unit (CPU) configured to execute the data; and a storage controller configured to read a requested unit of code from the storage in response to receiving a request from the CPU for the unit of code to be currently executed, and load the read unit of code to the RAM so that the unit of code can be processed by the CPU, wherein the storage controller performs validation with regard to the unit of code when reading the unit of code from the storage, and loads the unit of code, when the validation passes, to the RAM.
US09922187B2

A system for accessing a system with a touch sensitive interface is provided. The system may be configured for determining a first location and first touch pressure of the first input, determining a second location and a second touch pressure of the second input, and a first time between the first input and the second input. The system may also comprise determining a third location and a third touch pressure of the third input, and a second time between the second input and the third input. The system may further comprise determining a total time for the inputs and comparing the inputs to a unique touch pattern.
US09922183B2

An electronic device and an information processing method are disclosed in the disclosure. The electronic device comprises: a wearable apparatus capable of forming a ring or an approximate ring, which is able to surround a first cylinder; a first sensor arranged at least partly in the wearable apparatus and towards an interior of the ring or the approximate ring, and configured to detect first biometric information of at least part of a wearer's body surrounded by the wearable apparatus if the wearable apparatus is worn on the part of the wearer's body; a first processor arranged in the wearable apparatus, and configured to determine whether the first biometric information matches first preset biometric information to obtain a determination result and to perform security processing corresponding to the determination result based on the determination result.
US09922177B2

A method, system and computer program product for enforcing licensing terms when distributing content via a container image running in a container. Upon receiving a request for a service from the container by the isolation code, where the isolation code limits, accounts and isolates resource usage of process groups, the commerce code application programming interfaces (APIs) of the isolation code read a key of the container. The key contains licensing terms applied to the component(s) (e.g., applications) of the container. The commerce code APIs will then confirm that the container is in compliance with those licensing terms. If the container is in compliance with the licensing terms, the container will be allowed to execute. Otherwise, the container will be prevented from executing. In this manner, the commerce code APIs can enforce the licensing terms, including restrictions and enforcement of payment to the licensor upon distributing content in the container.