| Document | Document Title |
|---|---|
| US08601019B1 |
Presenting autocomplete suggestions
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for presenting autocomplete suggestions. A computing device can receive a query and autocomplete suggestions for the query. The autocomplete suggestions can be displayed in a plurality of separately selectable cells arranged in a column on a user interface. While a selected cell is displayed at a first location, input indicating that a user interacted with the selected cell can be received. In response to receiving the input, the computing device can display the selected cell at a second location that is different from the first location, include the autocomplete suggestion displayed in the selected cell in the query, and display autocomplete suggestions for the extended query in a plurality of separately selectable second cells. |
| US08601006B2 |
Information filtering apparatus
A search unit 11 presents a Web search result report to a client terminal 20. A theme space construction unit 12 updates theme information within a theme information DB 13 by a user-acquired information feedback from the client terminal 20, and performs a Web search to construct a theme space. The search unit 11 includes an exhaustivity calculation unit that calculates exhaustivity being a ratio of a user-acquired part to a part of an entire target theme. Moreover, the search unit 11 includes a difference calculation unit that calculates a difference between a “user-acquired” range when a user has acquired target Web pages and a user-acquired range before that, and a relevance calculation unit that calculates relevance of the target Web pages to the target theme. |
| US08600996B2 |
Use of inference techniques to facilitate categorization of system change information
Methods, systems, and articles for receiving, by a monitor server, change data associated with a change captured on a target host, are described herein. In various embodiments, the target host may have provided the change data in response to detecting the change, and the change data may include one or more rules, settings, and/or parameters. Further, in some embodiments, the monitor server may analyze the change data in order to group the change data into clusters. Once the change data have been classified as clusters, a report may be generated providing classification or categorization and cluster information for the various changes. In various embodiments, the generating may comprise generating a report to the target host and/or to an administrative user. |
| US08600993B1 |
Determining resource attributes from site address attributes
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for determining resource attributes from site address attributes. In one aspect, a method includes resource attributes of resources addressed by the resource locator and address attributes of the resource locators, determining a set of similar resource locators from the address attributes of the resource locators, comparing the address attributes of the resource locators in the set of similar resource locators to the resource attributes of the resources addressed by the resource locators in the set of similar resource locators, and determining, based on the comparison, likelihoods that the address attribute of the resource locators in the set of similar resource locators indicates resource attributes of the resources. |
| US08600990B2 |
Interacting methods of data extraction
Extraction methods can interact on a common data source using identifiers that correspond to events or other actions. These identifiers can be updated, whenever appropriate, once the corresponding data has been summarized, in order to provide for multiple extraction methods to operate only on the data of interest, and obtain a lock only on the data within the scope of extraction. High water marks, such as identifiers in the sequent, can be used to further designate which data has previously been extracted. Similarly, summarization methods can interact by utilizing corresponding persistent tables in the flows for the methods, but utilizing separate intermediate tables to allow for data transformations and application of various business rules and tuning techniques. The ability to switch between different methods can accommodate business, performance, or other such needs, and can provide for the dynamic extraction and summarization of different volumes of data. |
| US08600986B2 |
Lexical answer type confidence estimation and application
A system, method and computer program product for automatically estimating the confidence of a detected LAT to provide a more accurate overall score for an obtained candidate answer. A confidence “score” or value of each detected LAT is obtained, and the system and method performs combining the confidence score with a degree of match between a LAT and an AnswerType of the candidate answer to provide improved overall score for the candidate answer. |
| US08600982B2 |
Providing relevant information based on data space activity items
Various embodiments of systems and methods for providing relevant information based on data space activity items are described herein. Data space activity items of a user are identified while the user is working through an application. Several context elements relevant to each data space activity item are then determined. Content locations are searched to find content items relevant to the context elements. The content items are then ranked to determine relevant information. The relevant information can be accessed by the user when required. |
| US08600979B2 |
Infinite browse
An online article is enhanced by displaying, in association with the article, supplemental content that includes entities that are extracted from the article and/or entities that are related to entities that are extracted from the article. The supplemental content further includes information about each of the entities. The information about an entity may be obtained by searching for the entity in one or more searchable repositories of data. For example, the supplemental content may include, for each entity, video, image, web, and/or news search results. The supplemental content may further include information such as stock quotes, abstracts, maps, scores, and so on. The entities are selected using a variety of analyses and ranking techniques based on contextual factors such as user-specific information, time-sensitive popularity trends, grammatical features, search result quality, and so on. The entities may further be selected for purposes such as generating ad-based revenue. |
| US08600977B2 |
Automatic recognition and capture of SQL execution plans
Approaches, techniques, and mechanisms are disclosed for capturing and utilizing information related to query plans exhibiting interesting characteristics. A database server receives a request to execute a command. The database server executes the command according to a query plan. In response to determining that the command matches one or more pre-defined criteria, the database server captures information related to the execution of the first command. The criteria may include, for example, whether or not the command is repeatable, the existence of bind variables, access of a particular object, high resource utilization, receipt from a particular user, client, or application, etc. The information recorded may include, for example, performance statistics collected during execution of the first plan, data indicating the execution context during execution of the first plan, and properties of the first plan. The recorded information may subsequently be utilized by the database server in executing other database other database commands. |
| US08600976B2 |
Invalidating streams in an operator graph
Techniques are disclosed for invalidating, at one or more processing elements, data streams containing data tuples. A plurality of tuples is received via a data stream, whereupon the data stream is determined to be invalid based on at least one tuple in the plurality of tuples. The data stream is then invalidated, and a message is issued that causes one or more data streams included in the stream-based computing system and related to the invalidated data stream to also be invalidated. |
| US08600975B1 |
Query phrasification
An information retrieval system uses phrases to index, retrieve, organize and describe documents. Phrases are extracted from the document collection. Documents are the indexed according to their included phrases, using phrase posting lists. The phrase posting lists are stored in an cluster of index servers. The phrase posting lists can be tiered into groups, and sharded into partitions. Phrases in a query are identified based on possible phrasifications. A query schedule based on the phrases is created from the phrases, and then optimized to reduce query processing and communication costs. The execution of the query schedule is managed to further reduce or eliminate query processing operations at various ones of the index servers. |
| US08600974B2 |
System and method for processing formatted text documents in a database
A system and method for automatically determining a plurality of pieces of different information about a textual document from the text of the textual document are provided in which one or more particular characteristics of the text of the textual document are identified to generate a file containing the text of the textual document with the particular characteristics marked up within the text. In addition, any negative treatment of other textual documents from the text of the textual document is determined to generate negative treatment information, a data record is produced indicating a depth of treatment for each other textual documents cited in the text of the textual document, the source of a quotation in the text of the textual document is verified to generate verified quotation information, any subject matter text that is applicable to the text of the textual document is determined to generate subject matter headings associated with the text of the textual document, and a data record is generated containing the identified characteristics of the textual document, the negative treatment of other textual documents cited in the textual document, the depth of treatment of other textual documents cited in the textual document, the verified quotation information, and the subject matter text associated with the textual document so that all of the information is accessible. |
| US08600971B2 |
Information processing apparatus, storage medium, information processing method and information processing system for examining an object on an imaged image
An example of a game apparatus includes a CPU. The CPU activates two outward cameras to allow a user to image, for example, a flower. The CPU filters data for search included in a database. The CPU obtains color information, shape information and a size of the imaged flower. A shape category is obtained, and with the shape category, data for search included in a database for search is further filtered. Then, by comparing the color information, the shape information, and the size of the imaged flower with the data for search to be used, a score of a degree of approximation of the color information and scores of the degree of matching of the shape information and size, etc. are obtained. Then, images of flowers as candidates are presented in the descending order of the score (similarity level). |
| US08600967B2 |
Automatic organization of browsing histories
An automatic organization into topics for a browsing history. In one embodiment, a system identifies groups of browsing actions as related, and clusters the browsing history (e.g. a web browsing history) into sessions based on heuristics used to determine relationships. Latent semantic analysis can be used to determine the relationships which can be considered topics. User interfaces for displaying or otherwise presenting these sessions can include icons representative of topics, and these icons can have different sizes depending on a frequency of web page visits within a topic. The topics can be displayed in time ranges or in a cover flow view or both time ranges and cover flow view. |
| US08600966B2 |
Internet data mining method and system
A method for automatically acquiring a set of data opens a searchable Internet database; initiates an automated timed search of each one of a plurality of records, each record in the plurality of record includes common criteria with the other records; retrieves information associated with the searched record; and provides the retrieved information in a desired format. |
| US08600965B2 |
System and method for observing communication behavior
A system and method for observing the communication behavior of a user, and analyzing data regarding the user's contacts and community. An electronic message (for example, from the user to a group of contacts) is intercepted and copied; the message content and message data are stored in a database. A contact value is determined (for example, a score is computed) for each contact in the community of the user. Each contact in the community is optionally assigned a ranking. Relationship data (data regarding the user's relationships with the contact and community) is extracted from the message content and message data. Statistics are compiled relating to the user, the contact, and/or the community. A list of contacts is compiled and monitored over time, thereby providing information regarding patterns of the user's behavior. |
| US08600961B2 |
Data summarization integration
Embodiments of the invention provide systems and methods for providing summarizations of data and transactions based on the status of the summarization and the data and transactions being summarized. According to one embodiment, a method for providing summarizations of data and transactions related to one or more applications can comprise initiating a first summarization of the data and transactions related to the one or more applications. The first summarization can be paused in response to a request to evaluate the data and transactions being summarized. Data and transactions available for summarization can be evaluated in response to and based on the request. The first summarization can be resumed upon a completion or a timeout of the evaluating of the data and transactions being summarized. |
| US08600960B2 |
Processing proposed changes to data
Processing proposed changes to data includes notifying a server of a proposed change to master data, receiving, from the server, an indication as to whether there is a concurrent change to the master data, where the concurrent change corresponds to a change to the master data in addition to the proposed change, and deciding whether to make the proposed change or to abort the change. |
| US08600957B2 |
Mesh data creation method
Provided is a mesh data creation method allowing appropriate expression of population densities while making a balance between accuracy and granularity. In the mesh data creation method, when the number of samples in a region of reference mesh data with a predetermined size is not less than a threshold, divided mesh data is created by dividing the region of the reference mesh data. Namely, each portion with a high population density can be expressed by a fine region of mesh data and each portion with a low population density by a coarse region of mesh data. The above makes it feasible to prevent meshes from becoming too fine to ensure accuracy or, conversely, from becoming too coarse to maintain granularity, thereby resulting in failing to achieve a detailed grasp of population densities, and thus to achieve appropriate expression of population densities while making a balance between accuracy and granularity. |
| US08600954B1 |
Collaborative modeling environment
A system may receive a model, extract information from the model, form a group of tags using the extracted information, and associate the group of tags with the model. The system may further receive a search query including one or more sequences of characters and determine whether to provide the model in a list of models created for the search query, based on the one or more sequences of characters and the group of tags. |
| US08600944B2 |
System and method for managing integrity in a distributed database
Cluster recovery time is reduced by an incremental refresh technique that is described herein. The goal of the technique is to salvage the portion of the redundant distributed database lost (e.g., during a fault) by performing an incremental refresh of only the updates occurring to that portion of the database since the time of loss. |
| US08600943B1 |
Porting replication relationships
Migrating data from an old storage device to a new storage device includes transferring the data from a first logical device on the old storage device to a second logical device on the new storage device, determining replication relationships for the first logical device, transferring the replication relationships; and transferring logical devices used for the replication relationships from the old storage device to the new storage device. The replication relationships may include a clone of the first logical device. Migrating data from an old storage device to a new storage device may also include suspending writes to the first logical storage device prior to transferring the data for the first logical storage device. The replication relationships may include at least one snapshot. |
| US08600941B1 |
System and method for automatic configuration of networked information technology assets for a backup, recovery and archiving application
The invention is a system and method for detecting and configuring network resources for a backup and recovery application. The invention identifies data, software and hardware accessed through a network for the backup and recovery application. Additionally, the present invention identifies dependencies and relationships between the data, hardware and software. The invention thereby provides an updated overview of the entire network environment to the backup and recovery application. Using the invention, the backup and recovery application may backup data and the software that uses the data, as well as the configuration for the hardware that stores or accesses the data. During recovery, the invention will restore the data, hardware and software in the proper sequence and configuration. The present invention thereby enables proper recovery to any selected point in time, and ensures that after recovery, network resources function as they did at that selected point in time. |
| US08600939B2 |
Writable snapshots
Embodiments of the invention include systems and methods for providing writable snapshot functionality for file systems. Pointer-based snapshots can be taken of an active version of the file system resulting in either (1) a read-only snapshot image and a new active version of the file system resulting from a read-only snapshot operation; or (2) a read-only snapshot image and two new active versions of the file system resulting from a writable snapshot operation. The two active file systems generated from writable snapshot operations are each independently and concurrently writable. Various techniques are also presented for handling multiple, concurrently active file systems. For example, novel techniques are described for allowing snapshot restore, compaction, and other functionality to operate in an environment having multiple read-only and writable versions of the file system. |
| US08600927B2 |
Window algorithm using maximal parallelization
One embodiment accesses a binary decision diagram (BDD) representing a function having n variables, where n≧2, wherein the BDD comprises n layers corresponding to the n variables, respectively; and reorders the n variables of the BDD by iteratively and alternating reordering k consecutive layers, where 1 |
| US08600923B2 |
Method and system for adding an aspect trigger to an aspect
A method within a computing execution environment for adding an aspect trigger for an aspect, an aspect being an application level abstraction relevant to a source or service, along with the execution environment, where the method includes defining service aspects; inserting or encapsulating the service aspects as named aspects into an abstraction layer in the computing execution environment; and associating the named aspects with the aspect trigger, wherein the abstraction layer is configured to associate aspect triggers for a plurality of client applications. |
| US08600922B2 |
Methods and systems for knowledge discovery
Provided are methods and systems for knowledge discovery utilizing knowledge profiles. |
| US08600917B1 |
Coupling time evolution model with empirical regression model to estimate mechanical wear
Mechanical systems wear or change over time. Data collected over a system's life can be input to statistical learning models to predict this wear/change. Previous work by the inventors trained a flexible empirical regression model at a fixed point of wear, and then applied it independently at time points over the life of an engine to predict wear. The embodiment disclosed herein relates those wear predictions over time using a time evolution model. The time evolution model is sequentially updated with new data, and effectively tunes the empirical model for each engine. The combined model predicts wear with dramatically reduced variability. The benefit of reduced variability is that engine wear is more evident, and it is possible to detect operational anomalies more quickly. In addition to tracking wear, the model is also used as the basis for a Bayesian approach to monitor for sudden changes and reject outliers, and adapt the model after these events. |
| US08600916B2 |
Office system content prediction based on regular expression pattern analysis
A computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for content prediction. Differences between a sample set of cells and a target set of cells are compared to identify a pattern based on regular expression analysis. A preview of content prediction changes is presented for a user selection. Content predictions changes are made to the user selection in response to receiving a preview acceptance accepting the preview. |
| US08600912B2 |
Electronic business postal system
An electronic business postal system collects, clears and delivers electronic business mail through a closed access, secure messaging system. A collection subsystem consists of access portals that are associated with secured system nodes. The access portals provide authenticated users access to the system to send and retrieve electronic business mail that includes postal system electronic delivery addresses, physical delivery addresses, or both. Secured message servers that are associated with the respective access portals process the electronic business mail into uniquely identified messages for delivery over the system nodes and also process received messages to provide the corresponding electronic business mail to the intended recipients through associated access portals. A delivery subsystem directs the messages through the system nodes associated with the senders' access portals to the system nodes associated with the recipients' access portals. A clearance subsystem confirms the integrity of both the messages and their delivery and ensures that each message is delivered once and intact. |
| US08600911B2 |
System for optimizing transportation scheduling
A computer modeling application is disclosed for finding the optimal solution to maximize total net margin, for the assignment of vehicles (e.g., especially vessels) in an available fleet to perform a set of voyages to transport cargo comprising one or more bulk products during a planning period, as well as an apparatus and method employing the same. The fleet can include term vehicles and spot vehicles. The vehicles, voyages, and cargos can be heterogeneous. In one embodiment, the vehicles are crude carrier vessels and the bulk products are different grades of crude oil. To increase speed, the model is broken into linear programming and mixed integer (linear) programming problems. The model can be run on a real-time basis to support complex scheduling operations. |
| US08600909B2 |
PC postage™ service indicia design for shipping label
Systems and methods of insuring payment of a proper amount of postage, comprise receiving payment for an amount of postage, affixing a postage indicia to a piece of mail, wherein the postage indicia includes the postage amount in a format readable only by machine, and adjusting the postage amount at a time subsequent to receipt of payment. |
| US08600907B2 |
Systems and methods for providing an express mail label
Systems and methods are provided for generating a mailing label. In one embodiment, a method includes requesting, through a communication channel, a tracking number for the mailing label, wherein the tracking number identifies that the mailing label is printable by a user on a single-sheet medium; receiving, through the communication channel, a response to said request, such that the response includes the tracking number provided by a source of one or more tracking numbers; and enabling the user to print the mailing label with the received tracking number. |
| US08600906B2 |
Systems and methods for classifying goods for export
This disclosure relates to systems and methods of classifying exports. These systems and methods are generally computer implemented methodologies, or software for implementing such methodologies on a computer or computer network, that serve to make it easier to determine the classification of an export and to generate a report associated with that classification. Through a series of user inputs of information about the export entered at the user's own personal computer, the classification software installed on the remote auxiliary computer generates a classification report associated with the export and transmits the report to the personal computer via the Internet. |
| US08600901B2 |
Providing social likeness within a messaging context
Embodiments are directed towards providing a likeness application that may be integrated into one or more different messaging applications to provide a user with an indication of how much the user may be liked by their messaging contacts. Such application is directed towards providing a level of fun to a first user through a dynamically calculated social networking indicator. In one embodiment, the first user may communicate with one or more other users over a network using the messaging application modified with the likeness application. The other users may also communicate with each other over the network using the modified messaging application. Then, at various times or conditions, the likeness application may display to the first user a relative percentage indicating how much the first user is being ‘liked’ by one or more other users. |
| US08600900B2 |
Patent continuation analysis
Various embodiments of the present disclosure include systems and methods for rating a patent continuation case by comparing the patent continuation case with a priority or parent patent case of the patent continuation case. Comparison elements are used in an embodiment with automatic comparison. |
| US08600899B1 |
Vending data communications systems
Vending machine circuitry adapted to interface with vending machine electronics so as to provide data communications between a handheld device, preferably a wireless handheld device operated by a potential consumer, and the vending machine electronics, with the handheld device providing the network communications connectivity for transmitting and receiving information to and from remote data centers, data bases, and/or servers. |
| US08600897B2 |
System and method for transacting access to media
A flexible product distribution and payment system for computer network based electronic commerce is disclosed. Primary content data is made available to customers through a detachable local storage medium, such as a DVD or CD-ROM disc, or over a network connection. The primary content is capable of being accessed and played back through a computer or game console at the customer site. The primary content distribution may comprise a superset of content that is intended to be used by the customer. The customer is allowed to view and access the encoded primary content, and is charged only for the primary content that is used. Content that is encoded on the medium but that is not used by the customer remains on the medium but is not charged. A content database and customer database maintained at the primary customer site maintain records of products ordered and used by the customer, as well as identification and use patterns associated with the user. Authentication and use trigger data associated with the distributed content alert the primary content server computer when customer use has occurred and when a charge to the customer is appropriate. |
| US08600894B2 |
Three-stage, double blind credit rating of securities
Disclosed is a computer-implemented system and method for rating an asset, and, in embodiments, a system and method for performing a double-blind, three stage credit rating of a securitized instrument, such as without limitation, a commercial mortgage backed security or an asset thereof. The disclosed method utilizes a secure database structure which trifurcates information relating to the asset being rated into first, second, and third analytical stages. Asset information is distributed such that analysts at each stage have access to only that information which is relevant to the scope of the particular analytical stage being performed, while irrelevant and prejudicial information is withheld from the analyst. Unique access tokens are employed to control access to stage data and to maintain the integrity of the analytical process. |
| US08600887B2 |
Automated transaction machine
An automated retail terminal in which a plurality of goods and/or services are provided in an integrated system. The integrated system generally avoids duplicating hardware or functions in the course of delivering the goods or services offered, so for example in a combination ATM and Internet kiosk the same credit card or smart card reader is used for both the ATM and the Internet kiosk functions, the same control screen activates the ATM functions and the Internet functions, and etc. |
| US08600886B2 |
Managing transaction accounts
A transaction account verification system and method are provided. A user computing device transmits an account registration request that includes a selection of an account verification technique. A service provider obtains the request and initiates a set of transactions with an identified financial service provider. The service provider generates at least one verification token reflective of the set of transactions and at least one piece of information associated with the selected account verification technique. The user computing device generates at least one user verification token from user input regarding the set of transactions and at least one piece of information associated with the selected account verification technique. The service provider can verify the transaction account and set transaction thresholds based upon matching verification tokens. |
| US08600882B2 |
Prepaid card budgeting
In general terms, embodiments of the present invention relate to methods and apparatuses for providing one or more prepaid cards, prepaid card accounts, and/or prepaid card account services. For example, in some embodiments, a method is provided that includes: (a) receiving transaction information associated with a transaction, where the transaction includes a transaction machine, a prepaid card account, and a holder of the prepaid card account; (b) determining, based at least partially on the transaction information, that the transaction involves the prepaid card account; (c) determining that the prepaid card account has a budget category; (d) determining, based at least partially on the transaction information, that the transaction applies to the budget category; (e) determining that the budget category has a spending threshold; (f) determining, based at least partially on the transaction information, that the spending threshold will be (or has been) met as a result of the transaction; and (g) sending an alert to the holder based at least partially on the determining that the spending threshold will be (or has been) met. |
| US08600878B2 |
Method for transmitting a code
The present invention relates to a method for transmitting a code to a user in which the user transmits his or her financial account identifier information to a code allocation unit 3, the code allocation unit 3 transfers an amount of money to the financial institution 5 specified by the user and/or transfers an amount of money from the financial institution 5 specified by the user, thereby submitting the account identifier information and the code to be transmitted as additional information with this transfer and/or this debit, and the financial institution 5 forwards a receipt for the transfer and/or debit together with the additional information to the user. |
| US08600877B2 |
Customer assistance system
In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, an apparatus may include a network interface configured to receive data from and communicate data to a remote electronic device and a processor coupled to the network interface. The processor may be configured to receive, via a user interface at the remote electronic device and the network interface, credentials for identifying a customer, and to display to the user interface a notification that the customer owes a past-due amount on at least one loan account. The processor may also be configured to display to the user interface a plurality of options regarding the account. The processor may further be configured to receive via the user interface and the network interface, a selected option from the plurality of options. |
| US08600874B2 |
Venture capital transaction with a university scholarship
A technique involves providing an actual cost commitment and investing a retail value of the actual cost commitment to a student venture, and receiving a return on the retail value and a return on actual cost that is equal to the return on the retail value minus the actual cost commitment. A system constructed according to the technique may include an investment decision engine, a portfolio management engine, and a venture scholar fund operations engine. The system may further include, for example, an authentication engine and a public information engine. |
| US08600865B2 |
Solid phase biomass carbon storage (SPBCS)
A computerized method of using a data processor having a memory to account for carbon flows and determine a regulatory value for a biofuel includes (i) storing, in memory, a first set of one or more carbon flow values characterizing the production and use of a biofuel, wherein the biofuel is derived from a first fraction of an agricultural biomass, (ii) storing, in memory, a second set of one or more carbon flow values characterizing the sequestration of solid phase biomass carbon, wherein the solid phase biomass carbon is derived from a second fraction of the agricultural biomass and wherein the sequestration mitigates anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission, and (iii) calculating, using the data processor, a regulatory value for the biofuel from the first and second sets of carbon flow values. |
| US08600863B2 |
Financial services card that provides visual indicator according to available balance defined policies
An approach is provided that displays visual indicators on a financial services card, such as a credit or debit card, that indicates the user's balance at a financial services provider. Available funds data is received at a financial services card that includes visual indicators (e.g., LEDs, etc.), a memory, a processor, a power source, and a wireless transmitter. The available funds data is received via the wireless transmitter. Visual indicators are selected based on the available funds data received from the financial services provider. The selected visual indicators are activated by providing power to the indicators from the power source. In one embodiment, the power source is a piezoelectric material, such as a piezoelectric crystal, that generates power to activate the visual indicators and run the processors and wireless transmitter based on manipulation of the card (e.g., applying pressure, etc. to the card) by the user. |
| US08600861B2 |
On-screen roller controlled price change
A system and method of providing control of prices in an on screen window having a price held for further transactions on an interface for traders of financial instruments. The interface contains a display of products for trading and respective prices for bids and offers. The user has a control device such as a computer mouse with a roller control. Selection of a particular product results in the display of the price of the product at the instant time the product is selected. The price is held until a confirming key or mouse stroke is received to initiate a trading action such as placing a new order, killing an existing order or hitting or lifting an order. The price can be altered by means of the roller control. |
| US08600858B1 |
Determining financial sentiment based on contests
A system and a method are disclosed for classifying items of social media content and for determining sentiment. In one embodiment, an item of social media content is obtained. The item may have been generated by a user participant of a forecasting contest. Thereafter, a financial classification for the item of social media content is determined based on a social media message packet of the item of social media content. Subsequently, a polarity for the item of social media content is determined based on the social media message packet of the item of social media content. In addition, a reliability score for a user that generated the item of social media content is determined. Based on the determined polarity, determined financial classification, and determined reliability score, financial sentiment for a financial instrument associated with the item of social media content is determined. |
| US08600857B2 |
System and method for providing a savings opportunity in association with a financial account
The present disclosure relates to comparison shopping and usage based service analysis for consumers, primarily for financial products. A consumer may not be aware of a provider's services, options, terms, conditions, costs, or how the service options change based on the consumer's particular usage characteristics. The disclosed comparison shopping method uses the consumer's actual or predicted service usage data. Service provider information is used to present the consumer with relevant alternative service offering options. Transaction data is gathered from a user's financial account and is analyzed for a savings opportunity indication. The analysis is used to match a savings opportunity from a database of savings opportunities, and the savings opportunity may be displayed in a statement of a user's financial account. Past responses to a savings opportunity indication may be gathered and analyzed. In one example, a savings opportunity is presented with a statement of the consumer's financial account. |
| US08600856B2 |
High speed processing of financial information using FPGA devices
Methods and systems for processing financial market data using a reconfigurable logic device are disclosed. Various operations such as basket calculation and volume weighted average price (VWAP) operations can be performed on the financial market data using firmware logic deployed on the reconfigurable logic device to accelerate the speed of processing. |
| US08600850B2 |
Feedback loop for dynamic network resource allocation
A system, apparatus and method for dynamic resource allocation is provided, where a network resource shared by a plurality of electronic devices having unique service profiles and unique billing profiles is monitored. Allocation of the shared network resource as well as the service profiles and billing profiles are dynamically modified. |
| US08600849B1 |
Controlling content items
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products may be used for controlling use of a content item. A tag may be applied to a content item. The tag may include at least a unique identifier associated with the content item. When a first indication of a selection of the content item is received, the tag may be used to identify a sharing level associated with the content item and to control use of the content item based on the sharing level associated with the content item. |
| US08600848B2 |
Methods, apparatus and systems for ensuring wage and hour compliance in locate operations
Control of locating equipment used by a locate technician to perform a locate and/or marking operation to detect and/or mark a presence or an absence of at least one underground facility at a work site (e.g., locate receivers, locate transmitters, marking devices and/or combined locate and marking devices) is based on time-keeping information associated with the technician and/or wage and hour compliance information. In one example, one or more control signals are generated to at least partially enable or disable one or more piece of locating equipment based at least in part on a time clock status of the locate technician (e.g., clocked-in or clocked-out), and/or wage and hour compliance information associated with the locate technician and/or the work site (e.g., relating to required breaks and/or maximum number of work hours). |
| US08600835B1 |
Methods systems and computer program products for generating electronic shopping lists with item and price data
Systems, computer-implemented methods and computer program products for generating electronic shopping lists for recurring item purchase that identify items and their respective prices. Item-level electronic transaction data is analyzed to determine purchase intervals of items and estimate when the consumer will purchase the items again. A source of price data is accessed to determine prices of respective items, and an electronic shopping list is generated based on prior consumer purchase and lists items that when it is determined that consumer will need to purchase those items again and their respective prices. |
| US08600826B2 |
Method and apparatus for presenting information relating to a good
A method and apparatus to present information relating to a good. A product identification code is received via a cellular telephone, the product identification code identifying the good. The information relating to the good is presented via a network and using the product identification code. |
| US08600825B2 |
Payment service provision with reduced transaction costs
A method for providing on-line payment services is provided where a payment service provider pays for a plurality of purchases that are made by a user during a plurality of on-line shopping sessions. An authorization is received for the payment service provider to collect a reimbursement amount from a financial institution of the user. The reimbursement amount is at least equal to a cumulative amount of the payments for the plurality of purchases made by the user during the plurality of on-line shopping sessions. The payment service provider collects the reimbursement amount in a single transaction from the financial institution of the user and pays a fee to the financial institution of the user. The fee is based on the single transaction carried out to collect the reimbursement amount rather than being applied to each of the plurality of purchases or assessed as a percentage of the reimbursement amount, which allows the payment service provider to reduce the costs associated with providing payment services. |
| US08600824B2 |
Image-based product marketing systems and methods
Exemplary product marketing systems and methods are disclosed. An exemplary method includes a product marketing system receiving, from an access device, a product search request and image data representative of an image associated with a product, searching, in response to the product search request, a repository of product image data to identify at least one match to the image associated with the product, generating, based on the at least one match, search results data comprising product information for at least one product, and transmitting the search results data to the access device. Corresponding systems and methods are also disclosed. |
| US08600822B2 |
Online ordering system and method utilizing normalized product feeds and insertion of order data without redirect
Systems and methods for facilitating an on-line purchase of at least one item on behalf of a consumer are disclosed. A consumer may shop and purchase at least one item on a consolidated shopping (CS) website displaying one or more items available for purchase on one or more different merchant websites. The CS website provides consumers with advanced searching that takes into consideration a personal profile of the consumer, the consumer's previous shopping history, transactional data relating to a group of similar consumers, and the like. A host computer providing the CS website may access a merchant website selling the requested item, and order the requested item on behalf of the consumer, and charging a transaction fee, listing fee, receiving a rebate and/or offering a rebate for performing such. One embodiment allows a consumer to purchase/order multiple items from multiple websites in a single purchase request to the CS website. |
| US08600816B2 |
Multimedia, multiuser system and associated methods
A table system includes a touch screen integrated in a table top, a computer system in communication with the touch screen, the touch screen being configured to serve as a primary input to the computer and to display multiple active sections at different orientations corresponding to different seating locations on the table top simultaneously, and a secondary screen, located away from the touch screen, in communication with the computer system, the secondary screen being configured to continuously display media files stored on the computer system at a single orientation and to be viewed from the different seating locations simultaneous with use of the touch screen, the touch screen configured to display representations of media files to be displayed on the secondary screen and to serve as selection input for the media files. |
| US08600815B2 |
Methods and systems for facilitating off-site internet advertising and dividing compensation pursuant to contract
A super-saturation method for information-media substantially relates to a three-body cooperation to direct information to an electronic media consumer (reader, surfer, viewer, listener, etc.). Embodiments of the present invention facilitate a first media entity substantially offering out of context information placement using a second media entity. A facilitator entity guarantees that a consumer of the second media is a known consumer of the first media. Accordingly, the second media entity presents an out of context information placement. For example, an Internet site “AAA” is oversubscribed with potential paying advertising content at $100 CPM. This site offers advertisers an option to present their advertisements to certified “AAA” viewers, albeit on a non-AAA Internet site, for $50 CPM. The facilitator locates certified AAA viewers at Internet site “BBB” that normally charges $30 CPM. Contracts between AAA, BBB, and the facilitator divide a new revenue stream of $20 CPM between them. |
| US08600814B2 |
Structured analysis and organization of documents online and related methods
An online data storage system (100) is disclosed in which users may store a variety of personal documents in accordance with a common document structure that can include tag structures that are tailored to specific types of documents. The document and tag structures permit convenient access of the documents and enable providers of goods and services to generate targeted conditional offers while ensuring the privacy of individuals storing the documents. |
| US08600810B2 |
Expanding computer display advertising method continuation
A method and system is disclosed for creating additional advertising space by sensing the position of an element on a web page or other client viewer, and upon interaction of a user with that element positioning the appearance of additional web page elements not limited by the boundary of the initial element. Marketing methods enabled thereby are disclosed where among other possibilities this created advertising space can be sold to pay for placement of instances of the invention, where licensees are motivated to themselves place instances of the invention in exchange for usage rights, or further be compensated with a share of income from built-in links, where instances of the invention can carry value added content so that hosting sites will pay for the placement or carry it at no charge, and where a content provider might pay for having its content programmed or provide it for free for promotional value, where instances of the invention maintain links back to a generator site for its own propagation, where a web presence can be created across multiple sites for any commercial or social purpose as a conglomerate world wide billboard, where any instance of the invention can be reconfigured on any site where it resides in real time protected by optional password, and other alternatives more fully described in the specification. |
| US08600803B1 |
Incentivizing behavior to address pricing, tax, and currency issues in an online marketplace for digital goods
An online marketplace is provided to merchants of digital goods that may be downloaded from the marketplace to a client computing device for execution. A request is received from a party to the marketplace to list a digital good for sale in the marketplace. A primary price for the digital good is received. An opt-in service is offered that includes determining one or more derivative prices associated with the digital good, collecting the one or more derivative prices from a buyer of the digital good, and paying an amount based on the one or more derivative prices to the party to the marketplace. An incentive is provided to the party to accept the offer. After acceptance of the offer by the party, the derivative prices associated with the digital good are determined, the derivative prices are collected from a buyer of the digital good, and the amount based on the one or more derivative prices is paid to the party to the marketplace. |
| US08600800B2 |
Parking locator system including promotion distribution system
A promotion distribution system that distributes promotions based on where a user has parked provides the benefit of allowing providers or merchants to target promotions to particular areas where users park. The target areas may be remote from a merchant's location. In addition, since there are a vast number of vehicle drivers and passengers that park, the system provides a large audience for merchant promotions. The system may comprise one or more parking locators that detect the presence of a vehicle within a vicinity. A repository server and parking kiosk may retrieve promotions for presentation to a user based on where the user has parked and the area in which a promotion is targeted. |
| US08600795B2 |
System and method for filtering, distributing and routing sales leads
A system and method of managing leads by filtering, distributing and routing leads to a representative using business intelligence. |
| US08600793B2 |
Method and system for managing an enterprise resource planning project
A project management server automatically monitors the progress of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project represented by developing business configuration content for the ERP system. The project management server maintains a set of data representing a previous status of the development of business configuration content for the ERP system. The project management server requests a new set of data from the ERP system. The new set of data represents the current status of the development of business configuration content for the ERP system. The project management server automatically compares the two sets of data to determine the progress of the ERP project, generates a report showing the progress and updates the old set of data with the new set of data. |
| US08600790B1 |
System and method for presenting an internet survey to pre-qualified vistors to a website
A system, method, and computer readable medium comprising instructions for providing a survey to a user comprises accessing a web site by the user, determining if the user is qualified to partake in a survey related to the web site, tracking the user's interaction with the web site when the user is qualified to partake in the survey, presenting the survey to the user based on the user's interaction, receiving responses to the survey, tracking the user's further interaction with the web site, determining if a page unload event followed by a page load event occurs within a period of time, determining if the user has left the web site when the page unload event followed by the page load event does not occur within the period of time, presenting a static first portion of an additional survey to the user, and presenting a dynamic second portion of the additional survey to the user based on at least one of: the user's further interaction with the web site, the user's interaction with the web site, and the user's responses to the survey, when it is determined that the user has left the web site. |
| US08600783B2 |
Business to business computer system for communicating and processing rental car reservations using web services
An Internet-enabled automatic rental vehicle transaction system, the system comprising a web service connector in communication with a rental vehicle software program, the web service connector being configured to (1) receive, via a network, a document from a computer system of an authorized purchaser of rental vehicle services on behalf of another, the document comprising a web service rental vehicle reservation request, (2) process the received document in accordance with a web service specification document to create one or more data objects having a format supported by the rental vehicle software program, and (3) communicate the one or more data objects to the rental vehicle software program, and wherein the rental vehicle software program is configured to automatically process the one or more data objects for fulfillment of the reservation request. |
| US08600776B2 |
Records access and management
An electronic device for aggregating electronic medical records, in which electronic medical records are aggregated from multiple electronic repositories and displayed as a single set of records. The multiple electronic repositories may store records for a particular patient using varying identifying/access information to facilitate anonymous access to the electronic medical records. Emergency medical services providers may be able to access medical records for a patient using the electronic device after being authenticated as a valid/licensed medical services provider. |
| US08600774B2 |
Systems and methods for exchanging health care credits
Systems and methods for exchanging health care credits are described. Health care credits are transferable units of value representing good health, an improvement in health, or maintenance of health by an individual. The health care credits may be bought, sold, exchanged for goods and services, gifted or otherwise conveyed from one owner to another. Also disclosed are exchanges and markets for buying, selling, and trading health care credits, as well as derivative securities. The derivative securities or products are based on either the flow of health care credits through the system, or on health care information, which may have been generated to implement health care credit awards. |
| US08600772B2 |
Systems and methods for interfacing with healthcare organization coding system
Systems, articles, and methods for assisting medical coders with review and identification of relevant portions of electronic documents associated with a patient's encounter with a healthcare organization, and for the inputting of codes describing said encounter. |
| US08600771B2 |
Systems and methods for generating a teaching file message
Certain embodiments present a system for generating a medical teaching file message. An image identifier labels medical images based upon information pertaining to user interaction with the image. The system also provides an image search engine that scans and indexes images within a database based on a set of rules. The image search engine generates a subset of images from a larger group of medical images within a database based upon the rules. The system also includes a supporting data selection engine for accepting a free text search query from an interface. The supporting data selection engine scans medical databases based on the free text search query, and provides the supporting data search results via an interface. A teaching file message is generated either automatically or manually from the subset of images and the supporting data search results for transmission to a teaching file. |
| US08600768B2 |
People engine optimization
Some embodiments promote website credibility and the optimization of websites for people by automatedly quantifying various elements of a website into component credibility scores. In some embodiments, a set of encoded credibility scoring rules are used to compute each of the component credibility scores, wherein the credibility scoring rules are derived based on factors that have been identified by a grouping of people that preferably represent a primary demographic of users that consume the content of a particular classified type of website. In some such embodiments, the credibility scoring rules are derived from commonality that is identified from a sample set of known credible and/or non-credible websites of a particular classification. Once the credibility scoring rules are defined, the system applies the rules to other websites having the same classification as those from which the rules are derived to automatically generate credibility scores for the other websites. |
| US08600767B2 |
Bid-based control of networks
Service by a packet switched network is controlled based on bids from consumer equipment. The bids may be compared to historical bids previously received from each of the consumer equipment. A low bid from one of the consumer equipment may be disregarded, based on a history of high bids. |
| US08600765B2 |
Signal classification method and device, and encoding and decoding methods and devices
Embodiments of the present invention provide a signal classification method and device, and encoding and decoding methods and devices. The encoding method includes: dividing a current frame into a low-frequency band signal and a high-frequency band signal; attenuating the high-frequency band signal or a to-be-encoded characteristic parameter of the high-frequency band signal according to an energy attenuation value of the low-frequency band signal, where the energy attenuation value indicates energy attenuation of the low-frequency band signal caused by encoding of the low-frequency band signal; and encoding the attenuated high-frequency band signal or the attenuated to-be-encoded characteristic parameter of the high-frequency band signal. The technical solutions according to the embodiments of the present invention can improve the effect of combining the low-frequency band signal and the high-frequency band signal at the decoder. |
| US08600762B2 |
Mobile terminal and method for recognizing voice thereof
A method for detecting a character or a word emphasized by a user from a voice inputted in a mobile terminal to refer it as meaningful information for a voice recognition, or emphatically displaying the user-emphasized character or word in a pre-set format when the inputted voice is converted into text, and a mobile terminal implementing the same are disclosed. The mobile terminal includes: a microphone to receive a voice of user; a controller to convert the received voice into corresponding text and detect a character or a word emphatically pronounced by the user from the voice; and a display unit to emphatically display the detected character or word in a pre-set format when the converted text is displayed. |
| US08600760B2 |
Correcting substitution errors during automatic speech recognition by accepting a second best when first best is confusable
A speech recognition method includes the steps of receiving input speech containing vocabulary, processing the input speech with a grammar to obtain N-best hypotheses and associated parameter values, and determining whether a first-best hypothesis of the N-best hypotheses is confusable with any vocabulary within the grammar. The first-best hypothesis is accepted as recognized speech corresponding to the received input speech if the first-best hypothesis is not determined to be confusable with any vocabulary within the grammar. Where the first-best hypothesis is determined to be confusable, at least one parameter value of the first-best hypothesis can be compared to at least one threshold value, and accepting the second-best as the recognized speech, if its confidence score is within certain lower and upper threshold values and is not confusable with the first-best. The first-best hypothesis can be accepted as recognized speech corresponding to the received input speech, if the parameter value of the first-best hypothesis is greater than the threshold value. |
| US08600756B2 |
Handling a telephone call by voice analytics in a computer-telephony integration system
The invention provides a computer-implemented method of handling a telephone call, comprising monitoring a conversation between an agent and a customer on a telephone line as part of the telephone call to extract the audio signal therefrom. Real-time voice analytics are performed on the extracted audio signal while the telephone call is in progress. The results from the voice analytics are then passed to a computer-telephony integration system responsible for the call for use by the computer-telephony integration system for determining future handling of the call. |
| US08600755B2 |
Establishing a multimodal personality for a multimodal application in dependence upon attributes of user interaction
Establishing a multimodal personality for a multimodal application, including evaluating, by the multimodal application, attributes of a user's interaction with the multimodal application; selecting, by the multimodal application, a vocal demeanor in dependence upon the values of the attributes of the user's interaction with the multimodal application; and incorporating, by the multimodal application, the vocal demeanor into the multimodal application. |
| US08600751B2 |
Digital method and arrangement for authenticating a person
Digital method for authentication of a person by comparing a current voice profile with a previously stored initial voice profile, wherein to determine the relevant voice profile the person speaks at least one speech sample into the system, this speech sample is conveyed to a voice-profile calculation unit and thereby, on the basis of a prespecified voice-profile algorithm, the voice profile is calculated, such that the overall size of the speech sample and/or parameters of its evaluation to determine the relevant voice profile are established dynamically and automatically as the sample is spoken, in response to the result of an evaluation of a first partial speech sample. |
| US08600749B2 |
System and method for training adaptation-specific acoustic models for automatic speech recognition
Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media for training adaptation-specific acoustic models. A system practicing the method receives speech and generates a full size model and a reduced size model, the reduced size model starting with a single distribution for each speech sound in the received speech. The system finds speech segment boundaries in the speech using the full size model and adapts features of the speech data using the reduced size model based on the speech segment boundaries and an overall centroid for each speech sound. The system then recognizes speech using the adapted features of the speech. The model can be a Hidden Markov Model (HMM). The reduced size model can also be of a reduced complexity, such as having fewer mixture components than a model of full complexity. Adapting features of speech can include moving the features closer to an overall feature distribution center. |
| US08600747B2 |
Method for dialog management
A spoken dialog system and method having a dialog management module are disclosed. The dialog management module includes a plurality of dialog motivators for handling various operations during a spoken dialog. The dialog motivators comprise an error handling, disambiguation, assumption, confirmation, missing information, and continuation. The spoken dialog system uses the assumption dialog motivator in either a-priori or a-posteriori modes. A-priori assumption is based on predefined requirements for the call flow and a-posteriori assumption can work with the confirmation dialog motivator to assume the content of received user input and confirm received user input. |
| US08600744B2 |
System and method for improving robustness of speech recognition using vocal tract length normalization codebooks
Disclosed are systems, methods, and computer readable media for performing speech recognition. The method embodiment comprises selecting a codebook from a plurality of codebooks with a minimal acoustic distance to a received speech sample, the plurality of codebooks generated by a process of (a) computing a vocal tract length for a each of a plurality of speakers, (b) for each of the plurality of speakers, clustering speech vectors, and (c) creating a codebook for each speaker, the codebook containing entries for the respective speaker's vocal tract length, speech vectors, and an optional vector weight for each speech vector, (2) applying the respective vocal tract length associated with the selected codebook to normalize the received speech sample for use in speech recognition, and (3) recognizing the received speech sample based on the respective vocal tract length associated with the selected codebook. |
| US08600736B2 |
Linguistic analysis
A method of operating a computer to perform linguistic analysis includes the steps of splitting an input text into words and sentences; for each sentence, comparing phrases in the sentence with known phrases stored in a database, as follows: for each word in the sentence, comparing its value and values of words following it with values of words of stored phrases, starting with the longest stored phrase that starts with that word, and working from longest to shortest; in the event a match is found for two or more consecutive words, and considering the words around the phrase, labelling the matched phrase with an overphrase that describes the grammar use of the matched phrase; after the penultimate word has been compared, recasting the sentence by replacing the matched phrases by their respective overphrases; and then repeating the comparison process with the recast sentence until there is no further recasting. |
| US08600719B2 |
Ablated object region determining apparatuses and methods
Ablated object region determining apparatuses and methods for determining an ablated object region for ablating an object of interest are provided. A user can set an orientation and position of an ablation element with respect to a geometrical representation of the object of interest, at least one energy influencing element and a spatial relationship between the object of interest and the at least one energy influencing element. A model ablation region retrieving unit retrieves a model ablation region depending on the respective set orientation and position of the ablation element from a model ablation region storing unit. An ablated object region determining unit determines at least one of a) an ablated object region of the object of interest being located within the retrieved model ablation region and b) a non-ablated object region of the object of interest being located outside the retrieved model ablation region. |
| US08600718B1 |
Computer systems and methods for identifying conserved cellular constituent clusters across datasets
Systems and methods for determining a functional relationship between pairs of cellular constituents are provided. A plurality of datasets is received. Each dataset represents an experimental condition and comprises measurement data for a plurality of cellular constituents from each of a plurality of organisms. Each respective dataset is represented by correlation coefficients. Each correlation coefficient for a respective dataset in the plurality of datasets represents a correlation between abundance measurement data for a pair of cellular constituents across the dataset. The plurality of correlation coefficients that represents a first dataset in the plurality of datasets is clustered, thereby determining their order. This order is applied to each remaining dataset thereby forming a plurality of correlation matrices. When a conserved area in the plurality of matrices is identified, the functional relationship between the first cellular constituent and the second constituent is determined to be present. |
| US08600711B2 |
Analyzing model creating apparatus and method, and computer-readable storage medium
An analyzing model creating apparatus obtains a three-dimensional analyzing model (3D mode) of an analyzing target and regions of the 3D model, obtains a reference point on an impact surface from a normal vector of the impact surface represented by a unit vector and minimum and maximum values of each coordinate obtained from the regions of the 3D model to generate the impact surface having an impact attitude of the 3D model with respect to the impact surface defined by an arbitrary rotary position of the impact surface. The apparatus further generates an analysis input file which includes information related to the 3D model, the impact surface and an impact velocity with which the 3D model and the impact surface collide, and analyzes a strength of the 3D model based on the analysis input file. |
| US08600702B2 |
Non-destructive thickness measurement systems and methods
The present invention generally relates to improved non-destructive thickness measurement systems and methods. Embodiments of the present invention utilize quarter wave resonant frequency to measure the thickness of high-temperature pipe walls. In one embodiment, an improved non-destructive thickness measurement system is provided that utilizes Gaussian white noise to produce maximum mechanical resonance in the pipe wall and laser vibrometers to detect the pipe wall's maximum displacement. |
| US08600701B2 |
Dive computer with free dive mode
A dive computer with a free dive mode and/or wireless data transmission capabilities. In one embodiment the invention relates to a diving apparatus including a dive computer having a free dive mode, where the dive computer is configured to calculate a nitrogen loading in the free dive mode using a default value which is the fraction of oxygen in air, and where the free dive mode is used when a diver makes a dive without a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Another embodiment includes a method of operating a dive computer including recording two or more first identifiers, receiving pressure information from two or more pressure transmitters, the pressure information comprising second identifiers and pressure measurements, determining whether the pressure information contains one of the two or more first identifiers, and displaying a message indicative of the pressure information that contains one of the two or more first identifiers. |
| US08600700B2 |
Method and system for measuring angles based on 360 degree images
A method of measuring an angle includes orienting a measurement device at a reference position characterized by a reference angle. A first panoramic image defined by a predetermined range of elevation angles is acquired where the first panoramic image includes an object. A first bearing of the object in relation to the reference angle is determined and the measurement device is rotated to a measurement position characterized by a measurement angle. A second panoramic image defined by the predetermined range of elevation angles is acquired where the second panoramic image includes the object. A second bearing of the object in relation to the reference angle is determined. The measurement angle is computed as a function of the first bearing and the second bearing. |
| US08600695B2 |
Phase canceling current transducer
A phase canceling current transducer for a power meter includes an error correction unit including a memory for storing error correction factors. A data processing device of the error correction unit adjusts the output of the transducer to correct for phase and ratio errors produced by the transducer current transformer or to cause the transducer's output to mimic the output of another current transducer. |
| US08600692B2 |
Automatically configurable sensing device
The present document describes a ready to use sensing device which is auto-configurable when turned on. The sensing device includes one or more sensors and a communication port. When turned on, the system automatically contacts a central server via the communication port and requests the address of a second server with which the sensing device is associated. Upon receipt of the address of the second server, the sensing device contacts the second server and requests its customized configuration settings. When received, the configuration settings are installed, and the sensing device starts to sample the output of the sensors and sends the samples to the second server for storage. The user may view the measurement data by accessing the second server through the internet. The minimum memory capacity required for operating the sensing device is very low, due to the fact that the samples are sent to the second server every time the samples are taken. |
| US08600691B2 |
Gyroscope system magnetic field error compensation
One embodiment of the invention includes a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) gyroscope system. The system includes a gyro cell that is sealed to enclose an alkali metal vapor, a first gyromagnetic isotope, and a second gyromagnetic isotope. A magnetic field generator configured to generate a magnetic field that is provided through the gyro cell to cause the first and the second gyromagnetic isotopes to precess. A magnetic field error controller configured to measure an error associated with a magnitude of the magnetic field and to generate an error signal that is fed back to the magnetic field generator to maintain the magnetic field at a desired magnitude. The system further includes a mechanization processor configured to calculate a rotation angle about a sensitive axis of the NMR gyroscope system based on a measured precession angle of at least one of the first and second gyromagnetic isotopes and the error signal. |
| US08600690B2 |
System and method for the transmission of signals
A method and a transmission system are disclosed for the transmission of wanted signals between a sensor and an evaluation unit. In order to suppress interference to the sensor signals due to external interference sources as far as possible, at least one embodiment of the inventive system has at least one signal receiver with the sensor for detecting a wanted signal and a signal processing device for conditioning the wanted signal, at whose output a mixed signal with a wanted signal component and an interference signal component from at least one interference source are present; an interference source signal input for detecting at least one interference source signal of the at least one interference source; a filter device for reconstructing the interference signal component as a function of the at least one interference source signal; and a subtractor for eliminating interference superimposed on the wanted signal. |
| US08600689B2 |
Automatic analyzer
An automatic analyzer includes a function in which the measured data of a quality control sample is compared with reference maximum and minimum values of measured data of the quality control sample. When the measured data is out of the range between the reference maximum and minimum values, re-measurement for calibration is recommended to a user who can easily confirm the recommendation on an operation screen and request the re-measurement. |
| US08600688B2 |
Geometrically based button discrimination in capacitive sensing applications
Geometrically based system and method for receiving capacitive sensory input. User input may be received by a capacitive sensing pad. A signal may be generated by the capacitive sensing pad. The signal may indicate a size of an area in which the user input is received. The signal may be received by an input composed in processing circuitry and coupled to the capacitive sensing pad. A location of the user input may be determined by the processing circuitry based on the signal. |
| US08600685B2 |
Systems and methods for predicting failure of electronic systems and assessing level of degradation and remaining useful life
Disclosed are systems and methods for prognostic health management (PHM) of electronic systems. Such systems and methods present challenges traditionally viewed as either insurmountable or otherwise not worth the cost of pursuit. The systems and methods are directed to the health monitoring and failure prediction of electronic systems, including the diagnostic methods employed to assess current health state and prognostic methods for the prediction of electronic system failures and remaining useful life. The disclosed methodologies include three techniques: (1) use of existing electronic systems data (circuit as a sensor); (2) use of available external measurements as condition indicators and degradation assessor; and (3) performance assessment metrics derived from available external measurements. |
| US08600684B2 |
Spinner home sequence
The present invention relates to a method for determining the identity of a microfluidic device and a home position by means of a set of home position marks on the microfluidic device, which is of the type used in a microfluidic system. Said method comprises following phases: a microfluidic device scanning phase, wherein a microfluidic device is scanned for mark identifiers; a microfluidic device identifying phase, wherein at least one a characteristic feature of the set of home marks is/are determined and used for identifying the identity of the microfluidic device; a home position determining phase, wherein the home position is determined by the use of at least a subset of the home position marks identified during said previous phases. The present invention relates to a set of home marks, a microfluidic device carrying such a set of home marks, a microfluidic system, a computer program product and a computer program on a computer usable medium. |
| US08600683B2 |
Systems and methods for obtaining and managing sequencing data
Systems and methods for biological sample processing are described. A production line extracts genomic DNA from a biological sample, amplifies target components of the sample and produces sequence data for markers from the amplified components. The markers are associated with tests identified in a requisition received with the sample and some markers may be associated with unrequisitioned tests. A sample information management system (SIMS) controls and monitors the production line and subsequent analysis of the results using information in a quality control (QC) database to validate the results. A repository comprising the QC database and a research database receives and aggregates the results without identifying the source of the sample. A portal may be provided to provide access to the research database to a plurality of external contributors. Contributors can selectively provide additional research data and data can be processed using data mining and curation tools. |
| US08600678B2 |
System and method for presenting lightning strike information
A system and method for presenting lightning strike information in a manner so as to be easily understood and appreciated by viewers of televised weather report presentations and the like. Lightning strike information is displayed with a marker and textual indication of the lightning strike location in a viewer friendly format, e.g., a street address. Lightning strike data from a lightning strike data source is filtered to select individual lightning strikes to be displayed and processed to obtain the viewer friendly lightning strike location information to be presented overlaid on a geographic map or satellite image background. Personalized lighting strike information indicating the distance of a lighting strike from a viewer location of interest may be generated and provided directly to individual viewers via the interne, cellular phones, and/or other wired or wireless communication channels. |
| US08600676B2 |
Method for fast and precise orbit propogation including maneuver
A flight dynamics subsystem (FDS), a velocity increment calculation module, and operational methods of the same are provided. A used fuel quantity actually used in a satellite is calculated, and a velocity increment is calculated using the calculated fuel quantity. Therefore, an orbit of the satellite may be estimated more accurately. |
| US08600672B2 |
Travel energy learning device, and method
A road section where the host vehicle is currently located is identified and the work rate of a transmission shaft, which transmits a driving force from a drive source of a host vehicle to a wheel, is derived based on a rotational speed and the torque transmitted by the transmission shaft. The energy required to travel through the road section is linked to the road section and accumulated based on the work rate derived while the host vehicle travels through the road section. |
| US08600665B2 |
System and method for aligning a particular passenger with a unique vehicle
The present invention generally relates to passenger and vehicle paring. Specifically, this invention relates to a system and method for aligning a particular passenger with a unique vehicle through the use of one or more scanners and unique identifiers placed at specific entrances to a facility. The system further relates to a system and method for identifying particular egress routes to align the particular passenger with the unique vehicle. |
| US08600664B2 |
Method and apparatus for GPS services based on client and server architecture
A client navigation system establishes a wireless connection to a navigation server on a computer network. The client requests a route by uploading start and stop specifications. The server calculates an optimal route based on real-time data available on the network. A generic natural language description is used to specify the optimal route downloaded to the client. The natural language description is independent from the local mapping database software on the client and includes a plain text description for each link using pre-defined generic terms. The client interprets the route, interfaces with the local mapping database and reconstructs the optimal route using a mapping reconstruction algorithm. The route is displayed on the client navigation system using whatever mapping database is present. |
| US08600662B2 |
Method and system for plotting a user's position on a display
A method and system for showing a user his position in a set geographic area in which all parts of the geographic area are visible on a display at all times, and in which the user's position is shown as moveable relative to the set geographic area. The method and system utilize a positioning system (such as GPS) on the user and a display visible to the user to track and display the user's movement. In some versions the user defines the geographic area by positioning himself at the edges of the area. In other versions the user marks the geographic area on a map or chart on the display. In this way the user will always know his position relative to the same boundaries, without the need for zooming or scrolling the display. |
| US08600661B2 |
Multi-function appliance for a satellite navigation data distribution system
A multi-function appliance for use in a satellite navigation data distribution system is described. A computer includes an input/output interface and a memory the computer is configured with a plurality of modules. The plurality of modules includes a satellite signal receiver, a packetizer, a network interface, a concentrator, and a decoder. The satellite signal receiver is configured to obtain satellite navigation data from satellite signals. The packetizer is configured to packetize satellite navigation data to produce a reference packet stream. The network interface is configured to transmit packet streams towards a network. The concentrator is configured to remove duplicate packets within reference packet streams to generate a combined packet stream. The decoder is configured to decode satellite data from packet streams. In this manner, the computer may be configured to perform a reference station function, a hub function, or a server function in the satellite navigation data distribution network. |
| US08600658B1 |
Bicycle directions
A mapping system tailors maps and directions for bicyclists. The mapping system stores map data including data about the suitability for biking along roads in a road network. A cost model, including a turn model, a hill model, and a penalty/bonus model is applied to the road network. The turn model models how long it takes to traverse an intersection. The hill model models a bicyclist's speed based on the road grade. The penalty/bonus model adjusts the calculated cost of a road segment under the turn model and hill model to take account of steep hills and other unfavorable or favorable conditions along the road segment for bicycling. The mapping system generates one or more routes between an origin and destination. The generated route that has the lowest adjusted cost is determined to be a recommended route. The mapping system formats maps and/or directions to display recommended routes. |
| US08600657B2 |
Vehicle control apparatus
According to conventional art, if there is an obstacle on the left of a vehicle, a control threshold value is set so as to avoid the obstacle. If the control threshold value is exceeded, the vehicle is controlled in accordance with a deviation quantity so as to return to a position where the control threshold avoids being exceeded. However, even if a risky oncoming vehicle is approaching the vehicle on the right, the vehicle is controllably moved toward the oncoming vehicle. Thus, disadvantageously, a driver has a sense of fear or discomfort. A vehicle control apparatus according to the present invention includes a calculation section configured to calculate a first risk level present on the left of the vehicle and a second risk level present on the right of the vehicle, a setting section configured to set a first control threshold for the left of the vehicle based on the first risk level and to set a second control threshold for the right of the vehicle based on the second risk level, a change section configured to change at least one of the first and second control thresholds based on the first and second risk levels, and a control section configured to control the vehicle based on the changed control threshold. |
| US08600656B2 |
Lighting system with driver assistance capabilities
A method for providing driver assistance, comprising providing a vehicle with a visible-light source, driving the source to emit visible light in a predetermined mode, receiving a reflection/backscatter of the emitted visible light from an object and generating detected light data; identifying, using the driving data and the detected light data, at least one of a presence and a position of the object as a function of the reflection/backscatter received and of the predetermined mode, detecting a visibility in the environment using the driving data and the detected light data, triggering at least one of an interaction with a driver of the vehicle and an action of the vehicle as a function of at least one of the presence of the object, the position of the object and the visibility detected by the data/signal processor. |
| US08600648B2 |
Method and system for engine speed control
Methods and systems are provided for accurately determining cylinder fueling errors during an automatic engine restart. Fueling errors may be learned during a preceding engine restart on a cylinder-specific and combustion event-specific basis. The learned fueling errors may then be applied during a subsequent engine restart on the same cylinder-specific and combustion event-specific basis to better anticipate and compensate for engine cranking air-to-fuel ratio deviations. |
| US08600645B2 |
Induction backfire compensation for motorcycles
A control system for an engine having at least one manifold, a throttle, and a crank wheel, includes a pressure sensor to measure a pressure in the at least one manifold, a throttle position sensor to measure a position of the throttle of the engine, a revolution sensor to measure a rate of rotation of the crank wheel of the engine, a processor in communication with each of the pressure sensor, the throttle position sensor, and the revolution sensor to receive an input signal, analyze the input signal based upon an instruction set, and generate a control signal in response to analysis of the input signal, wherein the input signal is representative of at least one of the pressure, the throttle position, and the rate of rotation, and an engine system in communication with the processor and responsive to the control signal to control a function thereof. |
| US08600639B2 |
Yaw rate control with simultaneous maximum deceleration
A method for stabilizing a vehicle in a transverse direction, in which: for a first braking force distribution in which each vehicle wheel is braked using the maximum braking force transmittable to the road surface in the current driving situation, the yawing moment acting on the vehicle is ascertained; for at least a second braking force distribution that differs from the first braking force distribution in that at least one wheel is not braked using the maximum braking force, the yawing moment acting on the vehicle is ascertained; a setpoint yawing moment is ascertained; and from at least the first and second braking force distributions, the braking force distribution whose associated yawing moment comes closest to the setpoint yawing moment is set at the vehicle. |
| US08600638B2 |
Vehicle stabilization controlling apparatus
When a the brake assist control and a left/right distribution control are performed at the same time, since braking forces, which are equal to or larger than the braking force generated by a brake operation of a driver, are generated to wheels by the brake assist control, in a case where the driver requests a large deceleration, a desired deceleration can be obtained. Further, since a difference is made between the braking forces generated to left/right wheels by the left/right distribution control, in a case where a yaw direction behavior is generated to a vehicle, the yaw direction behavior can be reduced by a difference between the braking forces. |
| US08600637B2 |
Vehicle braking control device for braking force distribution
A braking control device for a vehicle executes braking force distribution (BFD) biased to front wheel in a manner compatible with Anti-skid control. In BFD control, braking force on rear wheels is held at a holding braking force and braking force on the front wheels is incremented beyond braking force requested by a braking action of a driver. After the starting of BFD control, further increase in the braking action is reflected in the front wheel braking force. Upon starting anti-skid control for either of the wheels during the execution of BFD control, an increment of the front wheel braking forces to be requested by BFD control is gradually decreased. Simultaneously, the holding of the rear braking force is released so as to compensate for the shortage of braking force on the front wheel. The gradual decrease of the braking force increment prevents a conflict of BFD and Anti-skid control. |
| US08600630B2 |
Sensing and display of gear ratios
The present application discloses an apparatus for determining and displaying gear ratios in a transmission system having a driving sprocket set, a driven sprocket set and a flexible drive member that engages the driving sprocket set and driven sprocket set, the apparatus comprising a display, a sensing module, the sensing module comprising a plurality of magneto-resistive assemblies, wherein at least one of the plurality of magneto-resistive assemblies is configured to detect adjustment of the transmission system, the sensing module configured to generate a signal responsive to said adjustment of the transmission system, and a data processor communicatively coupled with the display and with the sensing module, the data processor configured to receive the signal generated by the sensing module, process the signal to generate data relating to sprockets engaged by the flexible drive member, and write the data to the display. |
| US08600629B2 |
Compensation method for planter shut off delay
A method for compensating for planter shut off delay in a planter includes automatically calculating by an intelligent control associated with the planter, a time delay look-ahead distance based on groundspeed of the planter and a time delay, and a total look-ahead distance based on the time delay look-ahead distance and a distance delay look ahead distance. The method further includes determining by the intelligent control if seeding should be off or on at a point in the field at the total look ahead distance, and sending a signal to a row shutoff device of the planter to control the seeding. A control system is also provided. |
| US08600626B2 |
Headrest apparatus, method of adjusting headrest position, vehicle seat
There is provided a headrest apparatus including: a headrest main body provided at a top edge portion of a seatback; a detection section to detect contact between the head of an occupant seated in the seat and the headrest main body; a moving section that moves the headrest main body in the vehicle front-rear direction; and a controller that controls the moving section such that the headrest main body is moved forward until contact between the head of an occupant and the headrest main body is detected by the detection section, and, when contact between the head of an occupant and the headrest main body has been detected by the detection section, controls the moving section to move the headrest main body such that there is a specific amount of back-set separation distance in a horizontal direction between the head of an occupant and the headrest main body. |
| US08600625B2 |
Display control device
A light ECU in a light control device performs a display process of obtaining speed limit information at a current position of the driver's vehicle on a road and of instructing a pixel light system to display the speed limit information on the surface of the road. The light control device can project the speed limit information for the drivers vehicle onto the road. Further, the light control device judges whether or not the vehicle speed information is not less than a predetermined reference speed, and performs the process of displaying the vehicle speed information on the road only when the vehicle speed information is not less than a predetermined reference speed. The above control process displays the vehicle speed information on the road only when necessary, allows the driver of the vehicle only to recognize important information, and provides the driver of the vehicle with safer driving conditions. |
| US08600621B2 |
System and method for controlling slip
A system for automated control of a ground-engaging traction device includes sensors to indicate a speed of the ground-engaging traction device, an acceleration of the machine, and a pitch rate of the machine. A controller determines a drive acceleration based upon the speed, and a ground acceleration based upon the acceleration and the pitch rate. The controller determines a command signal at least in part based upon an operator input command signal and a difference between the drive acceleration and the ground acceleration. A method is also provided. |
| US08600619B2 |
Method and apparatus for providing smart zooming of a geographic representation
An approach is provided for custom zooming of geographic representation. A custom zooming application determines an input specifying a level of zoom for rendering a geographic representation presented at a device, the geographic representation including a plurality of objects. The custom zooming application determines respective degrees of relevance of the plurality of objects based, at least in part, on the device, a user of the device, related context information, or a combination thereof. The custom zooming application determines to render one or more of the plurality of objects with at least one different level of visibility with respect to other ones of the plurality of objects based, at least in part, on the respective degrees of relevance, the level of zoom, or a combination thereof. |
| US08600615B2 |
Vehicle cabin warm-up
A method of heating a cabin in a hybrid vehicle having an internal combustion engine employing a coolant to remove engine heat, and a heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system using the coolant to heat the cabin is disclosed. The method includes detecting a request to achieve a predetermined temperature inside the cabin. The method also includes selecting a first baseline mode of engine operation to supply thermal energy to the coolant, and selecting a second mode of engine operation to supply additional thermal energy to the coolant if the predetermined temperature has not been achieved via the first mode of operation. The method additionally includes selecting a third mode of engine operation if the predetermined temperature has not been achieved via the second mode of operation. The predetermined temperature may also be maintained by supplying thermal energy to the coolant after the predetermined temperature has been achieved. |
| US08600610B2 |
Method and apparatus for identifying related fix information and parts number
A diagnostic tool and method are provided wherein a faulty part and its part number is determined based on a retrieved DTC for a specific vehicle. The part number may include the original manufacturer's number and a generic equivalent manufacturer's number (if available). The diagnostic tool can search a parts database of various parts suppliers for their pricing and location. The diagnostic tool can also provide suggested fixes to the user based on the retrieved DTC. |
| US08600609B2 |
Method for operating a longitudinal driver assist system of an automobile, and an automobile
A method for operating a longitudinal driver assist system of an automobile, in particular an ACC system, wherein environmental data of the automobile are evaluated with respect to travel in a longitudinal convoy with at least three automobiles which include the automobile and at least two additional automobiles, which are driving immediately behind one another and each have an active longitudinal driver assist system. A convoy value is formed, and at least one operating parameter of the driver assist system is adapted depending on the convoy value. |
| US08600608B2 |
Communication system for vehicle
A communication system for a vehicle includes: a plurality of controllers mounted on the vehicle; a data communication network for coupling the plurality of controllers with each other so that the controllers transmit data to and receive data from each other via the data communication network; a failure diagnosis device for diagnosing whether each controller is normal; a failure diagnosis activation device for activating the failure diagnosis device; and an avoiding condition setting device for setting an avoiding condition, which provides to avoid execution of the failure diagnosis when the failure diagnosis device is activated. |
| US08600601B2 |
Positioning system and method
A positioning method that calculates a lower accuracy positioning solution and applies an offset to the lower accuracy positioning solution to form a final positioning solution if a higher accuracy positioning solution is unavailable. The offset represents a difference between the lower accuracy positioning solution and the higher accuracy positioning solution at a point in time when the higher accuracy positioning solution was last available. |
| US08600599B2 |
Fuel cell vehicle
A FC vehicle includes a long distance hill climbing detector for detecting long distance hill climbing and a controller for, in the case where the long distance hill climbing detector detects the long distance hill climbing, controlling the allocation amount of electric power outputted from an FC such that the allocation amount is larger than the allocation amount before the detection of the long distance hill climbing. |
| US08600590B2 |
Auxiliary power unit assembly and method of use
A locomotive assembly including an auxiliary power unit and a method of providing auxiliary power to a locomotive are disclosed. The locomotive assembly includes a locomotive having a power bus, a primary power source electrically coupled to the power bus, and a locomotive controller programmed to control the primary power source and transmit a first command signal to a power unit that is electrically coupled to the power bus. The power unit includes an auxiliary engine-generator set, a power interface electrically coupling the auxiliary engine-generate set to the power bus, and an auxiliary controller electrically coupled to the locomotive controller. The auxiliary controller is programmed to receive the command signal from the locomotive controller indicating a desired amount of power, control the auxiliary engine-generator set to produce at least the desired amount of power, and control the power interface to deliver the desired amount of power to the power bus. |
| US08600588B2 |
Meteorological data selection along an aircraft trajectory
A method of selecting weather data for use in at least one of a flight management system (FMS) of an aircraft and a ground station includes selecting a reduced set of weather data points to send to the FMS and taking into account a trajectory of the aircraft when determining what data points to include in the reduced set. |
| US08600581B2 |
System and method for vehicle control using human body communication
A mobile terminal capable of performing a human body communication is provided. The mobile terminal includes an authentication information storage unit, a control unit, and a human body communication unit. The authentication information storage unit stores authentication information of each authentication level. The control unit transmits authentication information of a preset authentication level to a human body communication unit when a communication path is established between the human body communication unit and a vehicle control apparatus externally located. The human body communication unit transmits the authentication information received from the control unit to the vehicle control apparatus. |
| US08600580B2 |
System and method for producing made-to-order designs on the surface of an extraterrestrial body
A method for producing designs involves receiving a request to create a design on the surface of an extraterrestrial body, transmitting a control signal to a device on a vehicle on the extraterrestrial body, the control signal causing the device to create the design, and receiving an image signal providing an image of the design created on the surface. A device for producing the designs includes a surface altering tool configured to rearrange material on the surface. The tool may be provided as a configurable-tread rover wheel that includes a wheel hub having radially-extending channels, and tread elements supported in the channels that are selectively articulatable under the control of a control module to form a tread pattern corresponding to a design intended to be produced. The tread elements may be selectively extended or retracted by operation of an array of solenoids controlled by the control module. |
| US08600579B2 |
Vehicular communication system
Under a state where an in-vehicle navigation apparatus and a cellular phone intercommunicate with each other by connecting a Bluetooth communication link, when a changeover relative to an application program is determined in one of the in-vehicle navigation apparatus and the cellular phone, an application program synchronization operation is executed such that the application program stored in the in-vehicle navigation apparatus and the application program stored in the cellular phone become identical to each other. |
| US08600576B2 |
Scheduling cool air jobs in a data center
Scheduling cool air jobs in a data center comprising computers whose operations produce heat and require cooling, cooling resources that provide cooling for the data center, a workload controller that schedules and allocates data processing jobs among the computers, a cooling controller that schedules and allocates cooling jobs among cooling resources, including assigning data processing jobs for execution by computers in the data center; providing, to the cooling controller, information describing data processing jobs scheduled for allocation among the computers in the data center; specifying, by the cooling controller in dependence upon the physical location of the computer to which each job is allocated and the quantity of data processing represented by each job, cooling jobs to be executed by cooling resources; and assigning, by the cooling controller in accordance with the workload allocation schedule to cooling resources in the data center, cooling jobs for execution. |
| US08600575B2 |
Apparatus and method for collecting and distributing power usage data from rack power distribution units (RPDUs) using a wireless sensor network
Various embodiments provide an apparatus and method for collecting and distributing power usage data from Rack Power Distribution Units (RPDUs) using a wireless sensor network. An example embodiment includes: establishing communication with a plurality of Rack Power Distribution Units (RPDUs) deployed at particular points in a facility, each RPDU of the plurality of RPDUs being configured to monitor power consumption of a plurality of electronic devices in the facility; periodically obtaining system data from each of the plurality of RPDUs, the system data including power consumption data corresponding to associated electronic devices, the system data being received from the plurality of RPDUs via a wired data connection; using a wireless bridge device to aggregate the system data from a plurality of associated RPDUs, the wireless bridge device transferring the aggregated system data to a gateway via a wireless sensor network; and using the system data to control operation of the plurality of electronic devices in the facility via the wireless bridge device and the plurality of associated RPDUs. |
| US08600568B2 |
Fluid flow management system and associated methods
A system is provided to control fluid flow in a wastewater treatment system. The wastewater treatment system may include a wastewater treatment plant and a main that connects a plurality of pump stations to the wastewater treatment plant. Each of the plurality of pump stations may include a wet well and a pump carried by the wet well to pump the wastewater. The system may include a central server and a sensor in communication with the central server to sense a level of wastewater within the wet well. The pump may be moved to an on position when the level of the wastewater in the wet well is at or above a first level. The level of wastewater within the wet well may be systematically manipulated responsive to the central server to control the fluid flow in the wastewater treatment system. The system advantageously enhances fluid management in a wastewater treatment system, increases life span of the wastewater treatment plant, and saves energy associated with running pumps at the pump stations of the wastewater treatment system. |
| US08600567B2 |
Door closer assembly
A door closer assembly is provided, including a valve regulating an amount of hydraulic fluid that flows through the valve. The amount of hydraulic fluid flowing through the valve controls a force generated by the door closer assembly on a door. A first sensor measures an angular position of the door, and a second sensor measures an angular position of the valve. The angular position of the valve determines the amount of hydraulic fluid flowing through the valve. A controller controls the adjustment of the valve based on the angular position of the door and the angular position of the valve. |
| US08600563B2 |
Hybrid heating system
A hybrid heating system and method including: (a) a heat pump water heating system; (b) a conventional heating system including a conventional heater having a surface heat exchanger, and a primary circulation arrangement fluidly communicating with the surface exchanger, the primary circulation arrangement adapted to effect an exchange of heat between the surface heat exchanger and a flow of liquid to produce a heated flow of liquid; (c) a plurality of sensors associated with the heat exchange system; (d) an input arrangement adapted to provide cost data pertaining to a first power cost for supplying power to the heat pump system, and to cost information pertaining to a second power cost for operating the conventional system, and (e) a processor including a memory storing criteria specifying when to operate the heat pump water heating system, and when to operate the conventional heating system. |
| US08600557B2 |
Equipment item management system, control method thereof, and equipment item management apparatus
A first communication section in an optical communication interface communicates with outdoor units and indoor units using a first communication method. A central management controller communicates with the optical communication interface using the first communication method and manages the outdoor units and the indoor units according to the first communication method. A second method communication section in a second communication method indoor unit of a different manufacturer communicates with a second method communication section in a second communication method outdoor unit using a second communication method. The optical communication interface and the second communication method indoor unit exchange information by optical communication with each other using respective optical communication sections. |
| US08600553B2 |
Coverage robot mobility
An autonomous coverage robot includes a drive system, a bump sensor, and a proximity sensor. The drive system is configured to maneuver the robot according to a heading (turn) setting and a speed setting. The bump sensor is responsive to a collision of the robot with an obstacle in a forward direction. A method of navigating an autonomous coverage robot with respect to an object on a floor includes the robot autonomously traversing the floor in a cleaning mode at a full cleaning speed. Upon sensing a proximity of the object forward of the robot, the robot reduces the cleaning speed to a reduced cleaning speed while continuing towards the object until the robot detects a contact with the object. Upon sensing contact with the object, the robot turns with respect to the object and cleans next to the object, optionally substantially at the reduced cleaning speed. |
| US08600552B2 |
Information processing method, apparatus, and computer readable medium
An apparatus executes movement control that causes a robot arm equipped with a camera to move up to an object, thereby enabling a manipulator to move to an object quickly, accurately, and stably as a control system. Specifically, when the object is not detected, the apparatus executes teaching playback control to cause a manipulator to move along a path up to a target position set in advance based on a position of the object. When the object is detected, the apparatus defines a position closer to the object than the target position as a new target position, sets a new path up to the new target position, executes teaching playback control to cause the manipulator to move along the new path until a switching condition for switching the movement control is fulfilled. When the switching condition is fulfilled, the apparatus executes visual servo control. |
| US08600548B2 |
Remote medication management system
An integrated medication management and compliance system for enabling a care provider to remotely manage and deliver individual doses of medications to a patient, in a non-sequential fashion. The system includes delivery apparatus remotely located from the care provider, wherein the apparatus stores a plurality of sealed unit dose packages that are delivered to a patient at a scheduled dosing time. The delivery apparatus is coupled to a control facility and to a computer terminal of the care provider by way of a secure communications network. The system enables the patient's medication regimen to be remotely tailored in real-time to accommodate fluid medical conditions. |
| US08600542B2 |
Method of and apparatus for controlling machine tool for restarting automatic operation
A machine tool controlled to restart automatic operation for machining a workpiece from an interrupted point after the machine tool, which has been automatically operated by NC program commands, is caused to interrupt the automatic operation. The NC program commands are classified into a plurality of main groups with respect to the contents of motions for changing the machine state of the machine tool. When the automatic operation of the machine tool restarts after the automatic operation has been interrupted halfway, an order of execution of the NC program commands is determined such that the main groups are arranged in a prescribed order of execution, for automatically generating a machine state restoration command. The automatic operation of the machine tool can restart from the interrupted point without the need for the operator to manually generate or correct a command for restoring the machine tool to its machine. |
| US08600533B2 |
Extraction of a multiple channel time-domain output signal from a multichannel signal
A digital signal processing system and method transforms pairs of channels selected from a multichannel signal into the frequency domain. Vector operations are performed upon the frequency-domain data by which signal components unique to one of the input channels are routed to one of the output channels, signal components unique to the other of the input channels are routed to another of the output channels, and signal components common to both channels are routed to a third and optionally to a fourth output channel. The frequency-domain output channels are then transformed back into the time-domain, forming a plurality of time-domain output channels. The vector operations are performed in a manner that preserves the overall information content of the input data. |
| US08600529B2 |
Audio fade control
Systems, methods, and computer program products for editing audio data are provided. In some implementations, a method is provided. The method includes receiving digital audio data and displaying a visual representation of the audio data. The method also includes receiving a single graphical user input gesture defining a fade curve, the fade curve specifying a fade length and a fade shape of a fade effect. |
| US08600527B2 |
Acceleration/deceleration control device
A residual-velocity calculating unit calculates a residual velocity that corresponds to a velocity increment when an acceleration is reduced from a current command acceleration to zero according to an acceleration reduction curve. A differential-velocity calculating unit calculates a differential velocity vs=v0-vn, which is a difference between a target velocity v0 and a current velocity command for every command generation period. An acceleration-reduction-start-timing determining unit compares the residual velocity to the differential velocity for determining whether acceleration reduction starts. When a condition that the residual velocity is equal to or larger than the differential velocity is satisfied, the acceleration-reduction-start-timing determining unit determines the start of the acceleration reduction and starts to reduce the command acceleration according to the acceleration reduction curve generated by the command generating unit. |
| US08600525B1 |
Efficient quadratic programming (QP) solver for process control and optimization
A method includes identifying an initial solution to a quadratic programming (QP) problem associated with a process. The method also includes performing an iterative procedure having one or more iterations. Each iteration includes determining whether any constraint associated with the process is violated in the solution. Each iteration also includes selecting a violated constraint, determining a step direction and a step length associated with the selected violated constraint, and updating the solution based on the step direction and the step length. Determining the step direction and the step length includes using a Schur complement based on an active set of constraints associated with the solution. The Schur complement is nonsingular during all iterations of the iterative procedure except when the active set is empty. |
| US08600524B2 |
State machine function block with a user modifiable state transition configuration database
A control system, a safety system, etc., within a process plant may each use one or more state machine function blocks that can be easily integrated into a function block diagram programming environment. Such a state machine function block may include one or more inputs, which may cause astute machine implemented by the state machine function block to change states. The state machine function block may determine a next state to which it is to transition based, at least in part, on data indicative of the next state to which to transition, if any. The configuration data may be retrieved from a database based on the current state of the state machine and at least one of the inputs. The state machine function block may also include one or more outputs that are generated based on the state of the state machine. |
| US08600521B2 |
Implantable medical device having multiple electrode/sensor capability and stimulation based on sensed intrinsic activity
In one embodiment, an implantable neurostimulator comprises a pulse generator that generates an electrical pulse signal to stimulate a neural structure in a patient, a stimulation lead assembly coupled to the pulse generator for delivering the electrical pulse signal to the neural structure, a plurality of sensors coupled to the pulse generator, and sensor select logic. Each sensor is individually selectable and the sensor select logic selects any two or more of the plurality of sensors for sensing a voltage difference between the selected sensors. In other embodiments, two or more physiologic parameters are sensed. In yet another embodiment, a method comprises sensing intrinsic electrical activity on a person's nerve and stimulating the nerve based on the sensed intrinsic electrical activity of the nerve. |
| US08600520B2 |
Implantable lead assembly having a plurality of inductors
In accordance with an embodiment, an implantable lead assembly is provided comprised of an elongated body including a distal end, a proximal end having a header connector portion for coupling the elongated body with an implantable medical device, and an intermediate segment located between the distal and proximal ends. An intermediate electrode is disposed at the intermediate segment along the elongated body. A conductor is disposed in the elongated body and electrically coupled with the header connector portion and the intermediate electrode. The conductor wound within the intermediate segment to form first and second inductive coils that are axially separated from each other by an inter-coil gap, wherein the first and second inductive coils have different self-resonant frequencies. |
| US08600519B2 |
Transient voltage/current protection system for electronic circuits associated with implanted leads
A transient voltage/surge current protection system is provided for electronic circuits associated with implanted leads. In particular, a transient voltage suppressor such as a diode, a zener diode, a transorb, a surge protector, varistor components or the like, is placed in parallel with the electronic circuits to thereby divert harmful surge current and bypass the electronic circuit during an external defibrillation event or during an applied therapeutic shock, such as from an ICD. |
| US08600518B2 |
Electrodes for stimulation leads and methods of manufacture and use
An electrode has a unitary ring with an exterior surface, an interior surface, and at least two edges. The electrode also includes a seat formed in at least the exterior surface of the unitary ring. The seat is configured and arranged for attachment of a terminal end of a lead wire, disposed in the seat, to the electrode. A lead includes a lead body; a plurality of electrodes disposed at the distal end of the lead body; and a plurality of lead wires. Each electrode includes a unitary ring and a seat in the unitary ring. The unitary ring has an exterior surface and an interior surface and defines a hollow center region. The seat is formed as a depression of a portion of the unitary ring. Each of the lead wires extends along the lead body and is attached to a corresponding electrode at the seat of the corresponding electrode. |
| US08600517B2 |
Energy transfer control adapted to a medical device system
The disclosed invention varies the width of the energy pulses with constant frequency and constant amplitude to regulate the amount of energy transferred from an energy transmitting device placed outside a patient to an energy receiver inside the patient. The pulse width is achieved with a modulation technique, PWMT, to control the amount of energy transferred from the external energy transmitting coil in the system to the implanted receiver. The PWMT is used to digitally vary the amount of power from the power amplifier that drives the transmitting coil. Compared to previous analog systems a PWM system is a great deal more efficient and can easily be controlled from a digital domain system such as a microprocessor. |
| US08600510B2 |
Apparatus, system and operation method for the treatment of female sexual dysfunction
There is disclosed an apparatus for treating a sexual dysfunctional female patient, comprising an implanted stimulation device adapted to stimulate at least a part of the sexually responsive tissue of the vulva or the wall of the vagina of the patient by movement of said stimulation device and contact between said stimulation device and the sexually responsive tissue or the wall of the vagina. A system and an operation method for the treatment of female sexual dysfunction are also disclosed. |
| US08600509B2 |
Lead splitter for an electrical stimulation system and systems and methods for making and using
A splitter for an electrical stimulation system includes a junction having a proximal end and a distal end. An elongated proximal member extends from the proximal end of the junction. The proximal member includes a plurality of terminals disposed on a proximal end of the proximal member. A plurality of elongated distal members extend from the distal end of the junction. Each distal member includes a connector disposed on a distal end of the distal member. The connector is configured and arranged for receiving a lead or lead extension. One of the distal members is longitudinally aligned with the proximal member and at least another one of the distal members is longitudinally offset from the proximal member. A plurality of conductors couple the terminals of the proximal member to the connectors of the distal members. |
| US08600508B2 |
Lead insertion visibility
An implantable medical device system that includes a housing containing an electrical circuit and a connector header mounted on the housing. A first inner surface of the connector header forms a connector bore adapted for receiving a lead connector assembly for electrically coupling a medical lead to the circuitry contained in the housing, and one of the connector header and the lead connector includes a visibly modified surface for facilitating visual verification of full insertion of the medical lead connector assembly in the connector bore. |
| US08600504B2 |
Physiologic demand driven pacing
Physiologic demand driven pacing can be used to maintain cardiac synchrony and improve hemodynamic function in patients with heart failure. |
| US08600497B1 |
Systems and methods to monitor and treat heart failure conditions
An implantable device monitors and treats heart failure, pulmonary edema, and hemodynamic conditions and in some cases applies therapy. In one implementation, the implantable device applies a high-frequency multi-phasic pulse waveform over multiple-vectors through tissue. The waveform has a duration less than the charging time constant of electrode-electrolyte interfaces in vivo to reduce intrusiveness while increasing sensitivity and specificity for trending parameters. The waveform can be multiplexed over multiple vectors and the results cross-correlated or subjected to probabilistic analysis or thresholding schemata to stage heart failure or pulmonary edema. In one implementation, a fractionation morphology of a sensed impedance waveform is used to trend intracardiac pressure to stage heart failure and to regulate cardiac resynchronization therapy. The waveform also provides unintrusive electrode integrity checks and 3-D impedancegrams. |
| US08600494B2 |
Method and device for treating abnormal tissue growth with electrical therapy
This invention relates generally to the electrical treatment of malignant tumors and neoplasms by applying a voltage to affected tissue. Devices and various adaptations therein are described for use in electrical therapy. Additionally, various chemotherapeutic agent and radiation therapies are described which may be advantageously used in conjunction with electrical therapy to ameliorate cancer. |
| US08600492B2 |
Method and system for EEG artifact correction in combined EEG and functional MRI recording
Artifacts are removed from EEG signals by segmenting EEG data that are continuously recorded during an MR scan with respect to a time period based on the MR scan, thereby obtaining n temporally consecutive segments of EEG data. For each segment j of the n segments, it is determined whether movement is detected when the segment j is recorded. In the case of no movement, the segment j is selected for a template k. In case movement is detected, EEG data of segments of the n temporally consecutive segments which have been selected for the template k are averaged, thereby obtaining the template k, the template k is subtracted from the EEG data of the segments, k is incremented, and the segment j is selected for the template k. In case no movement is detected and j=n, the segment j is selected for the template k and EEG data of segments of the n temporally consecutive segments which have been selected for the template k are averaged, thereby obtaining the template k, and the template k is subtracted from the EEG data of the segments. |
| US08600491B2 |
Defibrillator patient monitoring pod
A patient parameter monitoring pod in embodiments of the teachings may include one or more the following features: (a) portable housing containing a power supply, (b) a patient parameter module connectable to a patient via lead cables to collect patient data, the patient data including at least one vital sign, (c) a transceiver adapted to wirelessly transmit the patient data to a defibrillator, (d) a data port adapted to supply the patient data via a direct electrical connection to the defibrillator, and (e) a carrying handle extending from the housing proximate a patient lead cable port that permits connection of the lead cables to the pod, the carrying handle positioned to protect the patient lead cable port and the patient lead cables attached to the port from direct impact. |
| US08600490B1 |
Two-dimensional refractory period
A two-dimensional refractory period is defined in conjunction with the detection of cardiac events. Detection parameters associated with the two-dimensional refractory period may define a period of time during which a sensed cardiac signal is blanked or may define a period of time during which a given sensing threshold applies. The two-dimensional refractory period may be employed in atrial sensing to selectively blank far-field T-waves while enabling P-wave detection. The two-dimensional refractory period may be employed in ventricular sensing to selectively blank near-field T-waves while enabling detection of the QRS complex. The detection parameters associated with the two-dimensional refractory period may be adapted based on characteristics of previously detected cardiac signals. |
| US08600487B2 |
System and method for exploiting atrial electrocardiac parameters in assessing left atrial pressure using an implantable medical device
Techniques are provided for assessing left atrial pressure (LAP) based on atrial electrocardiac signal parameters, particularly intra-atrial conduction delay (IACD) and P-wave duration. In one example, a pacemaker or other implantable device senses an intracardiac electrogram (IEGM) or a subcutaneous electrocardiogram (ECG), from which IACD and P-wave duration are derived. The device tracks changes, if any, in the parameters. A significant increase in either IACD or P-wave duration is associated with an increase in LAP. In some examples, conversion factors are calibrated for use with a particular patient to relate IACD and/or P-wave duration values to LAP values to provide an estimate of actual LAP. The conversion factors are pre-calibrated using LAP measurements obtained using a wedge pressure sensor. In other examples, IACD and P-wave duration are instead used to confirm the detection of an elevation in LAP initially made using impedance signals. Other confirmation parameters are described as well. |
| US08600484B2 |
Meibomian gland imaging
A method of evaluating dry eye in humans wherein the flow of naturally occurring secretion to the eye is reduced or stopped due to the presence of an obstruction of a meibomian gland in the eyelid involves applying a pressure to the eyelid that mimics pressure applied during blinking; and simultaneously imaging the glands to diagnose the condition of the meibomian gland. This abstract is not to be considered limiting, since other embodiments may deviate from the features described in this abstract. |
| US08600480B2 |
System and method for assessing interference to a signal caused by a magnetic field
The present invention is directed to a system and method for assessing interference to a signal caused by magnetic field. The system includes a magnetic field generator configured to generate a magnetic field. The system further includes a first magnetic field sensor configured to detect a magnetic field and to generate a first signal representative of the magnetic field detected thereby. The system still further includes a second magnetic field sensor. The second magnetic field sensor is configured to detect a magnetic field and to generate a second signal representative of the magnetic field detected by the second magnetic field sensor. The system yet still further includes a processor. The processor is configured to receive and process the second signal to determine whether said magnetic field detected by said second magnetic field sensor may cause distortion to said first signal, as well as the magnitude of such distortion. |
| US08600477B2 |
Image-guided navigation for catheter-based interventions
A navigation system for catheter-based interventions, the system comprising a processing device; an angiogram x-ray system connected by data transfer connection to the processing device and capable of capturing angiographic images of a patient; an electrocardiogram monitoring device that is also connected by data transfer connection to the processing device and to the x-ray system; a medical instrument to be inserted into the area of the patient captured by the angiographic image; a position capture module for getting position information about the position of the medical instrument, the unit connected by data transfer connection to the processing device, wherein the processing device is capable of triggering the capturing of the angiographic images as a roadmap and superimposing on the roadmap the position information about the medical instrument. |
| US08600474B2 |
Body fat measurement device
A body fat measurement device includes a back area electrode group support unit including back area electrodes arranged to contact a back area of a measurement subject, a trunk area dimension measurement unit that detects the width and depth of a trunk area of the measurement subject, a position detection unit that detects a relative positional relationship between the back area electrode group support unit and the trunk area dimension measurement unit, an electrode selection unit that selects specific electrodes, placed in contact with the back area at an area that corresponds to the location of the navel of the measurement subject, from a plurality of electrodes included in a trunk area electrode group, based on the position information detected by the position detection unit, and a body impedance measurement unit that measures a body impedance of the measurement subject using the selected back area electrodes. |
| US08600473B2 |
Fetal electrode assembly and fetal electrode
An electrode assembly comprising a fetal electrode (1) that is connected to a drive tube (31) by a torque limiting connection (30). The connection allows the drive tube to separate from the electrode hub once a predetermined torque has been reached. The electrode hub is also provided with a deflection surface (9) that deflects the drive tube away from the fetal electrode into the hand of the operator, as rotation of the drive tube continues beyond the point of disconnection. Features are also provided to make the fetal electrode more compact and to optimise the fECG signal recorded on the electrode wires (5, 9). |
| US08600467B2 |
Optical sensor including disposable and reusable elements
An embodiment of the present disclosure provides a noninvasive optical sensor or probe including disposable and reusable components. The assembly of the disposable and reusable components is straightforward, along with the disassembly thereof. During application to a measurement site, the assembled sensor is advantageously secured together while the componentry is advantageously properly positioned. |
| US08600465B2 |
Superconductor cable and AC power transmission cable
There is provided a superconductive cable wherein an efficiency of an electric power transmission is increased to a maximum and the superconductive cable is miniaturized by strengthening a longitudinal magnetic field in a superconductive material.A superconductive cable 1, which transmits an electric power by using superconductive material, includes a conductive portion 4 that is constructed by superconductive members spirally arranged at either a positive angle or a negative angle with respect to a standard direction defined as a longitudinal direction of the superconductive cable, and is characterized by the fact that the conductive portion 4 is composed of a plurality of layers, that the spiral angles in the respective layers are different from each other to the standard direction in order from an innermost layer 2 toward an outermost layer 3, and that magnetic fields are produced by electric currents flowing into the conductive portion 4 in the same direction as a direction in which the electric currents flow. |
| US08600463B2 |
Conductor arrangement for a resistive switching element having at least two composite conductors made from superconducting conductor bands
A conductor arrangement for a resistive switching element, has at least first and second conductor connections disposed in a mutual plane adjacent to each other and insulated against each other. The composite conductors each have two conductor parts extending parallel, and forming a bifilar construction. The conductor parts are constructed from at least one superconducting conductor band. The composite conductors are formed into a coil winding, wherein the windings thereof substantially extend in the manner of a spiral, and are insulated against each other by a spacer. |
| US08600462B2 |
Composite antenna and portable telephone
A complex antenna has a first antenna element and a second antenna element each connected at one end to a different feed point and connected to each other at the other end through a parallel resonant circuit. Each antenna element has the same resonant frequency as the parallel resonant circuit. A mobile phone has an antenna switch with a first port connected to the first antenna element, a second port connected to the second antenna element, and a third port that can be connected to one of the first port and the second port and switched therebetween. A signal processing unit causes the antenna switch to connect the third port to the first port or to the second port and detects a signal captured by one of the antenna elements from the output of the third port. |
| US08600461B2 |
Attachable extendable and retractable earpiece assembly for mobile communication and sound devices
An extendable and retractable earpiece cable assembly for mobile communication or sound devices comprising a plate adapted to be fastened directly to the mobile device. The plate supports a reel housing that includes a reel mechanism around which the earpiece cables are removably wound. The earpiece cables are extendable from and retractable into the reel housing. Each of the earpiece cables have one end attached to an earpiece and each of the earpiece cables have a second end attached to a jack plug to electrically connect the earpieces to the mobile device. The plate also supports an attachment clip that allows a user to attach the mobile communication or sound device and integral earpiece assembly to an article of clothing or other accessory item supported by a user. In other embodiments, a rear back plate is fixed to the mobile device, and a front plate is removably attached to the rear plate. The cable reel assembly housing and the attachment clip are attached to the front plate. |
| US08600458B2 |
Method of reducing power consumption in a UE when the UE is in idle mode
A method is described for determining the rate of performing neighbor cell measurements by a User Equipment (UE) in an idle mode, which is based on the RANK information of the serving cell and neighbor cells. The RANK information is available with the UE. Comparison of the RANK of the serving cell with a predefined Threshold Value along with the status of the Order of the RANKs of the neighbor cells for a predefined number of DRX cycles, are verified to conclude whether the UE should perform the neighbor cell measurement when the UE is in the idle mode. Thus the method utilizes cell RANKs to determine the network topology. The RANKs are deduced using Hysteresis, Cell Individual offsets, and other parameters by the UE to provide a more practical indication of the neighboring environment of a cell. |
| US08600449B2 |
Mobile communication device, display method, and display program of mobile communication device
A mobile communication device has a housing, a communication part, a display part, a detection part, and a control part. The communication part transmits and receives messages. The display part displays a first message, or a second message that is related to the first message. The detection part detects a change in the state of the housing. The control part that displays the second message on the display part in the display direction that is different from the display direction of the first message in case in which the detection part detects a change in the state of the housing when the display part displays the first message. |
| US08600442B2 |
Power recovery circuit based on partial standing waves
A power recovery system includes a transmission line that is coupled to transfer an RF signal received via an antenna. The RF signal generates a partial standing wave in the transmission line and the transmission line has at least one standing wave anti-node. A power recovery circuit converts an anti-node signal from the at least one standing wave anti-node to a power signal. |
| US08600440B2 |
Apparatus and method of securing private content stored in a memory
An apparatus and a method of securing private content stored in a memory are presented. A terminal includes a memory configured to store private content and a private content identifier associated with the private content. The private content identifier includes secure and non-user editable information. The terminal also includes a security function configured to perform a comparison of the private content identifier to a smart card identifier of a smart card accessible to the security function. The security function is further configured to grant or deny access to the private content based on a result of the comparison. |
| US08600437B2 |
Portable computing, communication and entertainment device with central processor carried in a detachable portable device
A docking display unit for physically engaging a portable computing unit and a combination of the same. The display unit may include or exclude a central processing unit and includes a housing with a hinged first and second region. The first region includes a display screen and the second region includes a keyboard. A recessed docking port is provided in the second region and is configured to receive the portable device therein. At least one connector is provided in the docking port to operationally link a central processor in the portable device with the display screen and keyboard. A touchscreen on the portable device provides a user interface for controlling the combined display unit and portable device. The portable device preferably is a smartphone. |
| US08600429B2 |
Method for performing interactive services on a mobile device, such as time or location initiated interactive services
A system for performing interactive services at a mobile device is disclosed. In some cases, the system receives an indication of an event, and provides interactive services to a user of the mobile device based on the event. In some cases, an indication of an event in invokes a script-based process that determines one or more actions to present to a user of the mobile device. |
| US08600427B2 |
Method and system for bluetooth HID activity prediction for wireless coexistence throughput optimization
A host device may be enabled to support a plurality of wireless interfaces, wherein some of these interfaces may be utilized to support human interface device (HID) based communication. The host device may be enabled to monitor activity of HID devices based on communications via HID capable wireless interfaces, may predict future use of the HID devices based on the monitoring, and may manage sniff communication that is utilized to track and/or detect activities in the HID devices. The management of the sniff communication may comprise adjusting characteristics of the sniff communication to enable improving throughput of other wireless interfaces available via the host device that may be affected by the sniff communication. The adjustment of the characteristics of sniff communication may comprise adjusting, statically and/or dynamically, length of sniff intervals and/or designating of sniff packets as high priority requests. |
| US08600426B2 |
Power control on a deactivated component carrier
A wireless communication system implementing Carrier Aggregation (CA) allows activation and deactivation of certain component carriers. Transmit power on an uplink component carrier being reactivated may be controlled by predetermining appropriate power control parameters to be used upon reactivation. The predetermined power control parameters may depend on a last known power control state of the deactivated component carrier or may be reset to apply an initial low power state. |
| US08600425B1 |
TCP-aware power control in wireless networks
A method, system, and medium are provided for controlling power usage in a wireless telecommunications network, the method comprising transmitting a pilot signal to a mobile station over a wireless channel, receiving a response that includes a signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio associated with said pilot signal, determining an instantaneous channel rate to be used for a subsequent data transmission to said mobile station based at least on said signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio, selecting a transmit power level for said data transmission; and transmitting data to said mobile station at said channel rate and said power level. |
| US08600424B2 |
Method and apparatus for managing downlink transmission power in a heterogeneous network
A method, an apparatus, and a computer program product for wireless communication are provided in which it is determined that a transmission of a first instance of control information in a first control region in a subframe of a first power class eNodeB a non-modified power spectral density (PSD) will result in interference above a threshold with a transmission of a second instance of control information in a second control region in a subframe of a second power class eNodeB, PSD is modified for a portion of at least one of the first or second control regions of at least one of the subframes for at least one of the first power class or second power class eNodeB, and the first instance of control information is transmitted during the control region using the modified PSD for the portion of the first instance of control information. |
| US08600420B2 |
Method and apparatus for uplink timing synchronization with ranging signal in mobile communication system
When a base station of a time division duplex based mobile communication system receives an initial ranging request signal from a subscriber station, the base station generates initial ranging information including delay time information to the subscriber station, and receives uplink data delayed and transmitted using a delay time from the subscriber station. Also, when the subscriber station transmits an initial ranging request signal to the base station and receives initial ranging information including delay time information from the base station, the subscriber station establishes a transmission parameter value by using the transmission parameter value included in the initial ranging information and transmits uplink data by using the established delay time. |
| US08600417B1 |
Consumer care system
An apparatus, a method, and a computer program are disclosed. According to one example the apparatus may be configured to receive via the receiver a message from a mobile device to connect with an agent. The apparatus may also be configured to determine and select an available agent via the processor in order for the mobile device to communicate with the available agent, and transmit via the transmitter an agent availability message to the mobile device, wherein the agent availability message requires an acknowledgement from the mobile device prior to connecting the mobile device with the available agent. |
| US08600416B2 |
Method and system for providing messaging gateway services
An approach is provided for messaging gateway services. It is determined whether a user profile specifies opting to receive content. The content is selectively forwarded, according to a multimedia protocol, to a device of a user as a multimedia messaging service (MMS) message or a short messaging service (SMS) message based on the determination, wherein the multimedia protocol supports both MMS messaging and SMS messaging. |
| US08600415B2 |
System and method for distributing advertisements to third-party SMS content providers
Methods, apparatuses and systems enabling delivery of advertising to third-party short message service (SMS) content providers. An SMS content provider sends a request to an ad server for an advertisement to append to an outgoing mobile terminated message. The ad server retrieves an advertisement from the ad database that meets available character constraints as well as targeting parameters based on user area code, time, content-channel, and content of the message. If targeting parameters are satisfied, the ad server sends advertisement to SMS content provider to append to outgoing message. The ad server sends receipt of delivery to reporting database. Methods, apparatuses and systems are described for retrieving advertisements for delivery to mobile users, tracking retrieval of advertisements, and receiving compensation in exchange for advertisement distribution. Methods, apparatuses and systems are described for creating text-based advertisements, setting targeting parameters, and viewing ad delivery reports across third-party SMS content affiliates. |
| US08600413B2 |
Control arrangement and method for communicating paging messages in a wireless communication system
Systems and methods for utilizing paging group IDs and paging indicators are disclosed for PDCCH and PDSCH transmissions to mobile terminals in a mobile communication system. By use of the paging group IDs and paging indicators, various groups of mobile terminals, including subsets of those groups can be paged with reduced decoding requirements. Nesting of the grouping is exploited and packing of the PDCCH frame to accomplish efficient use is described. |
| US08600410B2 |
Wireless network with adaptive autonomous location push
A method of providing location-based services includes transmitting a first location criterion from a wireless network server to a wireless device. The method also includes evaluating whether a physical location of the wireless device satisfies the first location criterion. The process of evaluating is performed in part using the wireless device. When the first location criteria is satisfied, the method further includes transmitting an indication from the wireless device to the server that the first location criterion has been satisfied. |
| US08600408B2 |
Method and apparatus for finding people via a mobile device
A method, computer readable medium and apparatus for finding at least one person are disclosed. For example, the method receives a request from a subscriber to find at least one person having at least one characteristic predefined by the subscriber, receives a location of the subscriber and finds, via a processor, the at least one person having the at least one characteristic predefined by the subscriber near the location of the subscriber. |
| US08600404B2 |
Delivery of network services
A network includes user information comprising terminal capabilities and readiness information for a terminal device. A network element receives the terminal capabilities and readiness information from the terminal device and communicates the terminal capabilities and readiness information such that it is received and stored. The information is accessed to set media delivery parameters for the terminal device. |
| US08600403B2 |
Method and apparatus for configuring and locating a home base station
Techniques for configuring a Home evolved Node B (HeNB) in a location server and positioning the HeNB are disclosed. In one aspect, location for a HeNB is supported based on LTE Positioning Protocol (LPP) messages. The HeNB communicates LPP messages with a location server. These LPP messages are terminated at the HeNB instead of a UE. At least one location transaction for the HeNB can be performed to configure in the location server and/or locate the HeNB based on the LPP messages. In another aspect, location for a HeNB is supported based on an embedded UE in the HeNB. The HeNB establishes a location session with a location server based on an embedded UE ID, which is assigned to the HeNB and recognized by the location server as being for a HeNB instead of a UE. At least one location transaction for the HeNB is performed during the location session. |
| US08600401B2 |
Methods and apparatuses for user equipment localization
In a method for approximating a location of a user equipment in a wireless network, a mobile location signature is determined based on a measurement report received from the user equipment, and a location of the user equipment is approximated based on the mobile location signature. The mobile location signature being indicative of a region of the wireless network in which the user equipment is located. |
| US08600398B2 |
Method, apparatus and system for defining positioning configuration in a wireless network
GPS and A-GPS based positioning methods can be used to determine UE locations to enable location based services to be provided. However, if a UE does not have such receivers or the wireless network is not able to provide assistance, these methods will not be applicable. An alternative is to use OTDOA measurements using positioning reference signals transmitted by cells of the network. By optimizing the set of cells transmitting their positioning reference signals on different positioning occasions and properly configuring the muting patterns, interference can be minimized and the UE location can be readily determined. |
| US08600397B2 |
Mobile communication system and communication controlling method
The present invention relates to a mobile communication system which includes a base station, a mobile station for performing a communication with the base station, and a radio network controller for controlling the communication between the base station and the mobile station. The mobile communication system comprises a controller configured to control a communication state of the communication between the base station and the mobile station according to a congestion state of an uplink. |
| US08600395B2 |
Method of configuring radio connection in multiple cell system
A method of configuring a radio connection in a multiple cell system is provided. The method includes configuring a first radio connection between a user equipment (UE) and a primary base station (BS) and a second radio connection between the UE and a secondary BS based on a cooperative transmission configuration in which a plurality of BSs transmit the same data to the UE, receiving first channel state regarding the first radio connection and second channel state regarding the second radio connection from the UE, releasing at least one radio connection of the first radio connection and the second radio connection, the at least one radio connection having a worse channel state than a threshold, transmitting to the UE, a new cooperative transmission configuration changed by the release of the at least one radio connection, and receiving a layer reconfiguration complete message indicating completion of layer reconfiguration based on the new cooperative transmission configuration. |
| US08600393B2 |
Methods and apparatus for enabling interference coordination in heterogeneous networks
For use in a heterogeneous network, a method for enabling interference coordination includes, upon occurrence of a trigger condition, determining, at a first low power node, that the first low power node is approaching a second low power node. The method also includes sending, at the first low power node, an entering message to an evolved Node-B (eNB) that serves the first low power node. The method further includes receiving, at the first low power node, configuration information from the eNB to perform at least one measurement of the second low power node. |
| US08600392B1 |
Method and system for channel assignment into soft handoff (casho)
A mobile station requests origination of a call and reports signal strength measurements of pilot signals from multiple sectors, where some of the sectors support a preferred air interface configuration (such as RC 11) and some do not. The signal strength measurements may be evaluated to determine which sectors to use for the call and whether to use RC 11 or a default air interface configuration (such as RC 3 or RC 4) for the call. Sectors that support the preferred air interface configuration may be evaluated using a first threshold, and sectors that do not support the preferred air interface configuration may be evaluated using a second threshold. The first threshold can be greater than the second threshold, in order to favor the use of sectors that support the preferred air interface configuration over sectors that do not. |
| US08600390B2 |
Returning user equipment to a source radio access network
A device receives a request for a service for a user equipment associated with a source radio access network, and establishes a connection with the user equipment via a circuit switched fallback procedure. The device also receives, from the source radio access network, information associated with one or more source cells, and provides the service to the user equipment through a target radio access network. The device further uses the information to select one of the one or more source cells for the user equipment to return after the service terminates, terminates the service, and returns the user equipment to the selected source cell. |
| US08600388B2 |
Method and apparatus for cell reselection for a wireless communication device
A method and apparatus for cell reselection for a wireless communication device are disclosed. |
| US08600381B2 |
Method and device for obtaining candidate information
A method, computer readable medium and mobile device for operating using more than one Radio Access Technology (RAT) are provided. When the mobile device is operating in a serving cell of a first RAT, it obtains, through at least one of wireless access radios in the mobile device, a first set of candidate information from a message transmitted for the serving cell. It also obtains, through at least one of the wireless access radios, a second set of candidate information from a message transmitted for a neighbor cell of the serving cell. The mobile device considers the candidate information from the first set and the candidate information from the second set for reselection by the mobile device. |
| US08600380B2 |
System of Wi-Fi terminals and channel operation method for the same
A system of Wi-Fi terminals and a channel operation method for the same are provided. The method includes selecting a user function of a sending terminal including a Wi-Fi module, determining whether the selected user function is a Wi-Fi related function, performing, when the selected user function is the Wi-Fi related function, by the sending terminal, a search for a terminal capable of handling the user function, selecting, by the sending terminal, a found terminal as a receiving terminal, automatically establishing, by the sending terminal, a Wi-Fi channel to the receiving terminal by automatically sending a Probe Request message containing a Personal Identification Number (PIN) code, sending, by the sending terminal, data generated by the user function to the receiving terminal through the Wi-Fi channel, and outputting, by the receiving terminal, the received data. |
| US08600378B1 |
Access probe evaluation based on air interface conditions
Methods for evaluating an access probe transmitted by a wireless communication device (WCD) in a wireless communication system are disclosed. When an access probe is received by a radio access network (RAN), the RAN determines if the WCD that transmitted the access probe is physically located outside a predetermined distance from the RAN. If the WCD is located outside the predetermined distance from the RAN, the RAN evaluates whether a threshold air interface condition is met as part of a determination to accept the access probe and establish communication between the RAN and the WCD. |
| US08600376B2 |
Line routing to wireless access points
A system for mobile communication is provided. The system includes an access point, a first mobile switching center associated with a mobile device, a second mobile switching center, and a call manager. The mobile device communicates with the access point. The second mobile switching center associates a temporary line direct number with the mobile device. The call manager routes a call from the second mobile switching center to the access point. |
| US08600375B2 |
Method for optimizing the reduction of mobility signalling at inter-RAT change
Method for optimizing the reduction of mobility signaling after an Inter-RAT change for a UE roaming between a source area covered by a source telecommunication core network and a target area covered by a target core telecommunication network, wherein a signaling reduction function is activated by the source telecommunication core network, and wherein deactivation triggering events of the signaling reduction function generates a need for registration update at next IRAT change occurred. The method comprises the steps: storing in the UE a parameter the value of which indicates whether or not the deactivation triggering events of the signaling reduction function only correspond to the UE context modification, and, after the Inter-RAT change, checking the event generating the Inter-RAT change, and, checking the value of the parameter, cancelling the need for registration update or validating the need for registration update depending on the event generating the Inter-RAT change and on the value of the stored parameter. |
| US08600373B2 |
Dynamic distribution of device functionality and resource management
Aspects include methods and apparatuses for communicating in an ultra-wideband transmission. For example, some aspects include methods and apparatuses for wireless communications. The method includes, at a first device in communication with at least a second device via a wireless link, monitoring at least one resource for performing at least one function. The method further includes determining whether to assign the at least one function to the at least one second device. The determining is based on information that is indicative of at least one function and indicative of at least one resource of the at least one second device. Other aspects include apparatus and devices for communicating data, including according to one or more aspects of the method. For example, some aspects include devices such as headsets, watches, and medical devices configured to use such methods and apparatuses for communicating data. |
| US08600372B2 |
Recovery techniques in mobile networks
A technique for protecting location information of a subscriber in a mobile network is disclosed. A User Mobility Server (UMS) receives a first query from a first call state control function (CSCF). The UMS transmits a call setup and a subscriber identity to a servicing-call state control function (S-CSCF). The S-CSCF may have no record of the subscriber identity due to a restart are some other event. The UMS receives a second query from the S-CSCF based in part of the subscriber identity. The UMS transmits a home address of a mobile station to the S-CSCF. The UMS may also transmit a profile download to the S-CSCF. |
| US08600371B2 |
Method and system for diagnosing radio performance during functional over-the-air operation
An apparatus for determining a health of radio-frequency transmitters each transmitting a transmitted signal during normal operation. The apparatus comprises a receiver for receiving received signals, each received signal responsive to a transmitted signal, a first element for determining signal parameters of each received signal, the signal parameters responsive to an operating condition of a transmitter, each transmitted signal and each associated received signal including an identifier of the transmitter that transmitted the transmitted signal, the apparatus using the identifier to link determined signal parameters with the transmitter that transmitted the transmitted signal and a second element for determining a health of the transmitter that transmitted the transmitted signal, the health responsive to a relationship between one or more signal parameters and a selected value or a range of selected values for each signal parameter. |
| US08600363B2 |
Synchronization in unified messaging systems
A unified messaging system, method, apparatus, individual components and the like are disclosed. The unified messaging system comprises a server, a client and a synchronization application for synchronizing voicemail messages and fax messages on both the server and the client is disclosed. The server messages may include received messages and sent messages, each of which is indexed according to their respective indices and read/unread statuses. Similarly, the client messages may include received messages and sent messages, each of which is indexed according to their respective indices and read/unread statuses. |
| US08600360B1 |
Method and system for connecting people in a social network
A system and method for connecting people in a social network using information from a user's digital address book. A social network member can unilaterally friend any contact in her address book. Optionally, a member can only friend a contact and be friended by a contact if she is in that contact's address book. An central server keeps track of friended members of the social network and contacts. |
| US08600353B2 |
Methods and arrangements for communication channel re-establishment
The present invention relates to Radio Resource Control, RRC Connection re-establishments of unauthenticated calls or sessions between MEs, and one or more eNodeBs. By making use of the Cell Identity of the cell in which a ME having radio connection malfunction resides, in the calculation of a Message Authentication Code for data Integrity, MAC-I a ME unique MAC-I can be calculated which is used for the identification and verification of MEs by a target base station such as a eNodeB, in RRC Connection re-establishment of unauthenticated calls. |
| US08600351B2 |
Method and apparatus for unlocking a mobile telephone type wireless communication terminal
A method of unlocking a mobile terminal and a mobile terminal is disclosed. The mobile terminal is initially locked to the services of a mobile services provider. The mobile services provider transmits to a predefined telephone number associated with a service provider other than the mobile services provider, via the mobile services provider, a request for unlocking information. The request is transparent to the mobile services provider. If the request is approved, the mobile terminal receives the unlocking information. Using the received unlocking information, the mobile terminal unlocks itself so that it is no longer locked to the services of the mobile services provider. If the request is not approved, the mobile terminal receives and displays a message indicating that the request is not approved. |
| US08600344B2 |
Integrating a mobile hotspot into a larger network environment
Integration of a mobile hotspot into a service provider network is disclosed. A network node establishes a first wireless communication link with a mobile hotspot device. The mobile hotspot device is configured to establish a second wireless communications link with at least one client device. The network node receives an access request message from the mobile hotspot device which comprises credentials provided by the at least one client device. The network node determines that the at least one client device is authorized to access the service provider network through the mobile hotspot device based on the credentials and indicates to the mobile hotspot device that the at least one client device is authorized to access the service provider network through the mobile hotspot device. |
| US08600343B2 |
Method and system for collecting and presenting historical communication data for a mobile device
Among other disclosures, a method may include collecting historical communication data and personal data relating to a portion of a plurality of communications, a sender of one or more of the communications or one or more recipients of the communications. The method may include depositing the collected data into a repository of historical communication data and personal data. The method may include presenting one or more items in the repository on a mobile device, in response to user behavior. |
| US08600342B2 |
Emergency messages and their various aspects
This invention provides a means of sending emergency messages. When in the state of emergency, the user activates or initiates a communication device to execute the positioning procedure. The communication device, converts the current location into a text or voice message and delivers the text or voice message to at least one person on the contact list that is preset in the communication device. By using this invention, the amount of electricity consumption is low therefore charges last longer, the cost decreases, and the user does not experience the pressure of being traced. |
| US08600339B2 |
Proactive probe by eCall-only in-vehicle system
Proactive registration probes are conducted by an eCall-only IVS prior to an emergency to determine network availability and which available roaming networks a registration request will be approved by the home network. The results of this probing are stored and managed by the IVS. If no suitable roaming network can be found (or if only limited service is available, and this limited service cannot support an eCall), the IVS may notify the driver that the emergency call service may not be available. The frequency of the probing may be increased or decreased based on a variety of factors, including whether the IVS is currently receiving home network service, roaming network service, or no service, as well as whether the vehicle is moving and whether probing has previously been completed for a particular area (using location information, for example). |
| US08600338B2 |
Fire alarm text response system
A computer software and hardware system for fire stations is described which provides communications utilizing SMS (Short Message Service) cellular phone text messaging automatically notifying firemen or other personnel of an emergency page when their dispatch pages them via radio dispatch or by other means. Responses from this SMS text message are replied to via SMS text messaging with a code letter and their response is displayed on a screen at their station so other responding firemen know if, who, and where other firemen are responding. Users can also opt to automatically receive on their cell phones an MMS (Multimedia Message Service) message containing a multimedia sound recording of the actual emergency dispatch voice page. |
| US08600330B2 |
Filter arrangement
A filter arrangement for filtering a radio signal comprising at least a first filter stage is presented wherein the at least first filter stage comprises a divide stage for dividing a filter stage input signal into several signal portions. The signal portions are filtered in at least two parallel filter elements. A combine stage combines the separate filter output signals into a single filter stage output signal. |
| US08600329B1 |
Interference signal canceller
An interfering signal canceller has a passive isolation element fed by an input signal in a primary path. A first frequency converter is in an auxiliary path and is fed by an input signal for converting the input signal to an intermediate or baseband signal. A bandpass filter is tuned to the interfering signal component for passing the interfering signal component of the converted input signal and suppressing the desired signal component. A second frequency converter/phase rotator section has a phase rotator fed by a local oscillator signal and a second frequency converter fed by the phase rotator and the bandpass filter. The second frequency converter/phase rotator section convert and phase adjust the passed the interfering signal component and the suppressed desired signal component to the predetermined band of frequencies. A combiner combines signals in the primary signal path and from the second frequency converter/phase rotator section. |
| US08600326B2 |
GPS baseband architecture
A GPS baseband architecture provides flexibility and power consumption and chip area usage advantages. The GPS baseband architecture includes a first stage having a preamplifier coupled to a low noise amplifier, which is coupled to a mixer. A PLL provides the mixer with a frequency to convert a signal to a higher intermediate (IF) frequency. The output of the mixer is fed to a poly-phase filter. The output of the poly-phase filter is fed to a programmable gain amplifier (PGA), whose output is fed to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce an output GPS signal. A saturation bit of the ADC is used to control the PGA through a digital amplifier gain control (AGC) circuit. |
| US08600323B2 |
Method, device, and system for sending reference signals
A method, a device, and a system for sending reference signals (RSs) are provided, which are capable of least modifying an original system and controlling the system overhead of the RSs. The method includes: grouping expanded transmitting antennas, wherein each group includes two transmitting antenna ports; and in two adjacent RS periods 2T, the RSs sent through the two transmitting antenna ports of each group are [a*s1, b*s1*ejw] respectively in a first period T and [a*s2, −b*s2*ejw] respectively in a second period T. The method, the device, and the system for sending RSs are applicable in design of transmitting antennas of an LTE Advanced system. |
| US08600320B2 |
Wireless communications device with an adjustable impedance matching network and associated methods
A mobile wireless communications device includes a portable housing, a transmitter carried by the portable housing and configured to modulate an input signal, and an adjustable impedance matching network coupled downstream from the transmitter. An antenna is coupled downstream from the adjustable impedance matching network, and a non-directional coupler is coupled between the adjustable impedance matching network and the antenna. A feedback receiver is coupled to the non-directional coupler to generate a feedback signal. A controller is configured to control the adjustable impedance matching network based upon the input signal and the feedback signal. |
| US08600318B2 |
Transmit power management for a communication device and method for use therewith
In integrated circuit includes a processing module that determines a selected one of the plurality of power modes based on a function being currently performed by at least one non-transceiver module of a host device, and generates a power mode signal based on the selected one of the plurality of power modes. An RF transmitter generates a transmit signal at a selected one of the plurality of operating power levels based on the power mode signal and that operates from at least one transmitter power supply signal generated and selected by a power management circuit in response to the power mode signal. |
| US08600317B2 |
Linearization signal processing with context switching
A system for linearization signal processing with context switching comprises a plurality of signal processing units, a storage unit, a feedback channel, and a correlator. The plurality of signal processing units is associated with corresponding input data signals. The storage unit is to store context states associated with input data signals and corresponding feedback signals. The feedback channel is to convey feedback signals from outputs associated with the plurality of signal processing units. The correlator is coupled to the feedback channel and generates respective correcting information to be used by respective signal processing units, wherein a respective correcting information is based upon a context state and a feedback state associated with an input data signal. |
| US08600309B2 |
Methods for dynamic calibration of over-the-air path loss in over-the-air radio-frequency test systems
Calibration equipment for calibrating multiple test stations in a test system is provided. Each test station may include a test unit, a test chamber with an over-the-air (OTA) antenna, and a radio-frequency (RF) cable that connects the test unit to the test chamber. Reference devices under test (DUTs) may be used to calibrate the OTA path loss of each test station at desired frequencies. Once calibrated, the test chambers may be used during production testing to test factory DUTs to determine whether a particular production DUT is a passing or failing DUT according to pass/fail criteria. A running average path loss value may be constantly updated based on path loss values measured using the reference DUTs and the passing production DUTs. Dynamically updating the path loss value using this statistical approach can properly track the behavior of each test station as operating conditions shift over time. |
| US08600306B2 |
Wireless communication control device
A wireless communication control device which can stably communicate with another device without interruption by continuously and optimally adjusting a transmission reception direction of a wireless transmission reception unit so as to track the another device even when mobile terminals move while changing relative position between them. A device body (11) of the wireless communication control device comprises a wireless transmission reception unit (13) which transmits and receives a wireless signal, a device displacement amount detection unit (14) which detects a displacement amount of the device body (11), an another device displacement amount extraction unit (15) which extracts the displacement amount of the another device (12) that is a transmission source from the wireless signal received by the wireless transmission reception unit (13), a direction calculation unit (16) which calculates the transmission reception direction of the wireless signal according to the displacement amount of the device body (11) and the displacement amount of the another device (12), and a direction control unit (17) which controls the transmission reception direction of the wireless transmission reception unit (13) according to the calculated direction. Accordingly, the transmission reception direction of the device body (11) can be adjusted so as to track the another device (12). |
| US08600303B2 |
Wireless communication device, wireless communication system, controlling method for wireless communication device, and recording medium storing program
To improve operability by a user in a case of performing data transfer wirelessly in a near area, a near-field wireless communication circuit 10 included in a terminal 1A is able to switch between a normal mode to perform OFDM and a near mode with a relatively short communicable distance as compared with that in the first communication mode and to perform spread spectrum. A controller 13 executes preliminary processing needed for initiating data transfer in the near mode with a terminal 1B serving as a communication destination between the terminals 1A and 1B by using the near-field wireless communication circuit 10 which is set to the normal mode. Further, the controller 13 determines availability of the data transfer in the near mode with the terminal 1B by using a measured value of communication quality which has a correlation with a communication distance to the terminal 1B as a measure of the determination. Furthermore, when it is determined that the data transfer in the near mode is available, the controller 13 initiates the data transfer with the terminal 1B by using the near-field wireless communication circuit 10 which is set to the near mode, based on a result of the preliminary processing executed in the normal mode in advance. |
| US08600301B2 |
Portable terminal having bluetooth module and bluetooth communication method thereof
A portable terminal having a Bluetooth module and a Bluetooth communication method between the portable terminal and a device having a Bluetooth module are provided. The method includes determining whether the portable terminal receives a signal from the device in a call history viewing mode, during Bluetooth communication between the portable terminal and the device, wherein the signal is generated as a volume control key of the device is operated. The method also includes scrolling and displaying the call history, in the portable terminal, according to the received signal. The call history can be searched for in the portable terminal by using a volume control key of a headset or a hands-free accessory, which is linked to the portable terminal via Bluetooth communication, thereby providing users with a convenient mode of operation. |
| US08600300B2 |
Method and system for single chip WLAN and bluetooth radios on a single CMOS substrate
Aspects of a method and system for single chip WLAN and Bluetooth radios on a single CMOS substrate are presented. Aspects of the system may include a WLAN receiver circuit within a substrate of a single chip that enables reception of WLAN signals, and a Bluetooth receiver circuit within the same substrate that enables reception of Bluetooth signals. The WLAN receiver circuit and Bluetooth receiver circuit may utilize a single low noise amplifier circuit that enables reception of the WLAN signals and Bluetooth signals. Aspects of the system may also include a WLAN transmitter circuit within a substrate of a single chip that enables transmission of WLAN signals, and a Bluetooth transmitter circuit within the same substrate that enables transmission of Bluetooth signals. The WLAN transmitter circuit and Bluetooth transmitter circuit may utilize a single power amplifier circuit that enables transmission of the WLAN signals and Bluetooth signals. |
| US08600297B2 |
Method and system for femto cell self-timing and self-locating
Devices and methods are provided for providing self-timing and self-locating in an access point (AP) base station. In one embodiment, the method involves receiving Satellite Positioning System (SPS) signals from a first data source (e.g., plurality of satellites), wherein the SPS signals may include SPS time data, SPS frequency data, and SPS position data. The method may further involve obtaining from a second data source (e.g., cell site, terrestrial navigation station, server, user input interface, etc.) at least one of second time data, second frequency data and second position data, and determining relative reliability of the first and second data sources. |
| US08600296B2 |
Capacity maximization for a unicast spot beam satellite system
Methods, systems, and apparatuses are presented for improved satellite communications. The satellite system may comprises at least one gateway, a satellite in orbit configured to communicate with the at least one gateway and provide a plurality of spot beams, and a plurality of subscriber terminals. The spot beams may include a first spot beam to illuminate a first region and a second spot beam to illuminate a second region adjacent to and overlapping with the first region. The first spot beam as sent to at least one subscriber terminal may be affected by (1) interference from other signal sources including the second spot beam at a signal-to-interference ratio C/I and (2) noise at a signal-to-noise ratio C/N. Reception of signals from the first spot beam by the at least one of the first plurality of subscriber terminals may be interference-dominated such that C/I is less than C/N. |
| US08600292B2 |
Beam focusing in multi-beam satellite systems by combining signals from multiple satellite beams on the ground
A satellite communication system designed to communicate with wireless communication devices (WCDs) by use of a mosaic pattern of signal beams uses multiple beams to augment the communication with individual WCDs. In addition to communication with a WCD through a primary beam for that WCD, adjacent beams are used, but with signals utilizing circuit parameters assigned to the primary beam. The signals from a given WCD are relayed in a backhaul, either as an aggregate signal processed by the satellite, or as backhaul communication signals to be combined or separated on the ground. |
| US08600291B2 |
Multiple service management
An opportunity can arise while a user is engaging a first multimedia service, commonly when the service is engaged upon a personal electronic device. A trigger can have the first multimedia service changed to an alternative service based upon the opportunity. Upon completion of the opportunity, there can be an automatic return to the first service or a request to the user on how to leave the opportunity. In addition, a notice can transfer to the user that the opportunity is coming to an end and a request can be made for the user to determine how to proceed from the opportunity or that the opportunity is ending. |
| US08600287B2 |
System for controlling sheet folding processing
There is a disclosure of a system which controls a folding unit performing folding processing to one set of sheets supplied by a print unit. The one set of sheets includes sheets of a first size and/or a second size which is smaller than the first size. The system includes a first controller and second controller. When the one set of sheets includes a sheet of the first size, the first controller inhibits the folding processing to a sheet of the second size. When the one set of sheets does not include a sheet of the first size but includes a sheet of the second size, the second controller permits the folding processing to a sheet of the second size. |
| US08600280B2 |
Fixing device and image forming apparatus including the same
A fixing device includes a rotating fixing body fixes a toner image on a recording medium by heating, the rotating fixing body having a cylindrical metal core formed of a magnetic shunt alloy and having a thickness less than a magnetic-field permeation depth at a temperature higher than or equal to a Curie temperature of the metal core, a coil provided along an outer surface of the rotating fixing body so as to generate magnetic flux that subjects the rotating fixing body to induction heating, and an electrically conductive arch-shaped saddle ring member disposed at a position opposing the coil with the metal core being disposed therebetween and in an orientation such that magnetic flux leakage associated with loss of ferromagnetism of the metal core penetrates the ring member. |
| US08600276B2 |
Heat conduction unit, fixing device, and image forming apparatus
A heat conduction unit includes a flexible endless belt, a heat conductor disposed in proximity to an inner circumferential face of the endless belt and having a cross-section substantially identical to a cross-section of the endless belt, a heat source that heats the heat conductor to heat the endless belt, a pressing roller disposed opposite the heat conductor to rotate the endless belt in accordance with rotation of the pressing roller, a nip formation member disposed opposite the pressing roller and within a loop formed by the endless belt to form a nip between the endless belt and the pressing roller, and a pushing member disposed within the loop to support the nip formation member. The heat conductor has at least two different cross-sectional shapes perpendicular to a long direction of the heat conductor at different positions in the long direction of the heat conductor. |
| US08600275B2 |
Fixing device
A fixing device having: a heating roller and a presser that form a fixing nip portion therebetween; a pair of brackets having holes for supporting both end portions of the heating roller; a biasing member for pressing the presser against the heating roller to form the fixing nip portion; and a pair of semicircular arc slide bearings that are fitted in the holes of the respective brackets so as to be located between the respective brackets and the heating roller, on an opposite side of the heating roller to a side thereof pressed by the presser. |
| US08600259B2 |
Image forming apparatus fixing a toner image on recording material with a fixing portion having a fixing sleeve and pressing roller, at least one of which is grounded
An image forming apparatus includes: an image bearer bearing a toner image; a transferer transferring the toner image from the image bearer onto a recording material and including a transfer member forming a transfer nip between itself and the image bearer; and a fixer fixing portion for fixing on the recording material the transferred toner image and including a fixing sleeve, a heater contacting an inner surface of the fixing sleeve, and a pressing roller for forming a fixing nip between itself and the heater through the fixing sleeve. At least one of the fixing sleeve and the pressing roller is grounded through a first series circuit consisting of a rectifying element and a first resistance element and is grounded through a second series circuit, which is connected to the first series circuit in parallel, consisting of a capacitive element and a second resistance element. |
| US08600258B2 |
Job execution apparatus, billing and refunding method thereof and recording medium
A job execution apparatus having the function of billing and refunding by electronic money, determines before job execution, an amount of money required for job execution, and bills before job execution, the determined amount of money to a payment medium having the payment function, which is set to a billing apparatus. And the job execution apparatus can transfer a refund to the payment medium set to the billing apparatus if a refund needs to be transferred. The job execution apparatus also can transfer a refund by a method other than the method of refunding to the payment medium by using the billing apparatus. |
| US08600248B2 |
Image forming apparatus
An image forming apparatus includes: a belt; a plurality of photosensitive units that contact the belt are disposed at a predetermined interval in the transportation direction of the belt and transfer marks for image adjustment to the belt, images of different colors being respectively formed on the plurality of photosensitive units; an exposure unit that exposes the photosensitive units by light so that the marks are disposed at the same interval on the belt; a detector that detects the marks transferred to the belt; and an image adjustment unit that performs an image adjustment based on a detection result of the detector. A width and an interval of the marks in the transportation direction are set so that a mark of at least one color does not exist in all contact areas of the belt contacting the plurality of photosensitive units. |
| US08600247B2 |
Image forming apparatus, image forming method, and computer program product for causing a computer to execute the method
An image forming apparatus includes: an image carrier; a toner image forming unit that forms a toner image on the image carrier; a transfer unit that transfers the toner image on the image carrier to a transfer target having ridges and valleys on a surface thereof; an adjusting unit that adjusts a ratio of A/B, where A is a transfer ratio [%] from the image carrier to a valley portion of the transfer target while B is a transfer ratio [%] from the image carrier to a ridge portion of the transfer target, based on an adjustment input by a user; and a control unit that controls a transfer condition of the transfer unit based on the ratio of A/B adjusted by the adjusting unit. |
| US08600244B2 |
New/used cartridge detection
A developer cartridge includes a housing and a detection gear having a detection protrusion detectable by detecting device of an image forming apparatus. The detection gear is rotatable between a first position and a second position. In the first position, the detection protrusion is detectable by the detecting device and a gear toothed portion opposes an agitator gear. In the second position, the detection protrusion is undetectable by the detecting device and a toothless portion opposes the agitator gear. When the detection gear is in the first position, an urging portion of the housing contacts the detection gear and applies rotational force to urge the gear toothed portion toward the agitator gear. When in the second position, the urging portion contacts the detection gear and regulates the position of the detection gear in the rotational direction to cause the toothless portion and the agitator gear to oppose each other. |
| US08600238B2 |
Method and system for bi-directional communication over a single optical fiber
Gigabit Ethernet connectivity is realized using off-the-shelf GIGABIT INTERFACE CONVERTER transceivers, wave division multiplexer/demultiplexers, and a single optical fiber. Simultaneous and bi-directional optical communication over a single optical fiber connecting two or more nodes is achieved by using at least one GIGABIT INTERFACE CONVERTER transceiver having at least one optical signal output and an optical signal input that are of different wavelengths from each other. |
| US08600231B2 |
Monitoring energy consumption in optical access networks
An optical access network (5) comprises optical network units (10) connected to a node (40). A monitoring unit (35) determines information indicative of energy consumption at the optical network unit (10) over a period of time. An optical network unit (10) can operate in operating states/modes which differ in their energy consumption. Monitoring unit (35) can determine the information by determining a time that an optical network unit spends in the different operating states/modes. Monitoring unit (35) can use a state machine (31) at the node (40) which represents the optical network unit (10). An optical network unit (10) can locally record time spent in states/modes and forward this to the monitoring unit (35). An optical network unit (10) can locally monitor energy consumption and forward this to the monitoring unit (35). An operational parameters of the access network (5) can be modified based on the information determined by the monitoring unit (35). |
| US08600227B2 |
Multi-filter array for a multi-resolution, multi-spectral camera
A filter array for a multi-resolution multi-spectral camera system is described which not only captures 2D images at multiple wavelength bands simultaneously but also at a spatial resolution that meets the demand for spatial feature extraction. The present system optimizes filter bands that provide high image contrast at the highest possible resolution to enable spatial feature extraction and other wavelength bands at lower resolution to achieve maximum number of wavelength bands (e.g. spectral resolution) for multi-spectral analysis. After determining the required spatial resolution and number of wavelength bands for spectral analysis, multiple filters are arranged in a geometric pattern with each filter being designed to have specified wavelength and spatial resolution. Physical sizes of filters differ within each filter group. This maximizes the detector usage while optimizing the trade-off between spatial resolution and spectral resolution. Filter gaps are fixed or tuned to wavelengths of interest. |
| US08600226B2 |
Focusing methods and apparatus, and recording media for recording the methods
Focusing methods, apparatus, and computer-readable recording media having recorded thereon the focusing methods are disclosed. In an example focusing method, a focus evaluation value is divided into first information and second information. The first information represents a difference between focus evaluation values, which are obtained according to location of a focus lens, to be relatively large, and the second information represents the difference to be relatively small. Then, at least one from among the first information and the second information is provided to a user so that the user may easily and more accurately determine whether a subject is in focus. |
| US08600222B2 |
Imaging apparatus
Disclosed herein is an imaging apparatus including: an apparatus body in which a heat radiating part is disposed; and a heat dissipating section formed at an upper portion of the apparatus body, wherein the heat dissipating section has a recess provided in an upper portion of the apparatus body, and a closing plate so mounted as to close the recess, a space is formed between the recess and the closing plate, the recess is formed with a vent hole through which the inside of the apparatus body and the space communicate with each other, the closing plate is provided with a heat dissipating hole through which the space communicates with the exterior, and the vent hole and the heat dissipating hole are positionally deviated from each other. |
| US08600218B2 |
Video information playback method and video information playback apparatus
A video information playback method of playing back a recording medium on which a virtual-machine-using content whose video playback can be controlled by a program running in a virtual machine is recorded, including: performing simple resume playback for restarting playback of a main-program video of the virtual-machine-using content without activating the program, when the playback of the main-program video is interrupted and then a playback restart instruction is given; and skipping playback of predetermined video which is to be played back until a menu screen is displayed, when the simple resume playback of the main-program video is finished and then playback from an initial state is performed with activating the program. |
| US08600217B2 |
System and method for improving quality of displayed picture during trick modes
A video decompression system and method are disclosed. In one preferred embodiment, the video decompression system comprises a memory with logic, and a processor configured with the logic to receive a compressed video stream that includes frame pictures and detect a scan mode indicator in the compressed video stream, wherein the scan mode indicator indicates whether a progressive scan format was used during the creation of the frame pictures. |
| US08600215B2 |
Electronic device, playback device and server device
The present invention discloses an electronic device having a recording section that records a content extracted from broadcasting, an acquiring section that acquires information related to the content from a network, and a chapter making section that specifies chapters to the content recorded in the recording section based on hourly fluctuation of a number of the information related to the content and associates the chapter with a classification of the information during the period of the chapter. |
| US08600213B2 |
Filtering source video data via independent component selection
What is disclosed is a system and method for reconstructing a video signal such that selected signal components have been emphasized. Methods are disclosed for reducing the source video data to its independent signal components for selection. The source video is reconstructed, in a manner more fully disclosed herein, such that the selected component(s) are emphasized in the reconstructed video during video playback. The methods disclosed herein provide a solution for filtering an original video such that technicians can use the reconstructed video to visually examine, for instance, a dominant region of a patient's vital signals. The teachings hereof find their uses in a wide array of remote sensing applications and, in particular, the telemedicine arts. |
| US08600207B2 |
Splicing and connectorization of photonic crystal fibres
A method of coupling a spliceable optical fiber includes (A) providing the spliceable optical fiber, the spliceable optical fiber including (a) a core region; and (b) a microstructured cladding region. The cladding region surrounds the core region and includes (b1) an inner cladding region having a refractive index formed by inner cladding features arranged in an inner cladding background material with a refractive index n1, the inner cladding features including thermally collapsible holes or voids, and (b2) an outer cladding region with an outer cladding background material with a refractive index n2, the spliceable optical fiber having at least one end. (B) Collapsing the thermally collapsible holes or voids by heating the at least one end of the spliceable optical fiber thereby increasing the refractive index of the inner cladding providing an expanded core. And, (C) coupling the collapsed spliceable optical fiber end to the optical component. |
| US08600206B2 |
Reduced-diameter optical fiber
Disclosed is a reduced-diameter optical fiber that employs a novel coating system. When combined with a bend-insensitive glass fiber, the novel coating system according to the present invention yields an optical fiber having exceptionally low losses.The coating system features (i) a softer primary coating with excellent low-temperature characteristics to protect against microbending in any environment and in the toughest physical situations and, optionally, (ii) a colored secondary coating possessing enhanced color strength and vividness. The secondary coating provides improved ribbon characteristics for structures that are robust, yet easily entered (i.e., separated and stripped).The optional dual coating is specifically balanced for superior heat stripping in fiber ribbons, with virtually no residue left behind on the glass. This facilitates fast splicing and terminations. The improved coating system provides optical fibers that offer significant advantages for deployment in most, if not all, fiber-to-the-premises (FTTx) systems. |
| US08600205B2 |
Optical fiber array cables and associated fiber optic cables and systems
An optical system that allows for the flexible location of an optical device that is coupled to a patch panel in a wiring closet or other optical signal source through a series of fiber optic cables and optical connections, or the flexible location of an array of such optical devices. Array cables have optical and electrical conductors to provide electrical power as well as optical data in optical systems. |
| US08600204B2 |
Optical control device
Disclosed is an optical delay element that makes use of a line-defect waveguide of a photonic crystal, in which long optical delay time and small group speed dispersion are rendered compatible with each other and in which waveform distortion that might otherwise be produced in processing an ultra-high speed signal is eliminated. Two line-defect waveguides 5 and 11, having different pillar diameters and group velocity dispersions of opposite signs, are interconnected by a line-defect waveguide 8, the pillar diameters of which are gradually varied from one 5 of the line-defect waveguides to the other line-defect waveguide 11, such as to compensate for group speed dispersion as well as to maintain an optical delay effect. |
| US08600200B1 |
Nano-optomechanical transducer
A nano-optomechanical transducer provides ultrabroadband coherent optomechanical transduction based on Mach-wave emission that uses enhanced photon-phonon coupling efficiencies by low impedance effective phononic medium, both electrostriction and radiation pressure to boost and tailor optomechanical forces, and highly dispersive electromagnetic modes that amplify both electrostriction and radiation pressure. The optomechanical transducer provides a large operating bandwidth and high efficiency while simultaneously having a small size and minimal power consumption, enabling a host of transformative phonon and signal processing capabilities. These capabilities include optomechanical transduction via pulsed phonon emission and up-conversion, broadband stimulated phonon emission and amplification, picosecond pulsed phonon lasers, broadband phononic modulators, and ultrahigh bandwidth true time delay and signal processing technologies. |
| US08600197B2 |
Optical control device
In a light control element comprising a thin plate having a thickness of 10 [mu]m or less and exhibiting electro optic effect, an optical waveguide formed on the thin plate, and a control electrode for controlling light passing through the optical waveguide, the control electrode includes a first electrode and a second electrode so arranged as to sandwich the thin plate, and the first electrode has a coplanar electrode consisting of a first signal electrode and a ground electrode, while the second electrode has a second signal electrode. Modulation signals having mutually inverted amplitudes are inputted to the first signal electrode of the first electrode and the second signal electrode of the second electrode such that the modulation signals cooperate to apply an electric field to the optical waveguide. |
| US08600194B2 |
Positional sensor-assisted image registration for panoramic photography
This disclosure pertains to devices, methods, and computer readable media for performing positional sensor-assisted panoramic photography techniques in handheld personal electronic devices. Generalized steps that may be used to carry out the panoramic photography techniques described herein include, but are not necessarily limited to: 1.) acquiring image data from the electronic device's image sensor; 2.) performing “motion filtering” on the acquired image data, e.g., using information returned from positional sensors of the electronic device to inform the processing of the image data; 3.) performing image registration between adjacent captured images; 4.) performing geometric corrections on captured image data, e.g., due to perspective changes and/or camera rotation about a non-center of perspective (COP) camera point; and 5.) “stitching” the captured images together to create the panoramic scene, e.g., blending the image data in the overlap area between adjacent captured images. The resultant stitched panoramic image may be cropped before final storage. |
| US08600192B2 |
System and method for finding correspondence between cameras in a three-dimensional vision system
This invention provides a system and method for determining correspondence between camera assemblies in a 3D vision system implementation having a plurality of cameras arranged at different orientations with respect to a scene, so as to acquire contemporaneous images of a runtime object and determine the pose of the object, and in which at least one of the camera assemblies includes a non-perspective lens. The searched 2D object features of the acquired non-perspective image, corresponding to trained object features in the non-perspective camera assembly, can be combined with the searched 2D object features in images of other camera assemblies (perspective or non-perspective), based on their trained object features to generate a set of 3D image features and thereby determine a 3D pose of the object. In this manner the speed and accuracy of the overall pose determination process is improved. The non-perspective lens can be a telecentric lens. |
| US08600191B2 |
Composite imaging method and system
In a first aspect of the invention, a method is provided for forming a group image. In accordance with the method, a set of imaging information is obtained depicting a scene over a period of time. Elements in the set of imaging information are distinguished and attributes of the elements in the set of image information are examined. Imaging information is selected from the set of imaging information depicting each element with the selection being made according to the attributes for that element. A group image is formed based upon the set of imaging information with the archival image incorporating the selected image information. |
| US08600189B2 |
Block-based image stabilization
To combine two or more images, an image capture device may compute motion vectors for a plurality of blocks of pixels of one of the images. The image capture device may also interpolate or extrapolate motion vectors for individual pixels or sub-blocks of pixels using the block motion vectors. The image capture device may then average the first and second images by averaging each of the pixels of the first image with pixels of the second image that correspond to a location indicated by the plurality of motion vectors. These techniques may reduce blur in image information resulting from certain movements during image capture or the use of certain image capture technologies. |
| US08600186B2 |
Well focused catadioptric image acquisition
The subject innovation provides for systems and methods to facilitate obtaining an overall well focused catadioptric image by combining portions of multifocal images in a fast and reliable manner. The resulting images benefit applications where high image resolutions are desirable over a large field of view. In an aspect, shallow depth of field imaging with respect to the caustic volume boundary can be correlated to annular shaped best focal regions for multifocal image sets. These annular regions are generally independent of scene composition and generally dependant on optical system parameters allowing fast computation of overall well focused output images comprising concentric best focused annulus areas from a multifocal image set. |
| US08600185B1 |
Systems and methods for restoring color and non-color related integrity in an image
Methods and systems for restoring image integrity in an image are described. The described methods and systems are particularly applied against an image after determining whether the image has undergone at least one of a color mutation, a non-color mutation, or a combination of a color mutation and a non-color mutation. |
| US08600184B2 |
System and method for reducing artifacts in images
A system and method of the present disclosure provides a block, or region, based error diffusion process for reducing artifacts in images. The system and method allows for the generation and the control of the spatial frequency of a masking signal, e.g., noise, in a way that it can be easily passed through the compression process. The system and method provides for selecting a block size of pixels of the image, adding a masking signal to the image, determining a quantization error for at least one block in the image, and distributing the quantization error to neighboring blocks in the image to mask artifacts in the image. An output image is then encoded with a compression function. |
| US08600183B2 |
Optimized method and system for entropy coding
An optimized method and system for entropy coding is described. The system may include an input module to receive a digital image, a Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) module to obtain a plurality of DCT coefficients associated with the digital image, a statistics generator to generate statistics associated with the plurality of DCT coefficients, a placement module to store the generated statistics in the plurality of DCT coefficients and entropy coder to generate uniquely decodable (UD) codes for the plurality of DCT coefficients. The entropy coder may utilize the statistics stored in the plurality of DCT coefficients. |
| US08600181B2 |
Method for compressing images and a format for compressed images
There is provided a method for compressing images and an image format. The method comprises performing a transform on pixel portions of image data and evaluating resulting coefficients from each transform in terms of a flatness condition. If the transform is found to be flat then the result from the transform is quantized according to a first quantizing scheme. If the transform is found not to be flat then the result from the transform is quantized according to a second quantizing scheme being different from the first quantizing scheme. Different block arranging schemes are proposed for the quantizing schemes. An indicator is stored in the block indicating that the image block is flat or not flat. The resulting bits are written into a compression data structure. |
| US08600180B2 |
Compression method selection for digital images
Disclosed is a method of compressing an image (1301) using one of a plurality of candidate compression methods (1120, 1130), said method comprising the steps of (a) processing a portion of the image to determine, for at least some of the candidate compression methods, associated compressibility scores (220) and corresponding pairs of thresholds (230), the compressibility scores and the pairs of thresholds being dependent upon the proportion of the image that has been processed, (b) comparing (240, 260) the compressibility scores to the corresponding pairs of thresholds, (c) selecting (250), if a compressibility score satisfies the corresponding pair of thresholds, the associated candidate compression method, and (d) compressing the image (1301) using the selected candidate compression method. |
| US08600177B2 |
Image coding apparatus
A refresh area is taken advantage of when a series of images are coded using Intra-frame coding and Inter-frame coding, a partial area of an image being forcefully Intra-frame coded (Intra MBs) in the refresh area. As the prediction mode for prediction of the Intra MBs inside the refresh area, a prediction mode is selected where the prediction is executable based on only the image that exists inside the refresh area. |
| US08600176B2 |
Error detection method and apparatus in DMB receiver
Provided is a method and apparatus for detecting errors generated by a DMB receiver by not processing received audio/video data in realtime. The error detection method includes: calculating a time required to process one frame obtained by dividing received data into frames having a predetermined size; and determining as an error a situation in which the calculated time exceeds time predetermined to process the one frame in realtime and transmitting an error recovering command. Accordingly, subsequent data frames can be normally processed by quickly detecting the error and recovering the error by initializing their associated modules. |
| US08600174B2 |
Method and system for attaching a metatag to a digital image
A system and method for tagging an image of an individual in a plurality of photos is disclosed herein. A feature vector of an individual is used to analyze a set of photos on a social networking website such as www.facebook.com to determine if an image of the individual is present in a photo of the set of photos. Photos having an image of the individual are tagged preferably by listing a URL or URI for each of the photos in a database. |
| US08600172B2 |
Video based matching and tracking by analyzing one or more image abstractions
An analytical device is disclosed that analyzes whether a first image is similar to (or the same as) as a second image. The analytical device analyzes the first image by combining at least a part (or all) of the first image with at least a part (or all) of the second image, and by analyzing at least a part (or all) of the combined image. Part or all of the combination may be analyzed with respect to the abstraction of the first image and/or the abstraction of the second image. The abstraction may be based on a Bag of Features (BoF) description, based on a histogram of intensity values, or based on other types of abstraction methodologies. The analysis may involve comparing one or more aspects of the combination (such as the entropy or randomness of the combination) with the one or more aspects of the abstracted first image and/or abstracted second image. Based on the comparison, the analytical device may determine whether the first image is similar to or the same as the second image. The analytical device may work with a variety of images in a variety of applications including a video tracking system, a biometric analytic system, or a database image analytical system. |
| US08600171B2 |
Image labeling using parallel processing
Image data which includes a feature is labeled. The image data is comprised of pixel data in an N×M array. At least one pixel is designated and flagged. Asynchronous processes are executed, where each process corresponds to exactly one pixel. Each process sets a flag only for the owner pixel and only if a connected neighbor pixel in the pre-defined path is flagged. Each process inspects pixel data for all neighbor pixels of the owner pixel to determine if a neighbor pixel is a connected pixel and if the neighbor pixel is flagged, and continues until it sets the flag for the owner pixel or until all connected horizontal and vertical neighbor pixels have been inspected without encountering a connected neighbor pixel whose flag is set. The asynchronous processes are repeated until a pre-defined condition has been satisfied. All flagged pixels are labeled. |
| US08600169B2 |
Method and system for learning a same-material constraint in an image
In a first exemplary embodiment of the present invention, an automated, computerized method is provided for processing an image. According to a feature of the present invention, the method comprises the steps of providing an image file depicting an image, in a computer memory, assembling a feature vector for the image file, the feature vector containing information regarding a likelihood that a selected pair of regions of the image file are of a same intrinsic characteristic, providing a classifier derived from a computer learning technique, computing a classification score for the selected pair of regions of the image file, as a function of the feature vector and the classifier and classifying the regions as being of the same intrinsic characteristic, as a function of the classification score. |
| US08600168B2 |
Methods and systems for image processing of microfluidic devices
A method of processing data associated with fluorescent emissions from a microfluidic device. The method includes performing an auto-focus process associated with a first image of the microfluidic device and performing an auto-exposure process associated with the first image of the microfluidic device. The method also includes capturing a plurality of images of the microfluidic device. The plurality of images are associated with a plurality of thermal cycles. The method further includes performing image analysis of the plurality of captured images to determine a series of optical intensities and performing data analysis of the series of optical intensities to provide a series of change in threshold values. |
| US08600167B2 |
System for capturing a document in an image signal
Devices, methods, and software are disclosed for capturing a frame of image data having a representation of a feature. In an illustrative embodiment, a device includes an imaging subsystem, one or more memory components, and a processor. The imaging subsystem is capable of providing image data representative of light incident on said imaging subsystem. The one or more memory components include at least a first memory component operatively capable of storing an input frame of the image data. The processor is in communicative connection with executable instructions for enabling the processor for various steps. One step includes receiving the input frame from the first memory component. Another step includes generating a reduced resolution frame based on the input frame, the reduced resolution frame comprising fewer pixels than the input frame, in which a pixel in the reduced resolution frame combines information from two or more pixels in the input frame. Another step includes attempting to identify transition pairs comprising pairs of adjacent pixels in the reduced resolution frame having differences between the pixels that exceed a pixel transition threshold. Another step includes attempting to identify one or more linear features between two or more identified transition pairs in the reduced resolution frame. Another step includes providing an indication of one or more identified linear features in the reduced resolution frame. |
| US08600166B2 |
Real time hand tracking, pose classification and interface control
A hand gesture from a camera input is detected using an image processing module of a consumer electronics device. The detected hand gesture is identified from a vocabulary of hand gestures. The electronics device is controlled in response to the identified hand gesture. This abstract is not to be considered limiting, since other embodiments may deviate from the features described in this abstract. |
| US08600160B2 |
Signal processing apparatus and method, and program
Signals are provided which allow colors in a wider color range than predetermined standards, which can be handled by apparatus according to such predetermined standards. A primary color converter converts first color signals having primary color points in a wider color range than the primary color points according to BT.709 into second color signals based on the primary colors according to BT.709. A photoelectric transducer converts the second color signals into third color signals according to photoelectric transducer characteristics defined in a numerical range wider than a range from 0 to 1.0 of color signals corresponding to a luminance signal and color difference signals according to BT.709. A color signal converter converts the third color signals into a luminance signal and color difference signals. A corrector incorporated in the color signal converter corrects the color difference signals into color difference signals. |
| US08600156B2 |
Image processing apparatus, image processing method, and non-transitory computer readable medium storing image processing program
Provided is an image processing apparatus including a receiving unit that receives a point sequence image, a point-plane conversion unit that performs a point-plane conversion processing for the image received by the receiving unit, plural lossy encoding units that perform a lossy encoding processing for the point-plane conversion image by using the point-plane conversion unit, and a control unit that performs control such that transmission of the image to the lossy encoding unit from the point-plane conversion unit is controlled to synchronize lossy encoding processings of the plural lossy encoding units, and each lossy encoding unit changes processing variables used in the encoding processing based on a code amount of the processing result of the lossy encoding unit. |
| US08600153B2 |
System and method for normalization and codification of colors for dynamic analysis
A system and method for normalizing and codifying divergent color systems into a single universal color system. The middleware engine receives a data feed comprising a plurality of color swatches or images from one or more merchant system and normalizes the data feed into a common format. The dominant processor extracts the product images from the normalized data, segments each product image into segments, determines a dominant color for each segment, and determines the dominant product color for each product image based on prevalence of the dominant product color in each segment. The matched color processor converts the determined dominant product color into a digital value of the universal color system based on the color component intensity values. |
| US08600152B2 |
Devices, systems and methods for transcription suggestions and completions
Methods, devices and systems are described for transcribing text from artifacts to electronic files. A computer system is provided, wherein the computer system comprises a computer-readable storage device. An image of the artifact is received wherein text is present on the artifact. A first portion of the text is analyzed. Characters representing the first portion of the text are identified at a first confidence level equal to or greater than a threshold confidence level. The characters representing the first portion of the text are stored. A second portion of the text appearing on the artifact is analyzed. A plurality of candidates to represent the second portion of the text are identified at a second confidence level below the threshold confidence level. Finally, the plurality of candidates to a user for selection are presented. |
| US08600150B2 |
Wafer aligning apparatus and related method
A wafer aligning apparatus includes a laser sensor that generates a trigger signal, a CCD camera imaging a wafer in response to the trigger signal, a signal processing unit that calculates a center alignment correction value for the wafer, and a robot controller that receives the center alignment correction value to control movement of a transfer robot. The laser sensor generates the trigger signal in accordance with a change in reflected light detected by the laser sensor, the change in the amount of reflected light being detected by the laser sensor when a boundary between a blade of the transfer robot and a coupler of the transfer robot passes under the laser sensor. |
| US08600148B2 |
Inspection device
A device for inspecting the external surfaces of containers using a radiation device which directs light onto a container to be inspected. The device includes a transport device for transporting the container with respect to the radiation device, and an image capturing device which captures the container illuminated by the radiation device, with a background being located behind the container with respect to the image capturing device, with respect which the container can be imaged. The background has both a lighter area and a darker area by comparison with this lighter area. |
| US08600147B2 |
System and method for remote measurement of displacement and strain fields
A computer-implemented method for measuring full field deformation characteristics of a deformable body. The method includes determining optical setup design parameters for measuring displacement and strain fields, and generating and applying a dot pattern on a planar side of a deformable body. A sequence of images of the dot pattern is acquired before and after deformation of the body. Irregular objects are eliminated from the images based on dot light intensity threshold and the object area or another geometrical cutoff criterion. The characteristic points of the dots are determined, and the characteristic points are matched between two or more of the sequential images. The displacement vector of the characteristic points is found, and mesh free or other techniques are used to estimate the full field displacement based on the displacement vector of the characteristic points. Strain tensor or other displacement-derived quantities can also be estimated using mesh-free or other analysis techniques. |
| US08600146B2 |
Method for the classification of banknotes
The invention group relates to the banknote detecting means. The technical result is increase in the banknote identification accuracy. The method is based on a computational processing of the banknote scan formed in the device during scanning. The banknote digital image is separated into areas; for each area a function is calculated and a feature vector is composed with further calculation of the distance to the known classes represented by the parameters available beforehand. Moreover, the calculated function of the banknote digital image allows calculation of its signature in a form of binary number that is compared with the classes known beforehand. |
| US08600141B2 |
Method and device for the segmentation of a lesion
In a method and a device for the segmentation of a lesion, a quantity of candidate regions for the lesion is determined proceeding from a starting region by means of a candidate unit. The candidate regions are arranged substantially concentrically to the starting region. A candidate region closest to the lesion is selected automatically by means of a selection unit or manually by means of a correction unit from the quantity of candidate regions. The selected candidate region is a reliable and robust basis for a classification of the lesion. |
| US08600138B2 |
Method for processing radiological images to determine a 3D position of a needle
A method to process images for interventional imaging, wherein a 3D image of an object is visualized with a medical imaging system, the medical imaging system comprising an X-ray source and a detector, is provided. The method comprises acquiring a plurality of 2D-projected images of the object along a plurality of orientations of the imaging chain, wherein a rectilinear instrument has been inserted into the object. The method also comprises determining a 3D reconstruction of the instrument such that a plurality of 2D projections of the 3D image of the instrument, along the respective orientations in the 2D-projected images of the object were acquired, are closest to the acquired 2D-projected images of the object. The method further comprises superimposing the 3D reconstruction of the instrument over the 3D image of the object so as to obtain a 3D image comprising the object and the instrument. |
| US08600136B2 |
Method for generation of attenuation map in PET-MR
A magnetic resonance (MR) image segmentation processor (32) is configured to identify one or more geometrical regions of a subject using an MR image of the subject. An emission data reconstruction processor (40) is configured to generate an attenuation map (54) of the subject by assigning initial attenuation values (52) to the geometrical regions of the subject, and to: (i) process (56) emission data acquired from the subject to generate an emission image (58) of the subject, the processing employing the attenuation map of the subject; (ii) update (60) the attenuation map based on corrections calculated using the emission image of the subject; and (iii) iterate operations (i) and (ii) to iteratively generate a reconstructed emission image of the subject. |
| US08600130B2 |
3D medical image segmentation
A treatment planning apparatus comprises a means for receiving a three dimensional representation of a patient, a means for displaying at least a part of the representation, a means for user-designation of sub-regions of the representation, and a computing means adapted to segment the representation into a region within an anatomical structure and a region outside the anatomical structure on the basis of the locations of the sub-regions, the degree of similarity of voxels to neighboring voxels in the representation, and a dataset representing an a priori assumption of the correct segmentation. •The dataset preferably comprises a probability distribution of each pixel being within the segmentation, e.g. obtained from a segmentation of a previous image of the patient, for example by smoothing the previous segmentation. The at least part of the representation comprises one or more sections through the representation, such as axial, sagittal and/or coronal views of the patient. The computing means can segment the representation by minimizing a function. |
| US08600128B2 |
Image segmentation
A method for segmenting an image comprising: determining an initial estimation of a boundary between at least two components in a region of an image to be segmented; providing image data from the region of the image to be segmented, the image data representing gray level values of a plurality of image elements of the components; modelling the image data on a mixture of at least two statistical distributions, each statistical distribution having more than one parameter, and each component being associated with certain weights of the statistical distributions in the mixture; estimating the parameters of the statistical distributions in the mixture; for each component, estimating the weights of the statistical distributions in the mixture based on the estimated parameters and the image data of each image element; and optimizing the initial estimation of the boundary between the components based on the estimated parameters and estimated weights. |
| US08600122B2 |
Apparatus and method for culling substantially redundant data in fingerprint sensing circuits
An apparatus for culling substantially redundant data in a fingerprint sensing circuit is disclosed in one embodiment of the invention as including an input module, a storage module, a comparator module, and a determination module. The input module may receive sets of data samples from an array of fingerprint sensing elements. The sets of data samples may be stored by the storage module. The comparator module may calculate a difference between each data sample from a first-received set, and a corresponding data sample from a second-received set. The determination module may count the number of difference values that exceed a predetermined difference limit, and identify the second set of data samples as redundant if the number of difference values counted is less than a pre-set count limit. |
| US08600121B2 |
Face recognition system and method
Apparatus for face recognition, the apparatus comprising: a face symmetry verifier, configured to verify symmetry of a face in at least one image, according to a predefined symmetry criterion, and a face identifier, associated with the face symmetry verifier, and configured to identify the face, provided the symmetry of the face is successfully verified. |
| US08600120B2 |
Personal computing device control using face detection and recognition
Systems and methods are provided for control of a personal computing device based on user face detection and recognition techniques. |
| US08600116B2 |
Video speed detection system
Multiple-object speed tracking apparatuses are disclosed, including a camera configured to capture a set of images of a monitored area (e.g., a roadway). The camera's longitudinal axis may be positioned at any viewing angle relative to a longitudinal axis of a roadway such that at least two moving objects moving on the roadway are included in a set of high or low resolution images. A computer system is configured to analyze the set of images to detect the two moving objects and substantially simultaneously determine a calculated rate of speed of at least one of the two moving objects. The computer system also provides an on-site speed calibration process for transforming locations of an image among the set of images into real-world coordinates by considering both perspective and scale of the image. An apparatus mount for at least one of either the camera or the computer system is also disclosed. |
| US08600105B2 |
Combining multiple cues in a visual object detection system
Systems and methods for detecting visual objects by employing multiple cues include statistically combining information from multiple sources into a saliency map, wherein the information may include color, texture and/or motion in an image where an object is to be detected or background determined. The statistically combined information is thresholded to make decisions with respect to foreground/background pixels. |
| US08600104B2 |
System and method for assessing a condition of an insured property and initiating an insurance claim process
A system and method for assessing a condition of property for insurance purposes includes a sensor for acquiring a spectral image. In a preferred embodiment, the spectral image is post-processed to generate at least one spectral radiance plot, the plot used as input to a radiative transfer computer model. The output of the model establishes a spectral signature for the property. Over a period of time, spectral signatures can be compared to generate a spectral difference, the difference attributed to a change in the condition of the property, such as a fire or flood. In response to the change, an insurance company initiates an insurance-related action such as processing a claim. |
| US08600102B1 |
System and method of identifying advertisement in images
A system and method is provided wherein, in one aspect, a processor determines whether multiple street level images have captured a nearly-identical face. If so, the images are processed to determine whether the face appears to be part of an advertisement. Once it is determined that the face is displayed on an advertisement, the boundaries of the advertisement may be determined and the location of the advertisement is stored for future use, e.g., potentially replacing the advertisement in the image with a different advertisement. |
| US08600099B2 |
Method of detecting embedded data from image data having a plurality of types of data embedded therein
Data to be embedded is divided and thus embedded in areas internal to a block corresponding to a predetermined region of a scanned image. Of the areas, a defined area has the embedded data's identification information embedded therein. A detection apparatus includes a counter including a region including a region storing identification information and a region storing a count value corresponding to embedded data divided that is detected in an area other than the defined area, and classifies a count value corresponding to embedded data divided that is detected from a scanned image for each identification information detected in the block, and stores it to the counter. The detection apparatus identifies data stored for each identification information that has the largest count value for each area as data embedded in that area, and reconstructs the embedded data. |
| US08600098B2 |
Method for processing a satellite image and/or an aerial image
In a method for processing a satellite image and/or aerial image, unwanted objects are able to be removed from the satellite image and/or aerial image. Geographical positions of objects pictured in the satellite and/or aerial image are determined, at least one photo is taken at ground level at each and/or in the respective immediate vicinity of the geographical positions determined, and these photos taken at ground level are superimposed on the satellite image and/or aerial image. |
| US08600095B2 |
Earphone with a movable push rod structure
This invention relates to an earphone with a movable push rod structure, which comprising a housing, a sound-emitting unit assembled inside of the housing, and a sound duct connected to the sound-emitting unit for sound transmission, and an earplug connected to the sound duct, with an air duct assembled on the housing for the flow of air inside and outside the earphone, as well as a movable push rod assembled inside the housing and connected with the housing for adjusting air flow condition of the air duct. A completely sealed earphone can be achieved when the push rod is pushed to block the air duct, or an open earphone can be achieved when the push rod is separated from the air duct. This invention has advantages of convenient and flexible regulation of sound modes of the earphones, which can be applied to users who have different requirements for sounds, and also a broader range of applications. |
| US08600094B2 |
Mounting panel with elongated tongue
A device for mounting a communication headset to a helmet includes a mounting panel having a seat in a front surface thereof that includes a set of electrical contacts and a guide, a printed circuit board 110 in electrical connection with the electrical contacts, and an elongated tongue affixed to the mounting panel. The tongue is configured for insertion between an inner shell and an outer shell of a protective helmet. Also, a wireless communication device can have such a tongue affixed to it. The tongue can be forked or otherwise arranged to have plural broad surfaces extending to a free end. |
| US08600093B2 |
Capacitor microphone
A capacitor microphone includes: a capacitor microphone unit; a microphone casing that incorporates the microphone unit and is provided with an opening communicating with a rear acoustic terminal of the microphone unit; and a shield plate that covers the opening in the microphone casing from inside of the microphone casing. The shield plate has a projection extending towards axial direction of the microphone casing at least on microphone unit side in the axial direction of the microphone casing. The projection is folded to be pressed firmly against the outer surface of a casing of the capacitor microphone unit. The shield plate is rolled into a cylindrical shape and is in contact with the inner surface of the microphone casing with pressure. |
| US08600090B2 |
Hearing aid and in-the-ear-device
A hearing aid may include a hearing aid housing. The hearing aid housing may include a first housing wall portion and a second housing wall portion. The first housing wall portion has a first flexibility, the second housing wall portion has a second flexibility and the first flexibility is different than the second flexibility. |
| US08600085B2 |
Audio player with monophonic mode control
An audio player includes an audio headset having two earpieces. A playback circuit provides one of a stereophonic program and a monaural program to the audio headset. The monaural program may be created by mixing channels of the stereophonic program. A mode control is coupled to the playback circuit and to the audio headset. The mode control detects when at least one of the two earpieces is not adjacent a listener's ear and causes the playback circuit to deliver the monaural program to the audio headset. |
| US08600073B2 |
Wind noise suppression
A method of suppressing wind noise in a voice signal determines an upper frequency limit that lies within the frequency spectrum of the voice signal, and for each of a plurality of frequency bands below the upper frequency limit, compares the average power of signal components in a first portion of the signal to the average power of signal components in a second portion of the signal, where the second portion is successive to the first portion. Signal components are identified in at least one of the plurality of frequency bands as containing impulsive wind noise in dependence on the comparison, and the identified signal components are attenuated. |
| US08600072B2 |
Audio data processing apparatus and method to reduce wind noise
An audio data processing apparatus and method to reduce wind noise. The apparatus includes a wind noise detecting unit to detect a wind noise section from an input audio signal, and a signal processing unit to reduce a low-frequency band signal of the input audio signal in the detected wind noise section. The apparatus determines whether wind is present and automatically reduces wind noise based on the determined result. Accordingly, the apparatus can effectively reduce wind noise. |
| US08600068B2 |
Systems and methods for inducing effects in a signal
A system for inducing an effect in a raw audio signal comprises a computing device for receiving a first audio signal and a second audio signal from a signal source, and the second audio signal comprises the first audio signal induced with an effect. The system further comprises logic that parameterizes the effect in the second audio signal into an artificial neural network (ANN). |
| US08600063B2 |
Key distribution system
The key distribution system comprises a terminal and a server which establish encrypted communication with each other by use of a common key cryptography using a communication secret key. To issue a new communication secret key, the terminal generates a secret value and encrypts it with a public key and sends the encrypted secret value to the server. The server decrypts the encrypted secret value with a private key paired with the public key. The server issues the new communication secret key, and encrypts it with a common key cryptography using the secret value, and sends the encrypted new communication secret key to the terminal. The terminal decrypts the encrypted new communication secret key with the secret value, thereby obtaining the new communication secret key. Thereafter, the terminal and the server use the new communication secret key. |
| US08600058B2 |
Generation of self-certified identity for efficient access control list management
In a first embodiment of the present invention, a method for registering a new device to a control point in a home network is provided, the method comprising: generating a first self-certified identification at the control point, the generation using a pseudo-random generated number and using an identification of the control point; and sending a secure message to the new device containing the first self-certified identification. |
| US08600051B2 |
System and method for quantum cryptography
Provided are a system and a method for quantum cryptography. The method includes generating the same quantum cryptography key in a transmitter and a receiver by measuring a composite-quantum-system made of a plurality of sub-quantum-systems in each of the transmitter and the receiver connected to each other through a quantum channel, wherein a part of the sub-quantum-systems is confined within the transmitter in order not to expose the entire composite-quantum-system to an outside of the transmitter and the composite-quantum-system cannot be determined without disturbing the composite-quantum-system at the outside of the transmitter. |
| US08600050B1 |
Encrypting a data transmission using multiple channels
A method, system, and media are provided for securely communicating data. One embodiment of the method includes encrypting a data stream by way of a first algorithm; creating at least two subsets of data from the data stream by extracting one or more data portions from the encrypted data stream, thereby leaving a remaining portion and an extracted portion; communicating the remaining portion to a destination by way of a first communications channel; encrypting the extracted portion utilizing a second algorithm; communicating the encrypted extracted portion to the destination by way of a second communications channel; and providing for recombining the remaining portion and the encrypted extracted portion to facilitate recovery of the encrypted data stream. |
| US08600049B2 |
Method and apparatus for optimizing advanced encryption standard (AES) encryption and decryption in parallel modes of operation
The throughput of an encryption/decryption operation is increased in a system having a pipelined execution unit. Different independent encryptions (decryptions) of different data blocks may be performed in parallel by dispatching an AES round instruction in every cycle. |
| US08600048B1 |
Format-translating encryption systems
Format-translating encryption (FTE) cryptographic operations may be implemented using a cryptographic system that translates plaintext strings to ciphertext strings of a different format and that translates ciphertext strings to plaintext strings of a different format. Plaintext strings may have a format defined by a first regular expression. Corresponding ciphertext strings may have a format defined by a second regular expression that is different than the first regular expression. During encryption operations, a format-translating encryption algorithm may employ a format-preserving encryption (FPE) encryption algorithm. During decryption operations, a format-translating encryption algorithm may employ an FPE decryption algorithm. |
| US08600047B2 |
Exponent obfuscation
A method of obfuscating an exponent is provided. The method comprises identifying a value λ for which it holds that λ>0 and xλ=1 for a plurality of elements x which are to be used in a cryptographic process. The method further comprises identifying an obfuscated exponent y which is greater than λ and providing information indicative of the obfuscated exponent y. The method comprises establishing a key value a, wherein a<λ, selecting a positive integer b, and computing y=a+bλ. |
| US08600044B2 |
Supporting device and telephone device
A telephone device comprises a base, a handset, and a supporting device secured to the base. The base comprises a first receiving portion and a hang-up button protruding out of the first receiving portion. The hang-up button is used for ending a call when being pressed. The handset comprises an earpiece received in the first receiving portion. When the supporting device is in a resisting position, the supporting device extends into the first receiving portion for supporting the earpiece to prevent the earpiece from pressing the hang-up button. When the supporting device is in an unresisting position, the supporting device retracts into the base for allowing the earpiece to press the hang-up button. |
| US08600035B2 |
Systems and methods for customer contact
A user of a personal computing device may identify an item of interest displayed in a user interface provided by a network-based service and would like to obtain more information. The user may submit one or more electronic contact requests to a contact service in communication with a contact distribution system in order to obtain more information. The contact distribution system determines accurate, real-time availability of service agents and enables communications between the customer and an agent to be established in accordance with user contact information provided by the user. |
| US08600028B2 |
Contextual phone number validation
A validation service offers the ability to validate a telephone conference. The validation service can verify that a telephone number and a pass code can be used to access the telephone conference at the time the telephone conference is scheduled. The validation service can also inform users about changes to the scheduled telephone conference, and provide alternative telephone numbers that can be used to access the telephone conference. |
| US08600027B1 |
System and method for conference calling
A system for conference calling having a memory having at least one user record associated with a system user, the user record having telephone number and an electronic address. A conference call request receiving function is executable by the processor to receive a conference call request email, the conference call request email has calendar information and an electronic address of one or more participants. A scheduling function is executable by the processor to schedule a conference call on the system server between the one or more participants that are system users at the time of the conference call according to the calendar information in the conference call request email. Also provided is a method for conference calling whereby a conference call request is received via email. |
| US08600021B2 |
Method and apparatus for connecting a caller previously diverted to voicemail
Disclosed is a method and apparatus for enabling communication between a first party and a second party. The method and apparatus determine that the second party is calling the first party while the first party is leaving a message on the voicemail of the second party. The message is then aborted and the first party is connected to the second party. |
| US08599999B2 |
Detection system, DR imaging apparatus and CT imaging apparatus
Disclosed is detection system for detection an object being conveyed along a convey path, the detection system comprises a DR imaging apparatus and a CT imaging apparatus which is provided at the downstream or upstream of the DR imaging apparatus along the convey path, wherein an average speed at which the object passes the DR imaging apparatus is higher than an average speed at which the object passes the CT imaging apparatus. The present invention also relates to a DR imaging apparatus for forming an image of an object by scanning the object, the object being conveyed along a convey path, the DR imaging apparatus comprising: an X-ray source; a detector for detecting passing of the object; a digital image processing unit; and a DR trigger module for data acquisition, wherein during the object passes the DR imaging apparatus, the DR trigger module triggers the DR imaging apparatus to perform data acquisition every time the object passes the DR imaging apparatus a predetermined distance A along the convey path. |
| US08599995B2 |
Tiered tie plates and fuel bundles using the same
Example embodiments are directed to tiered tie plates and fuel bundles that use tiered tie plates. Example embodiment tie plates may include upper and lower tiered tie plates. Example embodiment tiered tie plates may have a plurality of bosses divided into groups, or tiers, having differing vertical (axial) displacement. Example embodiment fuel bundles may use tiered tie plates such that fuel rods in example bundles may originate and terminate at different vertical displacements, based upon the vertical displacement of the bosses receiving the fuel rods into the tiered tie plates. Optionally, shanks may be used to further vary fuel rod axial displacement and diameter. |
| US08599993B2 |
Fuel compact
A fuel compact formed by integrally molding coated fuel particles by a press into a cylindrical body and comprising a chamfer having plane or curved surface at its corner to thereby prevent the coated fuel particles from being damaged due to stress on press molding whereby the strength thereof is improved against mechanical contact with a fuel sleeve and a graphite block. |
| US08599991B2 |
Boiling water reactor, core of boiling water reactor and fuel assembly
A boiling water reactor has a core disposed in the reactor pressure vessel and loaded with a plurality of fuel assemblies including transuranic nuclides. A ratio of Pu-239 in all of the transuranic nuclides included in the fuel assembly, which is loaded in the core, with a burnup of 0 is 3% or more but 45% or less. In the fuel assembly having a channel box and a plurality of fuel rods disposed in the channel box, a transverse cross section of a fuel pellet in the fuel rod occupies 30% or more but 55% or less of a transverse cross section of a unit fuel rod lattice in the channel box. |
| US08599988B2 |
Control rod transfer device
A telescoping rod control cluster assembly change tool for moving control rod assemblies among fuel assemblies in a nuclear facility. The operation of the tool is completely mechanical and the telescoping feature enables the tool to have a relatively low profile when it is being moved and stored without housing a control rod assembly. Rigidly supported alignment cards guide a gripper that attaches to the control rod assembly as the control rod assembly is withdrawn into the tool with the alignment cards preventing any lateral or rotational movement of the gripper. |
| US08599984B2 |
Wide frequency range delay locked loop
A delay locked loop operates over a wide range of frequencies and has high accuracy, small silicon area usage, low power consumption and a short lock time. The DLL combines an analog domain and a digital domain. The digital domain is responsible for initial lock and operational point stability and is frozen after the lock is reached. The analog domain is responsible for normal operation after lock is reached and provides high accuracy using smaller silicon area and low power. |
| US08599981B2 |
Post-filter, decoding device, and post-filter processing method
Provided is a decoding device which suppresses generation of an abnormal sound caused by a layer switch. The decoding device includes: a first layer decoding unit (202) which performs a decoding process on first layer encoded data so as to generate a first layer decoding signal; a second layer decoding unit (203) which performs a decoding process on second layer encoded data so as to generate a first layer decoding error signal; an adder (204) which adds the first layer decoding signal and the first layer decoding error signal so as to generate a second layer decoding signal; a switching unit (205) which performs switching between the first layer signal and the second layer decoding signal for output according to layer information; and a post-filter (206) which selects a control parameter corresponding to the respective layer information and performs a control parameter smoothing process so as to generate a smoothed control parameter and performs a filter process on the decoding signal from the switching unit (205) by using the generated smoothed control parameter. |
| US08599977B2 |
Device and method for estimating doppler spread in a mobile communications terminal
The invention is suitable for use in an OFDM system, such as the 3GPP-LTE mobile phone system. A method of estimating Doppler spread in a mobile communications device includes: (a) selecting a channel estimate from each of a sequence of time slots at each of a series of selected sub-carrier frequencies; (b) performing a Digital Fourier Transform (DFT) on the selected channel estimates at each selected sub-carrier frequency to thereby compute DFT components at different frequency bins; (c) summing the DFT components at all selected sub-carrier frequencies for each different frequency bin; (d) detecting the frequency bin at which the summed DFT components first falls below a predetermined threshold; and (e) converting the detected frequency bin into a Doppler spread estimate. |
| US08599973B2 |
Detection of synchronization mark from output of matched filter upstream of Viterbi detector
Embodiments of the present invention relate to the detection of synchronization marks in data storage and retrieval. According to one embodiment, synchronization marks are detected from the output of a matched filter, upstream of the Viterbi detector. This approach avoids the delay associated with the latency of the Viterbi output, thereby allowing time to align parity framing and to properly start the time-varying trellis. Certain embodiments disclose 34- and 20-bit primary synchronization marks located at the beginning of a data region. Other embodiments disclose 16-, 20-, and 24-bit embedded synchronization marks located within a data region. |
| US08599970B2 |
Systems, methods, and apparatuses for detecting digital television (DTV) communications signals
A received RF signal is down-converted to a baseband or low-IF digitized signal in order to search for a pilot signal that indicates a presence of a DTV signal such as an ATSC DTV signal. The pilot signal characteristically resides in a fixed frequency range for all valid DTV signals and is extracted by processing the baseband or low-IF signal in multiple stages. The first stage reduces signal information to that pertaining to the frequency band covering all valid pilot frequencies, thereby reducing the sampling rate and computational complexity of subsequent operations. A second stage operates on this reduced rate signal to focus on a series of particular pilot frequencies for interrogation. For each such candidate frequency, the cyclostationarity of the signal is measured and tested for statistical significance relative to the background energy to yield an effective test that is invariant with respect to background noise level. |
| US08599968B2 |
Sampling circuit and receiver utilizing the same
A sampling circuit and a receiver have a high level of filter design flexibility and excellent image rejection characteristics. Signals with phases that differ by 90° are sampled using an IQ generating circuit and are weighted by each of multiple parallel-connected discrete-time circuits, and the result of addition by an output adding circuit is ultimately output. Alternatively, a configuration in which the multiple parallel-connected discrete-time circuits and the output adding circuit are cascade-connected is adopted, so that frequency characteristics having an attenuation pole to one side can be achieved and excellent image rejection characteristics can be obtained. |
| US08599967B2 |
Method and apparatus for training the reference voltage level and data sample timing in a receiver
Methods and apparatuses for calculating the location of an optimal sampling point for a receiver system are disclosed. In brief, a first method comprises determining a maximum voltage margin and a maximum timing margin of a received signal, and from these margins, determining an optimal sampling point, which includes a reference voltage level (Vref) and a relative sample phase. The location of the optimal sampling point is based on the locations of the sampling point of the maximum voltage margin and the sampling point of the maximum timing margin. A second method comprises establishing an initial sampling point, and then successively refining each of the voltage and timing components of the sampling point until an optimal sampling point is reached. |
| US08599962B1 |
Power control using distortion measurement
Apparatus having corresponding methods and non-transitory computer-readable media comprise: a transmitter configured to transmit a signal according to a gain setting, wherein the signal represents a first digital signal; a receiver configured to receive the signal transmitted by the transmitter, and produce a second digital signal based on the signal received by the receiver; a measurement module configured to produce a digital indication of a linearity of the transmitter based on the second digital signal; and a gain setting module configured to control the gain setting in accordance with the digital indication of the linearity of the transmitter. |
| US08599956B1 |
Doppler compensated communications link
A system for compensating for a Doppler frequency shift in communications between a mobile node and a fixed node. The system includes a Doppler frequency shift estimation unit configured to estimate the Doppler frequency shift experienced in a communication signal between the mobile node and the fixed node, wherein the Doppler frequency shift is estimated based on a location of the mobile node, a heading of the mobile node, and speed of the mobile node, and a location of the fixed node. The system also includes a frequency shift unit configured to shift a frequency of the communication signal in accordance with the estimated Doppler frequency shift. |
| US08599954B2 |
Transmission methods for downlink ACK/NACK channels
A method from transmitting data via multiple antennas. In this method, four information bits to be transmitted are multiplexed by using either one of a code division multiplexing scheme or a second code division multiplexing scheme combined with a real and imaginary multiplexing scheme, to generate a code division multiplexed symbol including four vectors. Then, the code division multiplexed symbol is repeatedly transmitted by alternatively applying two transmit diversity schemes via four transmission antennas. |
| US08599952B2 |
MU-COMP channel state normalization measure quantization and transmission
Uplink overhead is significantly reduced in a MU-COMP wireless communication network by exploiting the dissimilarity of received signal strength in signals transmitted by geographically distributed transmit antennas, as seen by receiving UEs. Each UE calculates a quantized normalization measure of channel elements for a channel weakly received from a first transmitter to that for a channel strongly received from a second transmitter. The quantized normalization measure may be modeled as a ratio of complex Gaussian variables, and quantized in phase and amplitude by making simplifying assumptions. The ratios are quantized, and transmitted to the network using far fewer bits than would be required to transmit the full channel state information. The network uses the quantized normalization measures to set the transmitter weights. |
| US08599951B2 |
Feed-forward control signaling and decoding schemes
Systems and methods for conveying wireless transmission allocation information are disclosed. In accordance with one method, an index indicating selected data stream parameters is received. In addition, an indication of a number of transmit antennas at a transmitter from which the data stream is transmitted is also received. Further, the selected parameters are determined from the index based on the number of transmit antennas at the transmitter. Moreover, data signals are received and processed with a processor in accordance with the selected data stream parameters. |
| US08599948B2 |
Method and arrangement for symbol mapping in communication systems utilizing OFDM-techniques
The present invention relates to a method and arrangement for symbol mapping in wireless communication systems utilizing OFDM transmission technology in combination with advanced coding schemes. In the method according to the present invention, adapted for use in a wireless communication system utilizing OFDM transmission technology, an OFDM grid is defined by at least a first dimension and a second dimensions from the dimensions time, frequency or space. The advanced coding scheme, for example Alamouti coding, outputs symbols that are related via the coding. At least some of the symbols, defining a code related symbol group should experience identical, or at least very similar, radio channels. According to one embodiment of the present invention, symbols from the same code related symbol group is placed as close together in the OFDM grid as possible. |
| US08599943B2 |
Communications apparatus and communications system using multicarrier transmission mode
A communications apparatus accommodated in a communications system for exchange of information between a communications apparatuses by a multicarrier transmission mode using a plurality of subcarriers. The communications apparatus comprises of a dedicated transmission data generator for each communications apparatus, configured to generate frequency band information indicating which frequency band is to be used for transmission of data information between each communications apparatus and a transmitter configured to transmit the dedicated frequency band information for each communications apparatus by using a specific frequency band which is set from among a plurality of frequency bands assigned to the communications system, in which the specific frequency band is set as a primary band in frequency band assigned to the communication system. |
| US08599937B2 |
Pulse transformer driver
Methods, systems, and devices are described for providing a communication system for handling pulse information. Embodiments of the invention provide a pulse shaping unit operable to avoid saturation of the pulse transformer, while being easily incorporated into IC processes. Some embodiments of the pulse shaping unit provide a two-to-three level driver unit for converting a two-level input voltage signal to a three-level driver signal for driving a pulse transformer. Other embodiments of the pulse shaping unit provide components configured to differentially drive a pulse transformer, effectively converting a two-level input voltage signal to a three-level driver signal. |
| US08599933B2 |
Robust PID filtering for DVB-H
One embodiment provides a method of performing packet identifier (PID) filtering of a digital video broadcasting-handheld (DVB-H) transport stream and includes processing a PID and a continuity counter (CC) sequence of the DVB-H transport stream, computing a number of mismatched bits between the PID and a desired PID, proceeding to a start of a reset state on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) queue of the DVB-H transport stream when a FIFO buffer becomes full, determining if a number of mismatched bits of a first packet in the FIFO buffer is less than a first threshold value, and proceeding to a start of a run algorithm state only if the number of mismatched bits of the first packet in the FIFO buffer is less than the first threshold value and if there is a valid CC sequence that includes the first packet. |
| US08599931B2 |
Local Flextream over internet protocol
The invention relates to the field of digital television. More exactly, the invention deals with video compression equipments inside television head-ends, which comprise encoders grouped in encoding pools for statistical multiplexing. The invention also concerns of a method for driving individual output bitrates for encoders gathered in such encoding pool.The present invention concerns an encoding pool comprising a master encoder MVE and at least one slave encoder SVEi, each encoder MVE, SVEi receiving an uncompressed video stream UM, USi and issuing an encoded stream TM, TSi via a first extremity of an IP link IPLM, IPLi, all second extremities of said IP links IPLM, IPLi being bound to a switch IPS, the at least one slave encoder SVEi sending a piece of information on the complexity Cli of the uncompressed video stream USi, the master encoder MVE evaluating an allocation for output bitrate BRi of the at least one slave encoder SVEi from the piece of information on the complexity Cli and sending said allocation BRi to the at least one slave encoder SVEi.According to the invention, the piece of information on the complexity Cli and the allocation for output bitrate BRi are transmitted via a path Pi comprising the IP link IPLi, the switch IPS and the IP Link IPM. |
| US08599930B2 |
Image coding and decoding method and apparatus considering human visual characteristics
An image coding method and apparatus considering human visual characteristics are provided. The image coding method comprises (a) modeling image quality distribution of an input image in units of scenes such that the quality of an image input in units of scenes is gradually lowered from a region of interest to a background region, (b) determining a quantization parameter of each region constituting one scene according to the result of modeling of image quality distribution, (c) quantizing image data in accordance with the quantization parameter, and (d) coding entropy of the quantized image data. |
| US08599927B2 |
Image coding and decoding method and apparatus considering human visual characteristics
An image coding method and apparatus considering human visual characteristics are provided. The image coding method comprises (a) modeling image quality distribution of an input image in units of scenes such that the quality of an image input in units of scenes is gradually lowered from a region of interest to a background region, (b) determining a quantization parameter of each region constituting one scene according to the result of modeling of image quality distribution, (c) quantizing image data in accordance with the quantization parameter, and (d) coding entropy of the quantized image data. |
| US08599926B2 |
Combined run-length coding of refinement and significant coefficients in scalable video coding enhancement layers
This disclosure describes techniques for coding an enhancement layer in a scalable video coding (SVC) scheme. The techniques involve run-length coding of significant coefficients and refinement coefficients of the enhancement layer. Rather than performing two different run-length passes to separately code the significant coefficients and refinement coefficients, the techniques of this disclosure perform run-length coding of the significant coefficients and refinement coefficients together. Therefore, run values of the run-length coding codes the significant coefficients with the refinement coefficients. Additional techniques are also described, which can eliminate the need to send sign information for some of the refinement coefficients. Instead, this sign information for some of the refinement coefficients may be derived at the decoder based on the sign values of corresponding coefficients of previously encoded layers of the SVC scheme, which can further improve compression efficiency. |
| US08599925B2 |
Efficient coding and decoding of transform blocks
A block transform-based digital media codec more efficiently encodes transform coefficients by jointly-coding non-zero coefficients along with succeeding runs of zero-value coefficients. When a non-zero coefficient is the last in its block, a last indicator is substituted for the run value in the symbol for that coefficient. Initial non-zero coefficients are indicated in a special symbol which jointly-codes the non-zero coefficient along with initial and subsequent runs of zeroes. The codec allows for multiple coding contexts by recognizing breaks in runs of non-zero coefficients and coding non-zero coefficients on either side of such a break separately. The codec also reduces code table size by indicating in each symbol whether a non-zero coefficient has absolute value greater than 1 and whether runs of zeros have positive value, and separately encodes the level of the coefficients and the length of the runs outside of the symbols. |
| US08599923B2 |
Motion vector encoding device and decoding device
A prediction error generating unit generates a predictive vector from the motion vectors of a plurality of adjacent blocks, and obtains a difference from a target vector. A plurality of variable-length coding units respectively encode the output of the prediction error generating unit with different encoding methods. A determining unit estimates the accuracy of the predictive vector generated by the prediction error generating unit based on the degrees of non-uniformity of the motion vectors of the plurality of adjacent blocks. A selecting unit selects one of the encoding results obtained by the plurality of variable-length coding units. |
| US08599921B2 |
Adaptive partition subset selection module and method for use therewith
A partition subset selection module selects a subset of available partitions for a macroblock pair of the plurality of macroblock pairs, based on motion search motion vectors generated by a motion search section, and further based on a macroblock adaptive frame and field indicator. A motion refinement module generates refined motion vectors for the macroblock pair, based on the subset of available partitions for a macroblock pair. |
| US08599920B2 |
Intensity compensation techniques in video processing
Techniques for intensity compensation in video processing are provided. In one configuration, a wireless communication device compliant with the VC1-SMPTE standard (e.g., cellular phone, etc.) comprises a processor that is configured to execute instructions operative to reconstruct reference frames from a received video bitstream. A non-intensity-compensated copy of a reference frame of the bitstream is stored in a memory of the device and used for defining the displayable images and for on-the-fly generation of a stream of intensity-compensated pixels to perform motion compensation calculations for frames of the video bitstream. |
| US08599919B2 |
Moving image coding/decoding system and moving image coding apparatus and moving image decoding apparatus used therein
An image quality/rate control portion 106 confirms whether a predictive code amount Ci is a target code amount Rt or less. When the predictive code amount Ci is the target code amount Rt or less, the predictive code amount Ci is output to a base layer coding portion 101. Then, a switch 108 is turned off. When the predictive code amount Ci exceeds the target code amount Rt, the target code amount Rt is output to the base layer coding portion 101. Then, the switch 108 is turned on and (predictive code amount Ci−target code amount Rt) is output to an enhancement layer coding portion 103. A buffer 104 stores coded data of the base layer coding portion 101 and the enhancement layer coding portion 103. In this manner, while performing fixed bit rate coding using a single transmission path, image quality of a moving image is made constant so as to prevent deterioration of image quality. |
| US08599918B2 |
Video compression encoding/decompression device, video compression encoding/decompression program and video generation/output device
When a periodic pattern is not included in image data 210, a prediction error encoding unit 204 outputs the variable-length code of a prediction error quantization value 214 generated by prediction encoding as compressed data 215. When the periodic pattern is included in the image data 210, a periodic pattern encoding unit 208 outputs only information about the periodic pattern as the compressed data 215, while the output of the prediction error encoding unit is stopped. On the decompression side, while the copy instruction of a pixel value before one cycle from the compressed data is not detected, the decompression operation in a normal prediction encoding system is executed. When the instruction is detected, the pixel value one cycle before, internally stored is copied and outputted. |
| US08599917B2 |
Apparatus and method for receiving streaming data in a portable terminal
An apparatus and method for receiving streaming data in a portable terminal are provided. The apparatus includes a controller and an Intra-frame (I-frame) manager. The controller decodes and reproduces received streaming data. In a case of a stopping of a streaming service, the I-frame manager stores information on a stopped position of the streaming service and, in a case where the stopped streaming service is reattempted, reproducing the streaming data from the stopped position of the streaming service. |
| US08599915B2 |
Phase-shifted pulse width modulation signal generation device and method therefor
First information is received at a first pulse width modulation (PWM) module responsive to a chip select signal being asserted at a chip select input of a communication bus of the first PWM module during a first time. The first information is latched at a control register of the first PWM module in response to a first logic transition of the chip select signal. A first PWM signal is provided at a first output of the first PWM module beginning a predetermined amount of time after the first logic transition of the chip select signal, the first PWM signal generated by the first PWM module based upon the first information. |
| US08599913B1 |
Data regeneration apparatus and method for PCI express
A data regeneration device regenerates a digital signal in a low-speed pass-through mode of operation, performs an upstream link equalization procedure on an upstream data link in an equalization mode of operation, performs a downstream link equalization procedure on a downstream data link in the equalization mode of operation, and regenerates the digital signal in a high-speed pass-through mode of operation. The data regeneration device transitions seamlessly from the low-speed pass-through mode of operation to the equalization mode of operation in compliance with a communication protocol. Moreover, the data regeneration device synchronizes completion of the upstream link equalization procedure with completion of the downstream link equalization procedure so that the data regeneration device transitions seamlessly from the equalization mode of operation to the high-speed pass-through mode of operation in compliance with the communication protocol. |
| US08599910B2 |
Jitter addition apparatus and test apparatus
Provided is a jitter injection apparatus that injects jitter into a signal, comprising: a plurality of jitter injecting sections that are provided in series in a transmission path that propagates the signal; an output section that selects the signal that is passed from a jitter injecting section at a first stage through a designated jitter injecting section, and outputs the selected signal; and a plurality of branch-path jitter injecting sections that (i) are provided in a plurality of branch paths that propagate the signal output by each jitter injecting section from the transmission path to the output section and (ii) are relays having frequency characteristics of attenuating a high-frequency band more than a low-frequency band. |
| US08599908B2 |
Modem for network system and operating method thereof
A modem for network system which is mounted in an electric home appliance to communicate with an external service device, to which an additional modem may be connected, and to which one or more electric home appliances may be connected and an operating method thereof. The modem has a plurality of input/output ports, functions of which are changed using a switch so that an additional modem or an electric home appliance is connected to the modem. When two modems using the same interface are connected to an electric home appliance, connection of the modems to the electric home appliance is easily achieved via the existing ports without adding a new input/output interface to the electric home appliance. Also, when one or more electric home appliances jointly use a modem, additional connection of the electric home appliances is achieved using a switch without using an additional distributor. |
| US08599902B2 |
Frequency selective modulating apparatus and method using re-spreading code
A frequency selective modulation apparatus and method using re-spreading codes are disclosed. The frequency selective modulation apparatus includes: a serial-to-parallel converter receiving transmission data and performing serial-to-parallel conversion on the transmission data at a pre-set ratio; one or more sub-frequency selective spreaders selecting one spreading code by using data bits received from the serial-to-parallel converter; a majority value selection unit selecting a majority value from one or more spreading codes which have been selected by each of the one or more of the sub-frequency selective spreaders; and a first XOR logic circuit XORing an output of the majority value selection unit and a re-spreading code Wn to re-spread a frequency selective baseband to a frequency selective passband. |
| US08599901B2 |
Method and apparatus for tracking a frequency-hopped signal
A frequency hopping signal receiving system comprising: a receiver for extracting discrete-time samples from the signal; a memory connected to the receiver for storing the extracted discrete-time samples from the signal; at least one processor operatively connected to the memory for: determining a state-space vector that captures relevant information to describe the dynamics of the signal; selecting a parameter to represent the probability of hopping associated with the signal; generating particle filters to estimate unknown parameters in the state-space vector based upon the extracted discrete-time samples by generating random particles that approximate the filtering distribution having importance weights; specifying the importance function in closed-form in a convenient mixture representation, which enables drawing particles and updating the importance weights; constructing an estimator to generate hop particles based upon observing at least one sample hop and then evaluating the estimator using a conditional expected value; using a spectrogram to generate particles in conjunction with an importance function; and estimating the hop frequency, hop time, and amplitude parameters, and a method thereof. |
| US08599899B2 |
Agitation device, melting apparatus and melting method
An agitation device, a melting apparatus, and a melting method for improving melting efficiency of molten metal without contaminating the same. The agitation device is provided with a traveling magnetic field generating unit which is disposed outside a charging tank for storing molten metal and generates, inside the charging tank, a magnetic field that travels downward along the rear sidewall of the charging tank. A flow of the molten metal that rotates longitudinally about an axis approximately parallel to the surface of the molten metal is produced in the molten metal. By charging aluminum cutting chips into the molten metal in which the flow is produced, the aluminum cutting chips move with a downward flow of the molten metal, and are immersed in the molten metal. As a result, melting of the aluminum cutting chips can be accelerated. |
| US08599898B2 |
Slab laser with composite resonator and method of producing high-energy laser radiation
Slab lasers and method for producing high power coherent laser radiation of good quality. In one embodiment, a slab laser comprises a slab laser medium, an energy source configured to deliver energy to the laser medium, and first and second optical elements. The first optical element has a first reflective surface at a first boundary of the laser medium, and the second optical element has a second reflective surface at a second boundary of the laser medium. The first and second reflective surfaces face each other across the length of the laser medium, and at least one of the first and second optical elements includes a plurality of reflective regions configured to modify the phase distribution of the incident laser radiation propagating from the reflective regions. The first and second reflective surfaces are also positioned at an angle relative to each other to form a laser resonator. |
| US08599892B2 |
Laser oscillator controller
Provided is a method for controlling a laser oscillator. Such a laser oscillator is applicable to a laser processing machine and includes a plurality of oscillator modules each adapted to be driven to oscillate a laser beam. Also, such a laser oscillator is configured to collect laser beams oscillated by driven modules for output. The method includes determining the number of modules to be driven, of the plurality of oscillator modules. |
| US08599889B2 |
Pulsed light source
Pulsed light source comprising pulse generation means (1), such as an optical oscillator, whose output is divided into three arms: two arms (3, 4) to generate a CEP-stable, ultrabroadband idler output; and a third arm (5) to generate a narrowband pump output. The pump output and idler output seed an OPCPA (13), generating stable ultrashort pulses. |
| US08599886B2 |
Methods and apparatus for reducing transfer qualifier signaling on a two-channel bus
To facilitate efficient communications in a multi bus master system that communicates with a plurality of peripheral devices, a two channel bus is used that shares write and read addresses with data on a transmit channel to reduce wiring density and provide efficient, reliable, and high speed data transfers. The two channel bus includes the transmit channel, a receive channel, and a single control channel that provides control information for both the transmit channel and the receive channel further reducing the signaling requirements of the two channel bus. The control information includes a control flag that specifies control information for data transfers on the two channel bus. The control flag and control information may be supplied in two bus cycles or in a single bus cycle depending on the control requirements for two data transfers occurring in parallel on the two channel bus. |
| US08599884B2 |
System and method for implementing optimized multiplexing and power saving in a broadcast network
A system and method for implementing optimized multiplexing and power saving in a broadcast/multicast network. According to various embodiments, frame and slot structures are designed in such a way so as to adapt based upon the bit rate variation of the input stream, while at the same time not compromising the receiver's power consumption. |
| US08599883B2 |
Transit time fixation device
A transit time fixation device and a control method of the same is provided which can constantly fix transmission delay time in relation to synchronous frames, and allows a high accuracy sampling synchronization control. The frame 101 from a client 3C1 is input to a transit time fixation device 2 via a port 21P1. A frame type judgment part 25a in a control circuit 25 judges the frame type of the frame 101 transmitted from the client 3C1. A destination judgment part 25b acquires a destination address from the received frame 101 to specify a frame control circuit 24Cn+1 to perform a delay process. The frame 101 judged a synchronous frame is delayed at a specific time by a specific time delay part 26a in the specified frame control circuit 24Cn+1. |
| US08599881B2 |
Redundant communication timing for remote nodes
A system and method for redundant synchronizing to a reference clock for data communications. A determination is made whether a first data stream and a second data stream are available. The first data stream and the second data stream are received through opposing directions of a communications ring. A first data packet and second data packet are received at a remote node in response to the first data stream and second data stream being available. A timing characteristic of the first data packet and the second data packet correspond to a tick of a reference clock. The tick of the reference clock is extracted utilizing a timing characteristic of the first data packet or second data packet in response to the first data stream or the second data stream being available. A secondary clock is disciplined with the reference clock by adjusting the secondary clock based on a difference between times measured by the reference clock and the secondary clock to generate a clock signal. The clock signal is communicated to one or more interfaces for distribution. |
| US08599879B1 |
External application gateway
A telecommunications system uses an external application gateway (EAG) in communication with a network call control element and external server systems for controlling calls. The telecommunications system further includes a session initiation protocol (SIP) proxy, an intelligent application proxy, and an intelligent application call control. The EAG communicates with a network call control element of a packet network and a third party application server for controlling calls. The external application gateway controls the flow of information between the network call control element and the third party application server, performing such functions as modifying or stripping out network-proprietary information with delivery of the modified messages to the third party application server, keeping track of call state information and associating messages with specific calls, verifying that the third party application server is making only allowed requests, and limiting traffic volumes. |
| US08599878B2 |
Wireless communication apparatus, header compression method thereof, and header decompression method thereof
Wireless communication apparatuses, header compression methods thereof, and header decompression method thereof are provided. The header compression method enables the transceiver to establish a tunnel for a user equipment, enables the processing unit to receive a first packet, enables the processing unit to generate a second packet comprising an outer header set and the first packet, enables the processing unit to replace the outer header set of the second packet with a replaced header, and enables the transceiver to transmit the second packet by the tunnel according to an identity recorded in the replaced header. The header decompression method decompresses the header compressed by the header compression method. |
| US08599869B2 |
System and method for adaptive removal of delay jitter effect and low end-to-end delay
Systems, modules, methods and computer readable mediums for adaptive removal of delay jitter and low end-to-end delay are provided. The method may include the following operations at a delay buffer: calculating a holding time for a plurality of packets input into a network; buffering each of the plurality of packets for the duration of the holding time; and arranging the buffered packets in a sequence indicative of an order in which the buffered packets were input into the network. The holding time may be based on a difference between a current maximum delay of the plurality of packets in a current time window and a delay of a first packet of the plurality of packets in the current time window. The method may also include playing back the buffered packets at a selected playback time. Playing back the buffered packets may be performed at a reception mechanism. |
| US08599867B2 |
Communication environment switchover
Communication environment switchover may be provided. A received signal strength level may be determined corresponding to a signal sent from a first device and received at a second device. The received signal strength level may be measured at the second device. In addition, the first device may be re-provisioned. For example, the first device may be re-provisioned to communicate in a second environment if the first device is provisioned to communicate in a first environment and if the received signal strength level is greater than a first threshold value. Furthermore, the first device to be re-provisioned to communicate in the first environment if the first device is provisioned to communicate in the second environment and if the received signal strength level is less than a second threshold value. The second threshold value may be less than the first threshold value. |
| US08599866B2 |
Systems and methods for providing service migration between first and second cellular technologies
Systems and methods for a call flow for a mobile directory number (MDN) from a first phone to a second phone which has been intra-service ported. The system includes: a first switch of a first technology; a second switch of a second technology; and a local number portability database (LNP). The LNP stores local routing numbers (LRN) associated with the MDN. The WLNP system determines whether a call, from the first phone, is received by a public switched telephone network (PSTN) or the first switch. If the call is received by the PSTN with the LRN, the call is routed to the second switch based on the LRN. If the call is received by the first switch without the LRN, the first switch queries the LNP for the LRN and the call is routed intra-carrier to the second switch. |
| US08599864B2 |
Transit switches in a network of logical switches
A Layer 2 network switch is partitionable into a plurality of switch fabrics. The single-chassis switch is partitionable into a plurality of logical switches, each associated with one of the virtual fabrics. The logical switches behave as complete and self-contained switches. A logical switch fabric can span multiple single-chassis switch chassis. Logical switches are connected by inter-switch links that can be either dedicated single-chassis links or logical links. An extended inter-switch link can be used to transport traffic for one or more logical inter-switch links. Physical ports of the chassis are assigned to logical switches and are managed by the logical switch. Legacy switches that are not partitionable into logical switches can serve as transit switches between two logical switches. |
| US08599860B2 |
Multiple prefix connections with translated virtual local area network
A system comprising an access node (AN) coupled to a plurality of service providers (SPs) and a host and configured to forward a plurality of services between the SPs and the host using a plurality of first connections between the AN and the host and a plurality of second connections between the AN and the SPs, and a router gateway (RG) positioned between the host and the AN and coupled to the AN via an access line that comprises the first connections, wherein the AN translates a plurality of first identifiers for the first connections to a plurality of second identifiers for the second connections to route the services appropriately between the host and the SPs over the first connections and the corresponding second connections. |
| US08599854B2 |
Method of identifying destination in a virtual environment
Techniques are described for identifying destinations in a virtual network by defining virtual entities such as a port profile as the destination for network policies, such as redirect or span to be a logical set of ports (i.e., ports belonging to a port-profile or a port group) where the members of the set of ports may be added/removed dynamically without requiring any changes to the network policy. Further, a network administrator (or other user) may predefine the destinations for a network policy even before some or all of the destinations are active on a given virtualized system. In such cases, the network policies may go into effect when the required entities become available. |
| US08599852B2 |
Open service discovery and routing mechanism for configuring cross-domain telecommunication services
Apparatus and method are provided for distributing service domain reachability information across domain boundaries, thereby allowing domain management systems to determine routing for cross-domain services even when the domains have different technologies or administrators. A Service Domain Manager within each domain advertises to neighbouring domains which services it supports. A domain which receives such advertisements forwards the advertisement on to other domains. Each SDM builds a routing information table which specifies the service, the domain, the next hop, and optionally user defined metrics. The routing information table does not include end-point addresses, in order to keep the size of the table manageable. In this way, the NMS of each domain obtains an end-to-end view of service routes. |
| US08599849B2 |
MPLS traffic engineering for point-to-multipoint label switched paths
A method and apparatus for providing point-to-multipoint label switch paths (LSPs) in a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network is described. In one embodiment, a point-to-multipoint LSP is built in a MPLS network by using Resource Reservation Protocol Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE) to signal the point-to-multipoint LSP as separate point-to-point LSPs and to merge the separate point-to-point LSPs into the point-to-multipoint LSP. |
| US08599848B2 |
Communication over selected part of a network
A method for communicating regional broadcast datagrams over a network in which the regional broadcast datagrams are routed using destination identifications wherein a sender terminal sends regional broadcast datagrams to a sub-network grouping server that selects a plurality of sub-network servers according to criteria defined by the sender terminal and chosen as a function of information derived from the sender terminal without the individual destination identifications of the destination terminals being specified by the sender terminal, and wherein the sub-network grouping server provides regional broadcast datagrams to the selected sub-network servers, which subsequently provide the regional broadcast datagrams to a plurality of destination terminals. |
| US08599846B2 |
Communicating in voice and data communications systems
A data and voice communication system includes communication between a line card and an accelerator card. Voice, data, and control traffic is received from the line card and is transmitted to the accelerator card via a physical link having separate voice, data, and control logical channels. The separate voice, data, and control logical channels are represented by labeled data packets. |
| US08599839B2 |
System and method for transmitting serial data, and recording medium thereof
A system and a method for transmitting serial data, and a recording medium thereof are provided, in which a host is connected to a portable device through network, and the portable device is connected to a serial device. The host includes a host control module, a data convert module, and a first communication module. The host control module generates and receives serial data. The data convert module is connected between the first communication module and the host control module to convert formats of serial data and network packet data. The first communication module performs communication of network packet data between the data convert module and the portable device. The portable device is configured between the host and the serial device, and converts formats of the serial data and the network packet data by using a bridge module, so as to establish connection between the host and the serial device. |
| US08599838B2 |
System and method for effectuating a SIP call in a network environment including IMS
In one embodiment, a scheme is disclosed for effectuating a call in a network environment including a circuit-switched (CS) network and an IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) network. Call information associated with a call is sent from a user equipment (UE) device to an application server (AS) node disposed in the IMS network. The call information includes at least one of a call reference number and a called party's URI. When a message is received at the UE device from the AS node, which message includes the call reference number and an IP multimedia routing number (IMRN), the returned call reference number is verified that it remains valid based on a local timer mechanism associated with the UE device. The IMRN is then sent to the application server in order to facilitate a session with respect to the called party. |
| US08599827B2 |
Methods and apparatuses for maintaining synchronization between a radio equipment controller and an item of radio equipment
The present invention comprises methods and apparatuses for maintaining radio network timing synchronization across an asynchronous communication link between a Radio Equipment Controller (REC) and an item of Radio Equipment (RE). An REC-side adaptor sends first and second asynchronous packet flows over the asynchronous communication link, including a downlink packet flow comprising CPRI basic frames and overhead information encapsulated in asynchronous communication link packets, and a synchronization packet flow comprising CPRI clock data. An RE-side adaptor recovers the CPRI clock from the synchronization packet flow, and uses the recovered clock to re-synchronize the downlink data recovered from the downlink packet flow. For the uplink, the RE outputs uplink traffic in a synchronous, CPRI-compliant stream that is then encapsulated for asynchronous transport by the RE-side adaptor. The REC-side adaptor reconstitutes the asynchronously received uplink data as a synchronous, CPRI-compliant stream for input to the REC. |
| US08599825B2 |
System clock synchronization apparatus and method for mobile communication system
A system clock synchronization apparatus, for use in a mobile communication system, supplies a GPS clock received from a GPS reception module to a Radio Frequency clock generation module and selects a candidate system clock. The candidate system clock is selected from among plural candidate system clocks having different phases, which can be most stably synchronized with a reference synchronization time signal as the final system clock. The apparatus includes a Global Positioning System reception module; a Radio Frequency clock generation module that generates a system reference clock and outputs an RF clock generated by synchronizing the system reference clock to the GPS clock in phase; and a system clock generation module that generates multiple candidate system clocks having different phases using the RF clock and selects one of the candidate system clocks which generates in a range of an enable duration of the reference synchronization time signal. |
| US08599822B2 |
Slot-based transmission synchronization mechanism in wireless mesh networks
Methods, apparatuses and systems directed to synchronizing transmissions among parent and child routing nodes in a hierarchical wireless mesh network. In one implementation, the present invention employs a time slot scheduling algorithm to coordinate communications between wireless nodes of a hierarchical tree. In one implementation, the present invention provides a wireless mesh network where slot scheduling information propagates throughout the mesh, while individual nodes in the mesh compute their respective time slot schedules based on this information and the current state of the network. In one such implementation, a parent routing node computes its slot schedule and transmits certain parameters to its child nodes (as opposed to the schedule itself). The child node(s) then iterates the same scheduling function based on the parameters passed to it to determine the slots with which it should communicate to its parent node and its child nodes. |
| US08599817B2 |
Apparatus and method for transmitting/receiving data in wireless communication system
Provided is an apparatus and method for transmitting and receiving data. The method includes respectively estimating a carrier frequency offset (CFO) of data packets transmitted during a transmit opportunity (TXOP) period by a unit of a packet; calculating an average CFO of the estimated CFOs estimated during a window period for the data packets; and compensating an estimated CFO of a predetermined data packet to one of the estimated CFO of the predetermined data packet and the average CFO, and restoring the predetermined data packet. |
| US08599816B2 |
Method apparatus and network node for applying conditional CQI reporting
A method for limiting Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) reporting from a User Equipment to a network node is provided where a User Equipment can transmit CQI reports to a network node, such as e.g. a base station, when the User Equipment is operating in low transmission and/or low reception activity mode. A limited CQI reporting is obtained by triggering the reporting according to one or more predefined rules, which to at least some extent depend on CQI specific information provided to the User Equipment from the network node. A User Equipment and a network node adapted to operate in accordance with the suggested method are also provided. |
| US08599815B2 |
Method and apparatus for processing multiple common frequency signals through a single cable using circulators
A method and apparatus for processing multiple signals at a common frequency combined into a single radio frequency cable and subsequently recovering the signals without significant losses, distortion, or cross-talk. The method and apparatus includes processing multiple signals at a common frequency fed through a single radio frequency (RF) cable with or without one or more amplifiers and utilized for either forward or reverse link transmissions. The invention enables a single power amplifier to amplify multiple RF signals that occupy a common frequency channel and after amplification splitting these signals into amplified copies of the originals. The amplified signals may be sent to different antenna ports to illuminate different base station sectors if required. The signal splitting function is performed at the antenna masthead such that this method reduces the number of feeder cables running up the antenna tower by a factor of N, where N is the number of common frequency signals (e.g., the number of sectors) amplified by the single power amplifier. This invention enables a single power amplifier to simultaneously provide all the radio frequency signals necessary to feed a general N input phased array antenna system and form multiple antenna beams uniquely for several individual users simultaneously. |
| US08599814B1 |
Apparatus and method for integrating short-range wireless personal area networks for a wireless local area network infrastructure
A network system comprises a first logic block providing a link to a first network via an access point of a WLAN and a second logic block communicating with a node of a second network (such as a WPAN) and configured to provide a link between the node and the first network via the access point. The network system is configured to maintain continuous connections to both the access point and the node while receiving power. The second logic block can communicate with the node using a modified communication protocol that is only partially compliant with an 802.11x communications protocol. A wireless hub can integrate a WPAN with a WLAN including, in part, a wireless circuit compliant with the WLAN standard (such as an 802.11x standard), a processor, and a memory. The wireless circuit can connect to the WPAN without losing connectivity (such as association and synchronization) to the WLAN. |
| US08599800B2 |
Assigning an access terminal identifier to a mobile node
Assigning an access terminal identifier to a mobile node includes receiving a request at an access terminal home agent of a radio access network. The request requests an access terminal identifier for the mobile node. An access terminal identifier is assigned to the mobile node. The access terminal identifier identifies a communication session of the mobile node, and is assigned according to an Internet Protocol procedure for assigning an address. The access terminal identifier is provided to the mobile node. |
| US08599794B2 |
Enhanced base station and method for communicating through an enhanced distributed antenna system (eDAS)
Embodiments of an enhanced base station and method for communicating through an enhanced distributed antenna system (eDAS) are generally described herein. The eDAS includes geographically-separated antenna nodes and each of the antenna nodes has a plurality of antenna elements. The base station may perform physical-layer baseband processing for each of the antenna nodes at a centralized processing location, and may cause the antenna nodes to transmit reference signals in accordance with a multiplexing scheme to allow user equipment to perform channel estimation for the antenna elements of any one or more of the antenna nodes. The base station may also cause the antenna nodes to transmit signals having synchronization codes to allow the user equipment to synchronize with the antenna elements of any one or more of the antenna nodes. In some embodiments, the base station may communicate with the antenna nodes over a physical-layer interface. |
| US08599791B2 |
Method and apparatus to enable fallback to circuit switched domain from packet switched domain
A method and apparatus are used to perform a Circuit Switched (CS) fallback in wireless communications. The Non-Access Stratum (NAS) of the apparatus determines whether to perform a CS fallback based on an Internet Protocol (IP) Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) registration status, and sends a service request indicating a request to perform the CS fallback when the WTRU is attached to a CS domain. The apparatus also includes an Access Stratum (AS) that receives the CS service request from the NAS, sends an indication of the CS service request in a Radio Resource Control (RRC) message to an Evolved Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN), wherein the RRC message includes CS service information, and receives a handover command in response to the CS service request. |
| US08599789B2 |
Tone based cognitive radio for opportunistic communications
Within both the licensed and unlicensed wireless spectrum, benefits are obtained in allowing devices to form and communicate based upon opportunistic spectrum availability. At present such ad-hoc networks are established using either directly existing Media Access Control protocols or proposing modifications to them. According to the invention, there is provided a method for allowing abstract wireless links, i.e., arbitrary cooperation among a set of proximite wireless nodes, to be established between devices in a fast and efficient manner. Beneficially the approach allows multi-standard cognitive radios to operate in ad-hoc environments and non-ad-hoc environments. Accordingly a wireless module monitors a plurality of sensing tones and polling tones, each pair of sensing and polling tones associated with a transmission channel. A wireless module determines a vacant transmission channel by the absence of both a sensing tone and its associated polling tone. An abstract wireless link could be established by the wireless module transmitting the polling tone associated with the vacant transmission channel and detecting from second other wireless modules the sensing tone associated with the vacant transmission channel. |
| US08599787B2 |
Routing packet flows along an optimized path in an IMS network
Routing a packet flow in a communication session includes facilitating a communication session between a first endpoint and a second endpoint. A permanent anchor of a home network receives path offers sent by the first endpoint. An optimized path offer corresponds to an optimized path passing through a transient anchor of a visited network and bypassing the permanent anchor. A default path offer corresponds to a default path passing through the permanent anchor. The permanent anchor determines whether packet flows between the first endpoint and the second endpoint are to be routed along the optimized path. The default path offer is removed if the packet flows are to be routed along the optimized path. The optimized path offer is removed if not. The remaining path offer is forwarded to the second endpoint. |
| US08599782B2 |
Method for performing a HARQ operation in a radio communications system, and method and apparatus for allocation of subframes
There is provided a method for allocating subframes in a radio communications system that performs communication by using a radio frame including a plurality of subframes, the method including: selecting a backhaul downlink subframe in which a base station is to transmit a signal to a relay station; and allocating the backhaul downlink subframe to a substitution subframe which is not limitation subframes, when the selected backhaul downlink subframe corresponds to one of the limitation subframes, wherein the limitation subframes are subframes in which the relay station is to transmit essential information to a relay user equipment. Therefore, it is possible to overcome a limitation that is present in a link between the base station and the relay station, perform an HARQ operation, and improve the efficiency of radio resource allocation. |
| US08599781B2 |
Method of transmitting downlink channel rank information through physical uplink shared channel
Provided is a method of transmitting channel rank information (RI) when the number of bits for transmitting the channel RI to be transmitted through a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) is three or more. The method includes mapping channel RI to be transmitted to a channel RI bit string of 3 bits or more, Reed-Muller coding and rate-matching the channel RI bit string using a basis sequence having a 32-bit code length, and generating modulation symbols by applying the bit sequence that has been Reed-Muller coded and rate-matched to a modulation mapper. Accordingly, the method of transmitting downlink channel RI can be employed when five or more antennas are used for downlink transmission or several carrier bands are used by carrier aggregation as specified in Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) long term evolution (LTE)-advanced following 3GPP LTE release 10. |
| US08599775B2 |
Method for scheduling distributed virtual resource blocks
A method for efficiently scheduling virtual resource blocks to physical resource blocks is disclosed. In a wireless mobile communication system, for distributed mapping of consecutively allocated virtual resource blocks to physical resource blocks, when nulls are inserted into a block interleaver used for the mapping, they are uniformly distributed to ND divided groups of the block interleaver, which are equal in number to the number (ND) of physical resource blocks to which one virtual resource block is mapped. |
| US08599771B2 |
Control of radio links in a multiple carrier system
Methods, systems and apparatuses for controlling radio links in a multiple carrier wireless communication system are disclosed. A method can include aggregating control functions from at least two carriers onto one carrier to form an anchor carrier and one or more associated secondary carriers; establishing communication links for the anchor carrier and each secondary carrier; and controlling communication based on the anchor carrier. |
| US08599769B2 |
Uplink open loop power control system
Embodiments of the present invention provide an uplink open loop power control system in which interference over thermal information is transmitted to mobile stations. Other embodiments may be described and claimed. |
| US08599766B2 |
Transmission device, reception device and random access control method
A transmission device according to an embodiment of the present invention includes a random access channel generation portion that generates a random access channel; an assignment portion that performs one of a continuous frequency assignment and a discontinuous comb-shaped frequency assignment for each user; and a transmission portion that transmits the random access channel with variable multi-bandwidth in accordance with the assignment, in a frequency band assigned to a contention-based channel. |
| US08599763B2 |
Timing control in a multi-point high speed downlink packet access network
A method, apparatus, processing system, and computer program product enable association of mis-aligned subframes from a first and second downlink with one another, such that a HARQ acknowledgment message including jointly encoded feedback for the respective subframes can be correctly interpreted by the corresponding cells. Here, an RNC may provide an RRC message to the UE to associate particular subframes with one another. Further, the RNC may provide NBAP messages to the cells transmitting the downlink signals, so that the cells can associate the HARQ acknowledgment message with the appropriate subframe. Still further, additional signaling provides for changing the set of associated subframes when needed due to a drift in the timing offset between cells. |
| US08599760B2 |
Error propagation protection in non-binary multiple ACK/NACKS
A scheme of error decoupling for carrier aggregation techniques to support a communication system is provided. The communication system operates with up to 2 codewords for up to 5 carriers, each codeword of each carrier having one acknowledgement/negative acknowledgement (ACK/NACK) or discontinuous transmission (DTX) to enable Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) to operate in each carrier. The scheme involves the steps of: performing separation of bits related to ACK, NACK, DTX for each carrier using up to 2 codewords; determining a maximum number of bits related to ACK, NACK, DTX when decoupling is not performed after a maximum number of carriers are used; and grouping the carriers such that separation between ACK, NACK, DTX of each carrier is optimized as long as the maximum number of bits is not exceeded. |
| US08599758B1 |
Indoor localization of mobile devices
Aspects of this disclosure provide systems and methods for generating models of a wireless network environment in an indoor space which may be used to predict an indoor location. The disclosure relates to collecting wireless network access point identifier information and power level observed at various locations are collected to generate various signal maps. The signal maps may be used to generate models of the indoor space. In one example, a voting model may use a probability distribution of a plurality of signal maps in order to identify a location with a highest probability of overlap with current signals received at a client device. Once a location has been identified, it may be used to assist with any number of navigational functions, such as providing turn by turn directions to another indoor location, for example, a conference room or exit, or simply providing information about the current location. |
| US08599754B2 |
Method, device, and system for configuring multicast broadcast single frequency network resources
In the field of mobile communication, a method, device, and system for configuring multicast broadcast single frequency network (MBSFN) resources are provided, so as to solve the problem that configuration information of each radio network controller (RNC) in an MBSFN cannot be dynamically synchronized. With the coordination of a master RNC, a multimedia broadcast multicast service (MBMS) configuration information message is transferred through IUR interface connection, and MBMS configuration information of the master RNC and each slave RNC is synchronized. In this way, the problem that configuration information of each RNC in an MBSFN cannot be dynamically synchronized is solved, thereby satisfying the demands of soft combing and air interface combining. |
| US08599750B2 |
Base station device, mobile station device, communication system, communication method, and communication program
A synchronization channel control unit halts generation of a synchronization channel signal. A signal control unit halts generation of signals other than the synchronization channel signal after the synchronization channel control unit halts generation of the synchronization channel signal. |
| US08599749B2 |
Apparatus and method of searching multi-carrier active set pilots
Apparatus and methods are described herein for detecting pilot signals. An access terminal determines whether each pilot signal in its active set can be tracked. If not, the access terminal adjusts the search window center associated with any untracked pilot to a position that allows tracking. In some aspects, a known search window center of a tracked member of a same pilot group may be used. |
| US08599744B2 |
Transmit power control maximizing coverage at a minimum interference
Techniques are provided to generate a transmit power plan comprising transmit powers to be used by wireless access point devices in a wireless network. A wireless network controller receives, from each of a plurality of wireless access point devices configured to provide wireless service in corresponding coverage areas to client devices, data indicating receive signal strength information with respect to signals received from others of the plurality of wireless access point devices. Overlap of coverage areas of wireless access point devices is computed from the received signal strength information. A plurality of candidate transmit power plans are generated each from a deterministic or random sequence of selections of wireless access point devices. One of the plurality of candidate transmit power plans is selected to achieve a desired amount of coverage area overlap while maximizing overall coverage by the plurality of wireless access point devices. |
| US08599734B1 |
TCP proxy acknowledgements
A system and method enable the transmission of messages between a source device and a wireless station. A first message is received at an access point from the source device. The access point transmits the first message to the wireless station and stores a copy of the first message in a memory. The access point receives an acknowledgement message from the wireless station and transmits a proxy acknowledgement message to the source device. The access point transmits a control message to the source device to limit the number or size of additional messages sent from the source device based on a number or size of messages currently stored in the memory and a maximum number or size of messages that can be stored in the memory. |
| US08599733B2 |
Method and apparatus for providing cell configuration information to a network element
A network controller for supporting a multi-cell service in a cellular communication network comprises interface connection logic operably coupled to at least one network element supporting communication within a communication cell of the cellular communication network. The network controller further comprises signal processing logic for generating a cell configuration message comprising cell configuration information, and transmitting logic for transmitting the cell configuration message to the at least one network element using a multicast protocol. |
| US08599732B2 |
Method for entering an idle mode
A method for entering an idle mode, which is used in a Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access system, comprising: during the procedure of a terminal enter to idle mode from active mode, an paging agent of the terminal sending mobility restriction parameters of the terminal to a mobility restriction parameter storage network element; the mobility restriction parameter storage network element saving the mobility restriction parameters; the mobility restriction parameter storage network element being an anchor paging controller, or an anchor authenticator, or a function entity including a function of the anchor paging controller and a function of the anchor authenticator. to save the mobility restriction parameters of a terminal when the terminal enters an idle mode may be achieved by using the method of the present invention, so that a mobility restriction judgment is performed to the terminal in the subsequent process procedure, and the problem of erroneously allowing the terminal to quit from the idle mode and enter an active mode or to update its location when the terminal is in the non-authorized regions can be avoided. |
| US08599731B2 |
Method of exchanging messages for transmission power control between devices in a wireless network, and devices for the same
A method of exchanging messages for link recommendation in a receiving device of a wireless network comprises receiving a first data packet from a transmitting device; and transmitting link recommendation information to the transmitting device, the link recommendation information including transmit power control (TPC) information for controlling transmission power to be used for a second data packet in the transmitting device. |
| US08599727B2 |
Method for transmitting control information in wireless communication system and apparatus therefor
A method for transmitting information data by using a Reed-Muller coding scheme in a wireless communication system is disclosed. The method includes the steps of configuring a number of resource elements for transmitting the information data; dividing the information data to first information data and second information data if a bit size O of the information data is equal to or larger than a predetermined number; applying RM coding on each of the first information data and the second information data; concatenating the coded first information data and the coded second information data, and transmitting the concatenated data by using the predetermined number of resource elements, wherein a minimum value Q′min for the number of resource elements is defined by a sum of a minimum value Q′min—1 for the number of resource elements corresponding to the first information data and a minimum value Q′min—2 for the number of resource elements corresponding to the second information data. |
| US08599722B2 |
Net-based recording of telephone conversations
A method for the ability to regulate and control a recording of a telecommunications connection, wherein the signals generated in the telecommunications connection are tapped and stored in a system. A storage occurs according to the specifications of the respective telecommunications subscriber and/or the respective network operators involved, and the signals of the telecommunications connection to be recorded can be stored as encrypted data files directly in the network of the telecommunications network used, where the data files can be decrypted, and the contents reproduced, by means of appropriate release by the subscribers of the telecommunications connection and/or by means of appropriate authorization of third parties. |
| US08599716B2 |
Method and system to configure quality of service in a network
A system and method to automatically configure packet classification at a customer edge network device connecting a customer network to a service provider network. The method may comprise accessing the IP header of a packet received from the customer network to identify a customer service level classification of the packet. A memory may be accessed to retrieve service provider packet classification data identifying classes of service provided to the customer network. The packet classification of the service provider with the associated customer classification is associated and mapped, whereafter the Ethernet header of the packet may be populated with the mapped service provider packet classification. |
| US08599715B2 |
Apparatus and method for transmitting channel state information in a mobile communication system
A apparatus and method for transmitting channel state information is disclosed. If an LTE-A system transmits a reference signal per subframe to support eight transmitting antennas, a problem occurs in that overhead is great. In order to solve this problem, a reference signal for channel measurement is transmitted per subband at different periods, or a user equipment scheduled for channel measurement uses a demodulation reference signal. The user equipment can notify a base station of channel measurement result using the demodulation reference signal in accordance with implicit or explicit signaling from the base station. |
| US08599714B2 |
Method and system for implementing local switching
A method and a system for implementing local switching are disclosed. The method includes: after receiving the uplink data sent by a sending MS, determining, according to information carried in the uplink data, information about location of a receiving Mobile Station (MS) that is to receive uplink data; and implementing, according to local switching rules that specify a local switching control mode, local switching for data transmitted between the sending MS and the receiving MS if determining, according to the information about location of the receiving MS and information about location of the sending MS, that the data transmitted between the sending MS and the receiving MS meets local switching conditions. In this way, network transmission resources are saved in the process of transmitting data, transmission delay is shortened, and data transmission efficiency is improved. |
| US08599711B2 |
Reference signal port discovery involving transmission points
A method includes receiving information indicating one or more sets of reference signal patterns from a first transmission point, wherein at least one of the indicated one or more sets of reference signal patterns corresponds to one of one or more other transmission points; measuring the channel quality for the indicated sets of reference signal patterns; and reporting indications of the measured channel quality for the indicated one or more sets of reference signal patterns to the first transmission point. Another method includes transmitting information indicating one or more sets of reference signal patterns from a first transmission point to a user equipment, wherein at least one of the indicated one or more sets of reference signal patterns corresponds to one of one or more other transmission points; and receiving from the user equipment indications of measured channel quality for the indicated one or more sets of reference signal patterns. |
| US08599709B2 |
Methods and apparatus for wireless coexistence based on transceiver chain emphasis
Methods and apparatus for reduction of interference between a plurality of wireless interfaces. In one exemplary embodiment, a device having a first (e.g., Wi-Fi) interface and a second (e.g., Bluetooth) interface monitors interference between its interfaces. A reduction in transmit power of the Wi-Fi module causes a disproportionately larger reduction in undesirable interference experienced at the Bluetooth antennas. For example, when the Bluetooth interface detects interference levels above acceptable thresholds, the Wi-Fi interface adjusts operation of one or more of its transmit chains based on various conditions such as duty cycle, Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI), etc. Various embodiments of the present invention provide simultaneous operation of WLAN and PAN interfaces, without requiring time division coexistence, by reducing power on a subset of interfering antennas. |
| US08599708B2 |
Channel feedback based on reference signal
Techniques for supporting channel measurement and reporting in a wireless communication system are described. In one design, a cell transmits a cell-specific reference signal (CRS) used for channel estimation and coherent demodulation and a channel spatial information reference signal (CSI-RS) used for channel measurement and channel feedback reporting. The cell may transmit the CSI-RS less frequently than the CRS, or from more antenna ports than the CRS, or on fewer resource elements than the CRS, or a combination thereof. In one design, a user equipment (UE) determines at least one bandwidth part configured for the UE, with each bandwidth part covering at least one subband. The UE receives the CRS and CSI-RS from the cell, determines channel feedback information for the at least one bandwidth part based on the CSI-RS, sends the channel feedback information to the cell, and receives data transmitted by the cell based on the channel feedback information. |
| US08599707B2 |
Power based content modification, transmission, and caching
Methods and apparatus for operating a mobile device based upon a power capability of the mobile device are disclosed. In one embodiment, the mobile device includes a network selection component configured to select a particular transceiver for communication based upon the power capability of the mobile device and a quality of service associated with available networks. In addition, a cache management component is configured to increase, based upon an indication of the power capability of the mobile device, a size of the cache that is available for requested content so as to increase the likelihood that subsequent requests for the content will be loaded from the mobile device. Moreover, some variations of the mobile device are capable of providing an indication of a power capability of the mobile device to a remote server so the remote server may modify the requested content based upon the power capability. |
| US08599706B2 |
Random access signaling transmission for system access in wireless communication
Techniques for transmitting random access signaling for system access are described. In an aspect, random access signaling may be sent based on at least one transmission parameter having different values for different user equipment (UE) classes. At least one parameter value may be determined based on a particular UE class, and the random access signaling may be sent based on the determined parameter value(s). The random access signaling may be a random access preamble, and the at least one transmission parameter may include a target SNR, a backoff time, and/or a power ramp. The random access preamble may then be sent based on a target SNR value, a power ramp value, and/or a backoff time value for the particular UE class. In another aspect, a message for system access may be sent based on a power control correction received in a random access response for the random access preamble. |
| US08599703B2 |
System and method to determine resource status of end-to-end path
Determining availability of an end-to-end physical path associated with reserved resources of a tunnel may include determining, for one or more nodes, a resource status for one or more resources integral to each node. Resource status for the integral resources of each node may be recorded in a message. Each node may communicate its associated message to one or more other nodes. At least one particular node of the one or more nodes may receive the messages communicated from the one or more nodes. The at least one particular node may store resource statuses for each of the one or more nodes. Based on an analysis of resource statuses, the at least one particular node may determine an availability of an end-to-end path of reserved resources of a tunnel including one or more of the nodes based on an analysis of resource statuses. |
| US08599694B2 |
Cell copy count
The present invention is directed to a network device, method and apparatus for processing data. The present invention includes at least one ingress module for performing switching functions on incoming data. The invention further includes a memory management unit (MMU) for storing the incoming data, and at least one egress module for transmitting the incoming data to at least one egress port. Further, in the present invention, the memory management unit further comprises a cell copy count pool (CCP) memory, wherein the CCP determines when a memory cell can be made available. |
| US08599685B2 |
Snooping of on-path IP reservation protocols for layer 2 nodes
Methods and apparatus for enabling a layer 2 node associated with an open systems interconnection (OSI) reference model to perform resource reservation protocol (RSVP) processing are disclosed. According to one aspect of the present invention a layer 2 device associated with an OSI reference model includes a first interface, a processing arrangement, and a second interface. The first interface intercepts a message associated with a on-path signaling protocol for at least one selected from a group including resource reservation and admission control at a layer above layer 2. The processing arrangement processes the message, and the second interface sends the message. |
| US08599682B2 |
Call management
A system may include a destination device that receives information about a caller via a first outgoing leg and exchanges content with the caller via the first outgoing leg. The system may further include a network device that receives an incoming call from the caller, establishes the first outgoing leg, connects the incoming call to the first outgoing leg so the content can be exchanged, monitors the first outgoing leg, selectively establishes a second outgoing leg in response to the monitoring, and connects the incoming call to the second outgoing leg. |
| US08599681B2 |
Techniques for determining local repair paths using CSPF
Techniques for computing a path for a local repair connection to be used to protect a connection traversing an original path from an ingress node to an egress node. The computed path originates at a node (start node) in the original path and terminates at another node (end node) in the original path that is downstream from the start node. A Constraint Shortest Path First (CSPF) algorithm may be used to compute the path. The computed path is such that it satisfies one or more constraints and does not traverse a path from a first node in the original path to a second node in the original path, wherein the first and second nodes are upstream from the start node in the original path and the second node is downstream from the first node in the original path. A local repair connection may then be signaled using the computed path. |
| US08599679B1 |
Fast link down
An apparatus including a monitoring module, a first timer, and a first circuit. The monitoring module is configured to (i) monitor a link when the link is up and (ii) detect when the link fails. The first timer is configured to expire in a predetermined time after the link fails. The first circuit is configured to generate an indication that the link is down. The first circuit is configured to generate the indication (i) in response to the monitoring module detecting that the link has failed and (ii) before the first timer expires. |
| US08599678B2 |
Media delivery in data forwarding storage network
Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, for media delivery in data forwarding storage network. A method includes, in a network of interconnected computer system nodes, directing unique data items to a computer memory, and continuously forwarding each of the unique data items, independent of each other, from one computer memory to another computer memory in the network of interconnected computer system nodes without storing on any physical storage device in the network. |
| US08599677B2 |
Method and system for multi-user detection using two-stage processing
Systems and methods for multi-user detection in a multiple access system are provided. In one aspect, an apparatus is provided. The apparatus comprises a processing unit configured to process received chips into received symbols for a plurality of users and a computation unit configured to compute a multi-user matrix using a Hadamard matrix, wherein the multi-user matrix relates user symbols for the plurality of users to the received symbols. The apparatus further comprises a detection unit configured to detect the user symbols for the plurality of users using the received symbols and the computed multi-user matrix. |
| US08599675B2 |
Information storage medium, recording method, and recording apparatus
According to one embodiment, an information storage medium in which layer 0 and layer 1 are arranged from a read surface, a system lead-in area, data lead-in area, data area, and middle area are arranged from an inner circumference of the layer 0, and a system lead-out area, data lead-out area, data area, and middle area are arranged from an inner circumference of the layer 1. A guard track zone is arranged on a side of the data area in the data lead-out area, and a reference code zone, R physical format information zone, recording management zone, and drive test zone are arranged in the data lead-in area of the layer 0 and padding of the guard track zone of the data lead-out area is performed after padding of the drive test zone of data lead-in area and recording of the recording management zone. |
| US08599673B2 |
High density data storage medium, method and device
A composition of matter for the recording medium of nanometer scale thermo-mechanical information storage devices and a nanometer scale thermo-mechanical information storage device. The composition includes: one or more polyaryletherketone polymers, each of the one or more polyaryletherketone polymers having two terminal ends, each terminal end having two or more phenylethynyl moieties. The one or more polyaryletherketone polymers are thermally cured and the resulting cross-linked polyaryletherketone resin used as the recording layers in atomic force data storage devices. |
| US08599671B2 |
Objective lens, optical pickup apparatus, and optical information recording reproducing apparatus
An objective lens a first optical path difference providing structure in which a first basic structure and a second basic structure are overlapped with each other. The first basic structure is a blaze-type structure which emits a Xth-order diffracted light flux, when the first light flux passes through the first basic structure, where the value of X is an odd integer. At least a part of the first basic structure arranged around an optical axis includes a step facing an opposite direction to the optical axis. The second basic structure is a blaze-type structure which emits a Lth-order diffracted light flux, when the first light flux passes through the second basic structure, where the value of L is an even integer. At least a part of the second basic structure arranged around the optical axis includes a step facing the optical axis. |
| US08599667B2 |
Multi-layer recordable optical disk, recording device, and recording method
Disclosed herein is a multi-layer optical recording medium having n recording layers (n≧3) in which recording and reproduction of information are carried out by laser light, the multi-layer optical recording medium including: a file system area configured to be disposed near a last logical address in an area used as a logical address space in which stream data is recorded, wherein in the other recording layers different from the recording layer in which the file system area near the last logical address is disposed, the logical address space is not allocated to an area overlapping with the file system area in a layer stacking direction. |
| US08599666B2 |
Method and apparatus for determining a location of a feature on a storage medium
A change in a property of a signal is detected, the signal having been sensed from a storage medium by a disk drive. A count is determined, the count corresponding to a first location on the storage medium at which the change in the property of the signal sensed from the storage medium is detected. The count is used to predict a second location on the storage medium corresponding to the change in the property of the signal sensed from the storage medium. Relative to the first location on the storage medium, the second location on the storage medium is closer to an actual location of a feature on the storage medium that causes the change in the property of the signal sensed from the storage medium. |
| US08599665B2 |
Information storage medium, record reproduction apparatus, and record reproduction method
Provided is an information storage medium that has a plurality of recording layers, a recording/reproducing method, and a recording/reproducing apparatus. In the information storage medium, each of the plurality of recording layers includes an inner circumference zone and a data zone, and at least one of the recording layers includes, in the inner circumference zone, a temporary disc management area (TDMA) for recording information about a defect detected in the data zone, wherein a size of a TDMA allocated on an upper layer is greater than a size of a TDMA allocated on a lower layer. |
| US08599664B2 |
Method and apparatus for determining unbalanced disc and optical information storage medium system using the same
An unbalanced disc determining apparatus is provided. The unbalanced disc determining apparatus includes a noise reduction unit configured to reduce noise components of a center error signal obtained from a signal configured to detect light reflected by a disc revolved by a spindle motor, and a determination unit configured to determine whether the revolving disc is unbalanced by determining whether the center error signal of which noise is reduced exceeds a reference value. |
| US08599659B2 |
Objective lens holder, objective lens driving device and optical pickup apparatus
Provided are an objective lens holder and the like which prevent a wire formed into tracking coils from being loosened. Tracking coils are respectively attached to bobbins provided to sidewalls of an OBL lens holder. In addition, a conducting wire hook portion is formed by projecting a part of a sidewall portion near one of the bobbins, and a conducting wire is hooked round this conducting wire hook portion. Similarly, another conducting wire hook portion is provided to a sidewall portion near another one of the bobbins, and the conducting wire formed into the corresponding tracking coil is hooked round this conducting wire hook portion. This prevents the conducting wire from being loosened. |
| US08599657B1 |
Method and system for providing energy assisted magnetic recording disk drive using a distributed feedback laser
A method and system for providing an energy assisted magnetic recording (EAMR) disk drive are described. The EAMR disk drive includes a media, a slider having a trailing face and an air-bearing surface (ABS), at least one distributed feedback (DFB) layer and EAMR transducer(s) on the slider. The DFB laser(s) each includes a plurality of quantum wells, a laser coupling grating, at least one reflector, and a cavity in the at least one DFB laser. The DFB laser(s) for providing energy to the media. The EAMR transducer(s) includes at least one waveguide, a write pole, at least one coil for energizing the write pole, at least one grating, and may include a near-field transducer. The grating(s) include a coupling grating for coupling the energy from the at least one DFB laser to the waveguide(s). The waveguide(s) direct the energy from the at least one grating toward the ABS. |
| US08599656B2 |
Planar plasmon generator with a scalable feature for TAMR
A TAMR (Thermal Assisted Magnetic Recording) write head uses the energy of optical-laser excited surface plasmons in a scalable planar plasmon generator to locally heat a magnetic recording medium and reduce its coercivity and magnetic anisotropy. The planar plasmon generator is formed as a multi-layered structure in which one planar layer supports a propagating surface plasmon mode that is excited by evanescent coupling to an optical mode in an adjacent waveguide. A peg, which can be a free-standing element or an integral projection from one of the layers, is positioned between the ABS end of the generator and the surface of the recording medium, confines and concentrates the near field of the plasmon mode immediately around and beneath it. |
| US08599655B2 |
Near field light generator, optical recording head and optical recording apparatus
Provided is a near field light generator to be utilized, effectively generating near field light with respect to a recording medium. Thus, disclosed is a near field light generator possessing a waveguide comprising a core and a cladding brought into contact with the core, to guide light having an electric field component perpendicular to an interface between the core and the cladding, and a metallic structure body provided on an outputting end face onto which light of the waveguide is output, to generate near field light by receiving light guided by the waveguide, wherein the metallic structure body is placed straddling the core and the cladding on the outputting end face in such a way that the metallic structure body receives the electric field component protruding from the interface to the cladding. |
| US08599647B2 |
Method for listening to ultrasonic animal sounds
A method for listening to ultrasonic animal sound signals comprises: obtaining a plurality of input samples at an input sample rate, the plurality of input samples including at least one sequence of samples corresponding to an instance of an intermittently occurring animal sound signal; receiving a frame including at least two of the plurality of input samples; selecting a fraction of the samples as output samples, the fraction of the samples including a sample containing the at least one sequence of samples corresponding to an instance of an intermittently occurring animal sound signal; and transmitting the output samples at an output sample rate slower than the input sample rate. |
| US08599646B2 |
Method of ultrasound telemetry for drones, with discrimination of spurious echoes emanating from another drone
The method comprises: a) the emission of an ultrasound burst repeated at a predetermined recurrence frequency; and b) after each emission and for the duration of a time frame (n−1, n, n+1, . . . ) separating two consecutive emissions, the reception of a plurality of successive signal spikes appearing in the course of the same frame. These spikes include spurious spikes (E′n−1, E′n, E′n+1, . . . ) originating from the emitter of another drone, and a useful spike (En−1, En, En+1, . . . ) corresponding to the distance to be estimated. To discriminate these spikes, the following steps are executed: c) for two consecutive frames, comparison of the instants of arrival of the p spikes of the current frame with the instants of arrival of the q spikes of the previous frame and determination, for each of the p.q pairs of spikes, of a corresponding relative time gap; d) application to the p.q gaps determined in step c) of a selection criterion making it possible to retain just a single spike of the current frame; and e) estimation of the distance as a function of the instant of arrival of the spike thus retained. |
| US08599636B2 |
Boosting memory module performance
Power supplied to a memory module is provided. A first voltage is supplied to a first power distribution pathway, the first voltage being from a voltage supplied to a printed circuit board on which the memory module resides. A second voltage is generated, the second voltage being generated by a voltage regulator. The second voltage is supplied to a second power distribution pathway. |
| US08599635B2 |
Fuse circuit and semiconductor memory device including the same
A fuse circuit includes a program unit, a sensing unit and a control unit. The program unit is programmed in response to a program signal, and outputs a program output signal in response to a sensing enable signal. The sensing unit includes a variable resistor unit that has a resistance that varies based on a control signal, and generates a sensing output signal based on the resistance of the variable resistor unit and the program output signal. The control unit generates the control signal having a value changed depending on operation modes, and performs a verification operation with respect to the program unit based on the sensing output signal to generate a verification result. The program unit may be re-programmed based on the verification result. |
| US08599634B1 |
Circuit and method for refreshing a memory module
A circuit is configured to be operatively coupled to a plurality of memory devices arranged into one or more logical ranks. Each logical rank may correspond to a set of at least two physical ranks. The circuit is configured to be operatively coupled to a memory controller of a computer system to receive a logical rank refresh command. In response, the circuit can initiate a first refresh operation for one or more first physical ranks and then initiate a second refresh operation for one or more second physical ranks. The circuit can further include a memory location storing a refresh time (tRFC) value accessible by the memory controller and based at least in part on a calculated maximum amount of time for refreshing the logical rank. |
| US08599633B2 |
Method for reducing standby current of semiconductor memory device
A semiconductor memory device includes memory cells, a sensing amplifier, a precharge circuit, and a control signal generator. The precharge circuit has a NMOS transistor and two PMOS transistors, and is used to precharge bit lines of a bit line pair, wherein the NMOS transistor is controlled by a first control signal, and the two PMOS transistors are controlled by a second control signal. The control signal generator is used to generate the first and second control signals, wherein the first control signal is at a logic high level only when the second control signal is at a first logic low level, the first control signal is at a logic low level when the second control signal is at a second logic low or a first logic high level, and the second logic low level is higher than the first logic low level. |
| US08599631B2 |
On-die termination of address and command signals
A system includes a plurality of memory devices arranged in a fly-by topology, each of the memory devices having on-die termination (ODT) circuitry for connection to an address and control (RQ) bus. The ODT circuitry has at least one input for controlling termination of one or more signal lines of the RQ bus. Application of a first logic level to the at least one input enables termination of the one or more signal lines. Application of a second logic level to the at least one input disables termination of the one or more signal lines. |
| US08599628B2 |
Precharge signal generation circuit, semiconductor device including the same, and method for generating precharge signal
A precharge signal generation circuit includes a control signal generation unit configured to activate a control signal in response to a read command or write command and a precharge signal generation unit configured to use a clock signal in a period when the control signal is activated to activate a precharge signal at a time point when a delay time passes from an input of the read command or the write command to precharge signal generation circuit. |
| US08599625B2 |
Switch pin multiplexing
An integrated circuit (IC) within an IC package, where the IC includes a memory control module and a timing module. The memory control module is configured to control read/write operations of a memory IC via N pins of the IC package, where N is an integer greater than 1. The memory IC is external to the IC package. The timing module is configured to control on/off timing of (N*M) light emitting diodes (LEDs) arranged in N columns and M rows connected to the N pins and M pins of the IC, respectively, where M is an integer greater than 1. The read/write operations utilize the N pins during a first period. The N*M LEDs receive data from the M pins and refresh signals from the N pins during a second period that is different than the first period. |
| US08599622B2 |
Charge trap flash memory device and an erasing method thereof
An erase method of a charge trap flash memory device, the method including receiving a temperature detection result, and performing an erase operation based on the temperature detection result, wherein the erase operation includes an erase execution interval, an erase verify interval and a delay time between the erase execution interval and the erase verify interval, wherein the erase operation changes a level of a word line voltage applied to word lines during the erase execution interval, a length of the delay time, or a level of the word line voltage applied to the word lines during the delay time. |
| US08599620B2 |
Nonvolatile semiconductor memory device
A nonvolatile semiconductor memory device according to an embodiment includes a control unit configured to perform a control of repeating a program operation, and a step-up operation, the program operation being an operation of applying a program pulse voltage to a selected memory cell and applying an intermediate voltage less than the program pulse voltage to first and second non-selected memory cells adjacent to the selected memory cell, and the step-up operation being an operation of increasing the program pulse voltage by a first step-up value. For a first period, the control unit maintains the intermediate voltage to be a constant value. For a second period, the control unit controls the step-up operation such that the intermediate voltage is increased by a second step-up value, and determines the first step-up value on the basis of the second step-up value. |
| US08599614B2 |
Programming method for NAND flash memory device to reduce electrons in channels
In a programming method for a NAND flash memory device, a self-boosting scheme is used to eliminate excess electrons in the channel of an inhibit cell string that would otherwise cause programming disturb. The elimination is enabled by applying a negative voltage to word lines connected to the inhibit cell string before boosting the channel, and this leads to bringing high program immunity. A row decoder circuitry to achieve the programming operation and a file system architecture based on the programming scheme to improve the efficiency of file management are also described. |
| US08599612B2 |
Method of operating integrated circuit embedded with non-volatile programmable memory having variable coupling related application data
A programmable non-volatile device is operated with a floating gate that functions as a FET gate that overlaps a portion of a source/drain region and allows for variable coupling through geometry and/or biasing conditions. This allows a programming voltage for the device to be imparted to the floating gate through variable capacitive coupling, thus changing the state of the device. Multi-state embodiments are also possible. The invention can be used in environments such as data encryption, reference trimming, manufacturing ID, security ID, and many other applications. |
| US08599609B2 |
Data management in flash memory using probability of charge disturbances
A Flash memory system and a method for data management using the system's sensitivity to charge-disturbing operations and the history of charge-disturbing operations executed by the system are described. In an embodiment of the invention, the sensitivity to charge-disturbing operations is embodied in a disturb-strength matrix in which selected operations have an associated numerical value that is an estimate of the relative strength of that operation to cause disturbances in charge that result in data errors. The disturb-strength matrix should also include the direction of the error which indicates either a gain or loss of charge. The disturb-strength matrix can be determined by the device conducting a self-test in which changes in the measured dispersion value are provoked by executing a selected operation until a detectable change occurs. In alternative embodiments the disturb-strength matrix is determined by testing selected units from a homogeneous population. |
| US08599608B2 |
GCIB-treated resistive device
The present disclosure includes GCIB-treated resistive devices, devices utilizing GCIB-treated resistive devices (e.g., as switches, memory cells), and methods for forming the GCIB-treated resistive devices. One method of forming a GCIB-treated resistive device includes forming a lower electrode, and forming an oxide material on the lower electrode. The oxide material is exposed to a gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) until a change in resistance of a first portion of the oxide material relative to the resistance of a second portion of the oxide material. An upper electrode is formed on the first portion. |
| US08599598B1 |
3T device based memory circuits and arrays
In one aspect, a memory circuit is provided. The memory circuit includes a first three-terminal (3T) resistive memory device and a second 3T resistive memory device coupled to the first 3T resistive memory device. In another aspect a memory array with memory circuits having 3T devices is provided. In yet another aspect, a method of programming a memory array is provided. |
| US08599596B2 |
Semiconductor device
In a semiconductor device of a stacked structure type having a control chip and a plurality of controlled chips, wherein the control chip allocates different I/O sets to the respective controlled chips and processes the I/O sets within the same access cycle, the controlled chip close to the control chip and positioned to a lower position in the stacked structure has I/O penetrating through substrate vias connected to penetrating through interconnections. The penetrating through interconnections are extended to an upper one of the controlled chips that not use the penetrating through interconnections and, as a result, all of the penetrating through interconnections have the same lengths as each other. |
| US08599593B2 |
Memory system and method of operating the same
A memory system includes a memory device configured to read control data for operating conditions from a content addressed memory (CAM) block by performing a CAM read operation and to perform a data input/output operation based on the control data and a memory controller configured to store the control data of the memory device and to determine whether the memory device is to perform the CAM read operation by comparing the stored control data with the control data of the memory device when an operating mode of the memory device or the memory controller changes. |
| US08599588B2 |
Parallel connected inverters
A distributed power system wherein a plurality of power converters are connected in parallel and share the power conversion load according to a prescribed function, but each power converter autonomously determines its share of power conversion. Each power converter operates according to its own power conversion formula/function, such that overall the parallel-connected converters share the power conversion load in a predetermined manner. |
| US08599586B2 |
Power inverter system and method of starting same at high DC voltage
A power inverter system includes a plurality of power semiconductor switching devices. Each switching device includes a corresponding gate turn off resistance configured to increase during starting up periods of the inverter system such that the open circuit voltage of a corresponding power source providing power to the power inverter system does not exceed the switching device blocking voltage ratings during the corresponding switching turn-off periods. The starting up period is the time required to bring the corresponding power source voltage from its open circuit voltage level to a predetermined voltage which constitutes a safe operating condition for the plurality of power semiconductor switching devices. |
| US08599579B2 |
Method of controlling a PFC stage operating in boundary conduction mode, a PFC stage, and an SMPS
Consistent with an example embodiment, there is a control method which reduces the steps: instead of a constant on-time for the switch, the duration of the on-time is increased each time an additional valley to be skipped. The predetermined increase may be either a fixed fractional increase or a further additional increment; it may be determined by a small regulation loop that multiplies the on-time from the main loop with a factor equal to the ratio between measured period time and the sum of primary and secondary stroke times. |
| US08599577B2 |
Systems and methods for reducing harmonic distortion in electrical converters
Systems and methods are provided for delivering energy using an energy conversion module. An exemplary method for delivering energy from an input interface to an output interface using an energy conversion module coupled between the input interface and the output interface comprises the steps of determining an input voltage reference for the input interface based on a desired output voltage and a measured voltage at the output interface, determining a duty cycle control value based on a ratio of the input voltage reference and the measured voltage, operating one or more switching elements of the energy conversion module to deliver energy from the input interface to the output interface with a duty cycle influenced by the duty cycle control value. |
| US08599571B2 |
Memory card
Memory card (1) includes at least semiconductor chip (3), circuit board (2) with semiconductor chip (3) mounted on main surface (21), having at least rigidity reducing portion (23) formed in main surface (21) or in a linear region of surface (22) opposite to the main surface, and cover portion (71) for covering semiconductor chip (3) on main surface (21) of circuit board (2), wherein circuit board (2) has a plurality of convex regions (201) which flex in a convex shape toward main surface (21) due to rigidity reducing portion (23). |
| US08599570B2 |
Electronic device capable of adjusting orientation of display content in response to rotation of a support
An electronic device includes a front frame, a back cover, a support stand rotatably connected to the back cover, a display panel and a circuit board. The display panel and the circuit board are fixed between the front frame and the back cover. The circuit board includes a first contact and a number of second contacts. The second contacts surround the first contact. The support includes a central shaft and a third contact. The central shaft is electrically connected to the first contact. The third contact rotates with the rotation of the central shaft to contact each of the second contacts. The circuit board includes a circuit and a processor. The electric circuit generates different signals when the first contact is connected different second contacts. The processor adjusts an orientation of display content on the display panel to rotate based on the signal. |
| US08599568B2 |
Lightweight audio system for automotive applications and method
A lightweight radio/CD player for vehicular application is virtually “fastenerless” and includes a case and frontal interface formed of polymer based material that is molded to provide details to accept audio devices such as playback mechanisms (if desired) and radio receivers, as well as the circuit boards required for electrical control and display. The case and frontal interface are of composite structure, including an insert molded electrically conductive wire mesh screen that has been pre-formed to contour with the molding operation. The wire mesh provides EMC, RFI, BCI and ESD shielding and grounding of the circuit boards via exposed wire mesh pads and adjacent ground clips. The PCB architecture is bifurcated into a first board carrying common circuit components in a surface mount configuration suitable for high volume production, and a second board carrying application specific circuit components in a wave soldered stick mount configuration. The major components and subassemblies are self-fixturing during the final assembly process, eliminating the need for dedicated tools, fixtures and assembly equipment. The major components and subassemblies self-interconnect by integral guide and connection features effecting “slide lock” and “snap lock” self-interconnection. The radio architecture includes improved push buttons employing 4-bar living hinge linkage and front loaded decorative trim buttons. |
| US08599567B2 |
Electronic module with improved printed circuit board to maximize width thereof
An electronic module (100) comprises a base portion (1), a panel portion (2) defining a pair of flange members (211, 212), a printed circuit board (3) and an actuator mechanism assembled to the base portion. The base portion defines a pair of lateral walls (111, 112), the pair of flange members are located inside of the corresponding lateral walls. The printed circuit board has a pair of positioning holes (32), and the base portion defines a plurality of standoffs (1112, 1113), and at least one of the standoffs (1113) on a same side has a situating post (1114) thereon, with the situating posts (1114) inserted into the relative positioning holes (32). |
| US08599563B2 |
Control panel having a pivotable connector
A control panel having a pivotable connector has a body, a rear cover and a connector. The connector is pivotally mounted inside the body and the rear cover, and has a plug being pivotable and freely aligned with an intended direction. Accordingly, users can adjust the orientation of the connector based on a position on which the control panel is to be mounted, placed or hung, so that the connector of the control panel can be smoothly connected with a connection port of the machine directly or through a connection cable. |
| US08599556B2 |
Power converter module with cooled busbar arrangement
A power converter module with a liquid-cooled heat sink, a busbar arrangement having at least two busbars, at least two power semiconductor modules, which are mechanically connected to the liquid-cooled heat sink for thermal conduction and are electrically connected to connections of the power converter module by the busbar arrangement has at least one coolant line forming a single structural unit with the busbar arrangement. The coolant line prevents additional power loss in the laminated busbar. |
| US08599555B2 |
Robot control device and robot system
A robot control device that controls operation of a robot having an actuator includes a casing, an actuator driver, a drive-control board, a main control board, a main power supply board, a vent passage, a cooling fan, and a holding member. |
| US08599552B2 |
Heat radiating structure in all-in-one computers
The present invention relates to a heat radiating structure in all-in-one computers, comprising a pedestal, mainframe module and back cover. The mainframe module is contained in a containing stand behind the pedestal, and a motherboard is included in the containing space in front of a mainframe module base. The motherboard's CPU sticks through a radiator to a heat radiating aluminum plate in the rear of the containing space, while the hard disk drive is close to the heat radiating aluminum plate, and the pedestal is covered by the back cover on the back. With the heat radiating aluminum plate to quickly conduct heat and its multiple heat radiating holes, heat dispersing holes behind the containing stand and hollowed grooves on the back cover to convect hot air. |
| US08599549B2 |
Mounting apparatus for backplane
A mounting apparatus for mounting a hard disk drive backplane to a side of a bracket in a chassis includes a first mounting member, a second mounting member, a pivot member, and a locking member. The bottom and opposite ends of the backplane are clipped to the bracket. The second mounting member is fixed to a top side of the backplane and is locked to a top plate of the bracket. The first mounting member is fixed to a bottom side of the backplane. The first mounting member includes an engaging portion. The locking portion is fixed to the chassis. A first end of the pivot member is pivotably mounted to the chassis. A second end of the pivot member is locked to the locking member. A pressing portion extends down from a middle of the pivot member to press the engaging portion on the chassis. |
| US08599544B2 |
Electronic device
According to one embodiment, an electronic device includes: a first member; a second member overlapped on the first member; a plurality of joints that are spaced apart from each other and that link the first member and the second member at an overlapping portion between the first member and the second member; and a curved rib that is erected on a surface of the second member and that has a curved shape over the surface of the second member in between the joints. |
| US08599542B1 |
Combined cover, keyboard and stand for tablet computer with reversable connection for keyboard and reading configuration
A reversible connection device to attach a cover to a tablet computer in two opposite configurations has a channel pivotally coupled to the cover to receive an edge of the tablet computer. The channel has a first magnet array to magnetically attach to a magnet array of the edge of the tablet computer in a first orientation of the tablet computer with respect to the cover and the channel. A tab is movably coupled in and carried by the channel and movable into the channel. The tab has a second reversed magnet array to magnetically attach to the magnet array of the edge of the tablet computer in a second reversed orientation of the tablet computer with respect to the cover and the channel. The second reversed magnet array has a reversed orientation with respect to the first magnet array of the channel. |
| US08599541B2 |
Electronic apparatus
An electronic apparatus includes a casing, a cap, and an access module. An accommodation space of the casing is used for accommodating a data storage apparatus, and the access module is disposed inside the accommodation space. The casing is formed with an opening at a position corresponding to an access unit, so that an external card is inserted in or pulled out through the opening. A terminal of the access module is pivoted on the casing. The cap is used for covering and thus sealing the accommodation space, so that the access module is arranged between the data storage apparatus and the cap. Thereby, the space is saved, and the access module and the data storage apparatus can be detached or assembled conveniently. |
| US08599538B2 |
Electronic apparatus and power-supply control apparatus and method
A method of controlling a power supply of an electronic apparatus connected to another electronic apparatus, the method including: electrically connecting a contact part configured to be connected to the other electronic apparatus and a detection unit configured to detect a signal representing a state of the power supply of the other electronic apparatus via the contact part when the power supply of the electronic apparatus is off; electrically disconnecting the contact part and the detection unit when the power supply of the electronic apparatus is on; and controlling the power supply of the electronic apparatus when the signal is detected by the detection unit. |
| US08599536B1 |
Stackable cube power distribution center
A power transformer and electrical current distribution device has a 480 V power inlet receptacle, at least one 120 V or 240 V power outlet receptacle, a transformer for transforming 480 V current to at least one of 120 V and 240 V current, and a first housing and a second housing each containing at least some of the 480 V inlet receptacle, the outlet receptacle and the transformer. A first part of an electrical connector is provided at the first housing, and a second part of an electrical connector at the second housing to mate with the first part of the electrical connector. The first housing part and the second housing part are electrically connected and disconnected at the electrical connector to permit transport of the power transformer and electrical current distribution device in at least two pieces. |
| US08599535B2 |
System and apparatus for managing and organizing electrical cords and cables
The invention provides a modular mapping system and apparatus for organizing and enclosing one or more electrical cables or cords that originate from and are connected to separate electronic devices and appliances. The system and apparatus can be made of a suitable size to house one or more electrical devices whereby the individual electrical cables or cords can be connected to or plugged into the electrical device. The individual electrical cables or cords never exit the apparatus and the electrical device is concealed from view. Another embodiment of the invention provides an apparatus for organizing and concealing for easy transport the various electrical cables and cords of the AC adapter cables and/or peripheral devices of a computer. The system and apparatus comprises a body that securely folds around the cables or cords in a closed configuration. The cords/cables can be restrained using wrapping system units and/or Velcro® wraps. |
| US08599533B2 |
Nanostructure electrode for pseudocapacitive energy storage
A nanoporous templating substrate, which is an anodically oxidized alumina (AAO) substrate, is employed to form a pseudocapacitor having high stored energy density. A pseudocapacitive material is deposited conformally along the sidewalls of the AAO substrate by atomic layer deposition, chemical vapor deposition), and/or electrochemical deposition employing a nucleation layer. The thickness of the pseudocapacitive material on the walls can be precisely controlled in the deposition process. The AAO is etched to form an array of nanotubes of the PC material that are cylindrical and structurally robust with cavities therein. Because the AAO substrate that acts as scaffolding is removed, only the active PC material is left behind, thereby maximizing the energy per mass. In addition, nanotubes may be de-anchored from a substrate so that free-standing nanotubes having randomized orientations may be deposited on a conductive substrate to form an electrode of a pseudocapacitor. |
| US08599531B2 |
Electrostatic end effector apparatus, systems and methods
Systems, apparatus and methods for transporting substrates between system components of an electronic device manufacturing system are provided. The systems and apparatus include an electrostatic end effector having a base, an electrode pair on the base, and spacer members for spacing the substrate from the electrode pairs to provide a gap between the electrode pair and the substrate. Methods of the invention as well as numerous other aspects are provided. |
| US08599525B2 |
ESD protection on high impedance MIC input
An apparatus comprises an integrated circuit (IC) including an external IC connection, a high impedance circuit, a biasing circuit communicatively coupled to the external IC connection via the high impedance circuit, and an electro-static discharge (ESD) protection circuit coupled to the biasing circuit to form a circuit shunt path leading from the IC external connection to the ESD protection circuit via the high impedance circuit. |
| US08599524B2 |
Surface mount spark gap
A spark gap device includes an optional insulating layer formed on a substrate, a metal layer formed on a surface of the insulating layer, a solder resist layer formed on a surface of the metal layer, and first and second contacts. The metal layer includes a central portion and a peripheral portion separated by an air gap that surrounds the central portion of the metal layer and exposes the insulating layer. The solder resist layer includes a central portion disposed on the central portion of the metal layer having a first opening exposing a central region of the central portion of the metal layer, and a peripheral portion disposed on the peripheral portion of the metal layer having a second opening exposing a peripheral region of the peripheral portion of the metal layer. The first contact is formed in the first opening and the second contact is formed in the second opening. |
| US08599520B1 |
Method and system for providing a read transducer having an adaptive read sensor track width
A method and system provide a magnetic read transducer having an air-bearing surface (ABS). The magnetic transducer includes a first shield, a second shield, and a read sensor between the first shield and the second shield. The read sensor extends along a stripe height direction perpendicular to the ABS. A first portion of the read sensor at the ABS has a first width in a track width direction parallel to the ABS. A second portion of the read sensor is recessed from the ABS along the stripe height direction and has a second width in the track width direction. The second width is greater than the first width. |
| US08599519B2 |
Head rotator assembly for tape drive
A head rotator assembly (22) for positioning a head (20) of a tape drive (10) relative to a storage tape includes a head supporter (230) and a supporter mover assembly (232). The head supporter (230) is coupled to and supports the head (20). The supporter mover assembly (232) rotates a portion of the head supporter (230) about an axis (241) to move the head (20) in an azimuth direction relative to the storage tape as the storage tape moves over the head (20). The head rotator assembly (22) includes a controller (16) that controls movement of the supporter mover assembly (232) based on a positioning signal. The supporter mover assembly (232) can include a first actuator (234A) that moves a first lever (236A) to rotate the head supporter (230) to move the head (20) in the azimuth direction. The first actuator (234A) biases the first lever (236A) to rotate part of the head supporter (230) to move the head in the azimuth direction. |
| US08599518B2 |
Head-cleaning device and head-cleaning method
A head-cleaning device cleans the surface of a head for reading and writing data from/to a medium, and includes a cleaning unit that moves in parallel with grooves provided in the surface of the head while abutted to the grooves, and thereby cleans the surface of the head. |
| US08599513B1 |
Bearing mechanism, motor, and disk drive apparatus
A bearing mechanism includes a shaft portion, a sleeve portion, and an opposing portion including a surface arranged opposite to an end surface of the sleeve portion on one of upper and lower sides with a thrust gap defined therebetween. The thrust gap includes a thrust dynamic pressure bearing portion defined therein. The sleeve portion includes a sleeve body and a thrust plate fixed to an end portion of the sleeve body on the one of the upper and lower sides. The sleeve body includes an annular surface arranged opposite to the thrust plate, and an annular body projecting portion arranged to project in an axial direction inside of the annular surface. An outer circumferential surface of the body projecting portion and an inner circumferential surface of the thrust plate are arranged to be in direct or indirect contact with each other. |
| US08599512B2 |
Current sensor comprising differential amplifier biased by leakage current
A current sensor is disclosed comprising a differential amplifier including a first node, a second node, and an output. The current sensor further comprises a first resistor having a first end coupled to the first node and a second end for coupling to a transducer, and a second resistor having a first end coupled to the second node and a second end. When the second end of the second resistor is unconnected and the differential amplifier is driven with a supply voltage, the first node is biased by a first leakage current and the second node is biased by a second leakage current such that the output represents a current flowing through the transducer. |
| US08599511B2 |
Apparatus for controlling writing data and method for the same
In a controller of a tape drive, when a command processor receives a command for moving to the end of data (“EOD”) or the like, an operation signal output unit suspends the moving of a tape and a cartridge memory (“CM”) input/output unit stores therein a state of the tape in which the moving has been omitted. Then, when the command processor receives a command for writing data in this state, the CM input/output unit writes the data to a cartridge memory. Subsequently, for example, when a head passes a proper position at which the data should be actually written to the tape, the CM input/output unit reads the data from the cartridge memory, and the channel input/output unit writes the data to the tape at the proper position. |
| US08599507B2 |
Distributed field self-test for shingled magnetic recording drives
A method is described for allowing disk drives, such as shingle-written magnetic recording (SMR) drives, to be shipped for customer use with portions of the magnetic media being left untested. The testing is then completed by the drive self-testing in the field. The drive is made functional at the factory by fully testing at least one operational set of regions including an I-region, an E-region and a write cache region. The operational set of regions works as a separate self-contained virtual disk drive and can be used immediately. The remaining untested areas on the media can be tested in the field by a background task and/or when the first write command is received that requires a new track or operational set of regions (on-the fly testing). |
| US08599504B2 |
Prism sheet having prisms with wave pattern, black light unit including the prism sheet, and liquid crystal display device including the black light unit
A prism sheet, a backlight unit, and a liquid crystal display device, the prism sheet including a transparent substrate; and at least one prism on the transparent substrate, wherein a refractive index (n) and a basic angle (θ) of the at least one prism satisfies the following condition: 1≦n/sin θ≦4. |
| US08599501B2 |
Lens module
A spacing ring is provided and includes a peripheral ring-shaped spacing portion and a light shading portion extending from an inner peripheral surface of the spacing portion. The spacing portion has a resisting surface. The light shading portion includes an inclined clamping surface connecting with the resisting surface of the spacing portion. The clamping surface and a central axis of the spacing ring cooperatively define an acute angle, the clamping surface and the resisting surface of the spacing portion cooperatively define an obtuse angle. A lens module using the spacing ring is also provided. |
| US08599500B2 |
Imaging lens, camera and personal digital assistant
An imaging lens includes in order from an object side a first lens group including a positive refractive power and a second lens group having a negative refractive power, the first lens group and the second lens group including a widest air space therebetween, the first lens group including in order from the object side a negative first lens having a concave face on the object side, a positive second lens having a convex face on both sides, an aperture stop, a negative third lens having a concave face on the object side, a positive fourth lens having a convex face on an image side and a positive fifth lens having a convex face on the image side, and the second lens group including a negative meniscus sixth lens having a concave face on the object side. |
| US08599499B2 |
High-speed wide-angle lens construction
Embodiments are disclosed herein related to the construction of optical elements for an RGB camera system. One disclosed embodiment provides a wide-angle lens construction, comprising a first, negative stage, and a second, positive stage positioned behind the first, negative stage along an optical axis of the lens construction. The second, positive stage further comprises a first positive lens substage, a first negative lens substage, a second positive lens substage, and a second negative lens substage. |
| US08599495B1 |
Optical image capturing system
An optical image capturing system includes, in order from an object side to an image side, a first lens element, a second lens element, a third lens element, a fourth lens element, a fifth lens element, a sixth lens element and a seventh lens element. The first lens element with positive refractive power has a convex object-side surface. The second through fifth lens elements all have refractive power. The fifth lens element has a convex image-side surface. The sixth lens element with positive refractive power has both of the object-side and image-side surfaces thereof being aspheric. The seventh lens element with negative refractive power has a concave image-side surface and both of the object-side and image-side surfaces thereof being aspheric. The image-side surface of the seventh lens element changes from concave at a paraxial region to convex at a peripheral region. |
| US08599492B2 |
Zoom lens
There is provided a zoom lens which is suitable for a digital still camera and a video camera and includes a small number of lenses, especially a zoom lens which has an angle of view of 75° or more at the wide-angle end and a variable power ratio of about ×10. The zoom lens includes a first lens group with positive refractive power, a second lens group with negative refractive power, a third lens group with positive refractive power, and, a fourth lens group with positive refractive power. The zoom lens varies power by changing an interval of each neighboring lens groups. The first lens group is composed of a negative lens and a positive lens. The third lens group is composed of an aperture stop, a cemented lens formed by a positive lens in a biconvex shape and a negative lens, and a positive lens. |
| US08599491B2 |
Zoom lens and electronic imaging apparatus incorporating the same
The zoom lens of the invention comprises, in order from an object side thereof, a first lens group having positive refracting power, a second lens group having negative refracting power, a third lens group having positive refracting power, a fourth lens group having positive refracting power, a fifth lens group having negative refracting power, and a sixth lens group having positive refracting power. The first lens group includes a reflective optical element, and the lens component in, and on the most image side of, the fourth lens group has negative refracting power. |
| US08599487B2 |
Beam-combiner for fiber-delivered laser-beams of different wavelengths
A beam combiner for combining laser-beams of different colors along a common path includes a directing-prism for each of the laser-beams and one combining-prism. The directing-prisms are arranged to transmit the laser-beams to the combining-prism. The directing-prisms and the combining-prism are configured and arranged with respect to each other such that the directing-prism transmits the beams along the common path. |
| US08599484B2 |
Diffractive optical element and measuring device
To provide a diffractive optical element and a measuring device capable of generating light spots of dispersive type. The problem is resolved by providing a diffractive optical element having concaves and convexes and diffracting incident light in two dimensions so as to generate diffracted light, wherein when the number of a part of light spots formed by the diffracted light is denoted by n, an average distance W to the nearest neighbor in the light spots normalized by an area of a region onto which the light spots are projected falls within a range of 1/(2×n1/2) |
| US08599483B1 |
High angle rear projection system
A system for projecting content at an angle to a rear projection screen. The system includes a projector configured for projecting changeable electronic content and a rear projection screen for receiving the projected content at an angle and displaying the projected content. The rear projection screen includes a turning film having prisms facing toward or away from the projector. For prisms facing toward the projector, a protective film covers the turning film. When the projected content is displayed on the rear projection screen, the content has a substantially uniform appearance. |
| US08599479B2 |
Modulation contrast microscope
A modulation contrast microscope that affords good view of sperm in ICSI, in particular, good view during sperm manipulation in ICSI, by improving contrast of the end portion of the tail includes the modulation contrast microscope comprises an aperture member having a partial aperture disposed at or near the front focal plane of a condenser lens, and a modulator disposed at a plane substantially conjugate with the aperture member, at or near the rear focal plane of a first objective lens or a conjugate plane thereof. The transmittance T(%) of a region of the modulator, corresponding to the partial aperture, satisfies the condition 1 £ T £ 8. Good viewing for ICSI sperm manipulation can be obtained as a result. |
| US08599476B1 |
Alignment and optimization of a synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator for nonlinear optical generation
A synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator (OPO) comprises a nonlinear optical medium positioned in an optical resonator (e.g., a ring resonator) and is pumped by a pump laser source. A first arrangement includes a positioning mechanism for translating the nonlinear optical medium so OPO resonant modes propagate through one of multiple longitudinal regions arranged for differing odd orders of quasi-phase-matching. A second arrangement includes a pump fiber laser oscillator stretched to adjust its repetition rate to match that of the OPO. A third arrangement includes a time-domain-multiplexer (TDM) fiber loop between a pump fiber laser oscillator and fiber laser amplification stage(s). The TDM loop increases the pump repetition rate to enable increased average pump power without increased peak power. |
| US08599474B1 |
Alignment and optimization of a synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator for nonlinear optical generation
A synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator (OPO) comprises a nonlinear optical medium positioned in an optical resonator (e.g., a ring resonator) and is pumped by a pump laser source. A first arrangement includes a positioning mechanism for translating the nonlinear optical medium so OPO resonant modes propagate through one of multiple longitudinal regions arranged for differing odd orders of quasi-phase-matching. A second arrangement includes a pump fiber laser oscillator stretched to adjust its repetition rate to match that of the OPO. A third arrangement includes a time-domain-multiplexer (TDM) fiber loop between a pump fiber laser oscillator and fiber laser amplification stage(s). The TDM loop increases the pump repetition rate to enable increased average pump power without increased peak power. |
| US08599473B2 |
Pulsed laser sources
Modelocked fiber laser resonators may be coupled with optical amplifiers. An isolator optionally may separate the resonator from the amplifier. A reflective optical element on one end of the resonator having a relatively low reflectivity may be employed to couple light from the resonator to the amplifier. Enhanced pulse-width control may be provided with concatenated sections of both polarization-maintaining and non-polarization-maintaining fibers. Apodized fiber Bragg gratings and integrated fiber polarizers may also be included in the laser cavity to assist in linearly polarizing the output of the cavity. Very short pulses with a large optical bandwidth may be obtained by matching the dispersion value of the grating to the inverse of the dispersion of the intra-cavity fiber. Frequency comb sources may be constructed from such modelocked fiber oscillators. Low dispersion and an in-line interferometer that provides feedback may assist in controlling the frequency components output from the comb source. |
| US08599471B2 |
Electronic paper display device
An electronic paper display device includes an electronic paper display panel, and a functional layer. The electronic paper display panel includes a common electrode layer and a display surface. The functional layer is located on the display surface and includes a carbon nanotube touching functional layer. A distance between the common electrode layer and the carbon nanotube touching functional layer is above 100 microns and equal to or less than 2 millimeters. |
| US08599468B2 |
Pulse-width-modulated thermal tuning of optical devices
An optical device that includes a wavelength-sensitive optical component, which has an associated thermal time constant, is described. Note that an operating wavelength of the wavelength-sensitive optical component is a function of several physical parameters including temperature. Moreover, the optical device includes a heating mechanism that provides heat to the wavelength-sensitive optical component. Furthermore, the optical device includes a driver circuit that provides a pulse-width modulated signal to the heating mechanism. Note that an average pulse-width modulated heat provided by the heating mechanism, and which corresponds to the pulse-width modulated signal, thermally tunes the wavelength-sensitive optical component to a target operating wavelength. Additionally, note that the target operating wavelength corresponds to a target operating temperature of the wavelength-sensitive optical component. |
| US08599467B2 |
Environmentally safe electrochromic devices and assemblies
This invention recognizes the hazards of materials used to make electrochromic devices and the resulting mirror assemblies for automotive use. The invention provides novel ways to reduce these hazards and to manufacture these mirrors using renewable resources and smaller environmental footprint. |