Did You Know...
...that the Eveready Battery began as an invention called the "electric flowerpot," which was a tube with a battery and light bulb inside? The idea was to fasten this gizmo to the side of a flowerpot so it would illuminate the flowers from the bottom. The idea died on the vine and the businessman who licensed the flower pot, Conrad Huber, was left with a pile of useless tubes -- until he found a way to market them as batteries to light the world!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8018378 | Satellite navigation receiver having a configurable acquisition engine A satellite navigation receiver having a flexible acquisition and tracking engine architecture. The flexible acquisition engine has a reconfigurable delay line that can be used either as a single entity or divided into different sections. Consequently, it can be con... | 09/13/2011 |
| 7894487 | Time synchronization in a network A method and corresponding system for communicating between stations in a network is presented. The method includes providing repeated beacon transmissions from a coordinator station for coordinating transmissions among the stations; transmitting a signal from a fir... | 02/22/2011 |
| 7834790 | Communication device including a power reduction mechanism A communication device includes a communication port that includes a digital to analog converter (DAC) that may be configured to output for transmission an analog signal that corresponds to a digital input such as link data that is to be transmitted on a physical li... | 11/16/2010 |
| 7822059 | Managing contention-free time allocations in a network A method and corresponding system for communicating between stations in a network are presented. The method includes providing repeated beacon transmissions from a coordinator station for coordinating transmissions among a plurality of the stations; transmitting fro... | 10/26/2010 |
| 7821118 | Power distribution pattern for a ball grid array A reduced inductance power distribution pattern for an integrated circuit (IC) package is disclosed. The IC package can include a die in which the electronic circuitry is formed, a ball grid array (BGA) substrate, and a plurality of conductive balls coupled to the B... | 10/26/2010 |
| 7800531 | High precision positioning system A method for determining a position uses an access point array, a reference station, a location server and a client terminal. The reference station may include a GPS receiver to acquire and track GPS satellites. GPS data may be provided to the location server. The a... | 09/21/2010 |
| 7792158 | Media streaming synchronization A system and method for closely synchronizing the transmission of real-time data streams is described. Synchronization data is transmitted by a cycle master for receipt by one or more cycle slaves. A cycle slave updates an internal state based on synchronization dat... | 09/07/2010 |
| 7792052 | Method and system for testing and optimizing the performance of a radio communication device A radio communication device is tested by forwarding relevant signal characteristic data derived at the physical (PHY) layer to the media access control (MAC) layer for processing, analysis and feedback to the radio circuit to improve performance. The relevant signa... | 09/07/2010 |
| 7787227 | Apparatus and method for electrostatic discharge protection of a transmit integrated circuit An apparatus and method for providing electrostatic discharge protection of a transmit integrated circuit including an ESD protect block coupled to an integrated circuit pad in a package without bond wires, and an ESD clamp circuit coupled between the ESD protect bl... | 08/31/2010 |
| 7772932 | Quadrature local oscillator generation for direct conversion radio transceiver A method of generating a quadrature local oscillator (LO) frequencies is provided. In this method, a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) frequency can be mixed with a divided version of the VCO frequency to generate mixed signals. A lower sideband of the mixed signa... | 08/10/2010 |
| 7768960 | Efficient communication channel survey A system and method are described for repeatedly and efficiently performing a wireless communication channel survey to determine whether comparable communications devices exist, which frequencies are in use, and the identities of the comparable communications device... | 08/03/2010 |
| 7768363 | Inter-stage coupling with a transformer and parallel AC-coupling capacitor An RF coupling circuit including a transformer and a parallel AC-coupling capacitor can advantageously ameliorate substantial attenuation of a signal, prevent destabilization of any feedback loop, and simplify the circuit design process. The AC-coupling capacitor ca... | 08/03/2010 |
| 7768346 | System for amplifier linearization with envelope feedback An amplifier with linearization feedback includes an amplification stage that receives a feedback control signal from an envelope detection feedback network. The envelope detection feedback network controls the gain of the amplification stage based on an envelope of... | 08/03/2010 |
| 7768324 | Dual voltage buffer with current reuse A voltage buffer with current reuse is described. This voltage buffer can advantageously provide a relatively wide voltage differential using a relatively low current. In one embodiment, a slave branch can be used to minimize potential spikes/glitches in the voltage... | 08/03/2010 |
| 7764727 | Selecting MCS in a MIMO system An accurate total error rate performance can be measured using a computed error vector magnitude (EVM) per stream. Using this EVM, the receiver or the transmitter can advantageously generate an optimized modulation and coding scheme (MCS) that corresponds to a speci... | 07/27/2010 |
| 7756152 | Managing contention-free time allocations in a network A method and corresponding system for communicating between stations in a network are presented. The method includes providing repeated beacon transmissions from a coordinator station for coordinating transmissions among a plurality of the stations; transmitting fro... | 07/13/2010 |
| 7756082 | Wireless LAN using background scanning technique Background scanning can include using a power save mode to momentarily suspend transmission between a current access point and a client. Information regarding other access points can then be collected. The client can return to the current access point before communi... | 07/13/2010 |
| 7756039 | Data plane aggregation based on route and service type Methods and systems are operable to aggregate data. A plurality of data units can be received. The data units can be combined based upon a class associated with the data and a next hop associated with the data. A link can be provided for the combined data units base... | 07/13/2010 |
| 7751520 | Packet detection, synchronization, and frequency offset estimation Techniques are disclosed for detecting a packet. One technique includes sampling a received signal to produce a sequence of samples wherein the sequence of samples includes a plurality of subsequences of samples; cross correlating the subsequences of samples with a ... | 07/06/2010 |
| 7746274 | Global positioning receiver with PN code output A local ranging system for use with GPS receivers and GPS enabled devices. A device in accordance with the present invention comprises a Radio Frequency (RF) section, the RF section adaptable to receive at least one GPS signal from at least one GPS satellite, and a ... | 06/29/2010 |
| 7742778 | Method and apparatus for transient frequency distortion compensation Transient distortion is compensated for by multiplying an exponentially-decaying phase shift onto the distorted waveform. The exponentially decaying phase shift waveform is patterned after the transient which typically takes the form of an exponential and occurs upo... | 06/22/2010 |
| 7729372 | Communicating in a network that includes a medium having varying transmission characteristics A method and corresponding system for operating in a network in which stations communicate over a shared medium are presented. The shared medium has at least one varying channel characteristic that varies approximately periodically. The method includes providing rep... | 06/01/2010 |
| 7728676 | Voltage-controlled oscillator with control range limiter A voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) comprising a first circuit, a second circuit, a comparator circuit, and a control unit. The first circuit can determine an output common mode voltage associated with an output of the VCO. The second circuit can generate an upper... | 06/01/2010 |
| 7728631 | Phase frequency detector with pulse width control circuitry A phase frequency detector comprising a detection circuit and a reset circuit. The phase frequency detector may receive a feedback signal having a predetermined pulse width. The detection circuit may generate a first control signal based on a reference signal, and a... | 06/01/2010 |
| 7728567 | Current mode pulse frequency modulation switching regulator A method of providing current mode pulse frequency modulation (PFM) for a switching regulator can include resetting a driver input for a fixed duration when a first current in the driver reaches a first value set by an error amplifier output. The first current can b... | 06/01/2010 |
| 7715425 | Channel adaptation synchronized to periodically varying channel A method of operating in a network (e.g., a power line communication network) in which a plurality of stations communicate over a shared medium (e.g., an AC power line) having a periodically varying channel. The method includes determining a plurality of channel ada... | 05/11/2010 |
| 7705778 | Satellite navigation receiver having configurable acquisition and tracking engines A satellite navigation receiver having a flexible acquisition and tracking engine architecture. The flexible acquisition engine has a reconfigurable delay line that can be used either as a single entity or divided into different sections. Consequently, it can be con... | 04/27/2010 |
| 7693036 | Decision feedback channel estimation and pilot tracking for OFDM systems Current OFDM systems use a limited number of symbols and/or sub-channels to provide approximations for channel estimations and pilot tracking, i.e. phase estimations. For example, two training symbols in the preamble of a data packet are used to provide channel esti... | 04/06/2010 |
| 7683829 | Method and apparatus for adapting a receiver frequency plan according to location A selectable frequency source for use in GPS receivers. A device in accordance with the present invention comprises a reference frequency source, a first divider, coupled to the reference frequency source, the first divider having a first dividing factor, a first mi... | 03/23/2010 |
| 7675443 | Saturation detector for an ADC A method for detecting saturation in a cascaded ΔΣ ADC can include receiving an output of the cascaded ΔΣ ADC, determining a magnitude of the output, and squaring the magnitude. The squared magnitude can be added to a feedback signal, wherein the sum represents ... | 03/09/2010 |
| 7675353 | Constant current and voltage generator A compact constant current generator that can operate with a positive supply voltage of 1.22 V (or lower) and minimize noise is provided. The constant current generator can include a bandgap reference circuit and a single gain stage. Notably, the bandgap reference c... | 03/09/2010 |
| 7672656 | Systems and methods to provide wideband magnitude and phase imbalance calibration and compensation in quadrature receivers Systems and methods for passively calibrating and correcting for I/Q mismatch in a quadrature receiver without the necessity of modifying the analog portion of the receiver by adding calibration signals or correction circuitry are presented. The passive I/Q mismatch... | 03/02/2010 |
| 7672220 | Apparatus and method of multiple antenna receiver combining of high data rate wideband packetized wireless communication signals The present invention provides an apparatus and method of multiple antenna receiver combining of high data rate wideband packetized wireless communication signals, where the apparatus includes M receive antennas, receiving M high data rate wideband packetized wirele... | 03/02/2010 |
| 7669312 | Method of generating a layout for a differential circuit A differential circuit layout can advantageously use step symmetry for inductors and mirror symmetry for the rest of the circuit. Interconnect segments can be used to connect the terminals of the inductors to other components in the circuit. These interconnect segme... | 03/02/2010 |
| 7664955 | Establishing shared information in a network A method for establishing shared information is described. The method includes estimating characteristics of a communication channel between two nodes based on signals transmitted between the nodes. The method also includes transmitting a signal from the first node ... | 02/16/2010 |
| 7660327 | Temporary priority promotion for network communications in which access to a shared medium depends on a priority level A method of operating in a network in which a plurality of stations communicate over a shared medium (e.g., using a carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) service). The stations contend for access to the shared medium using a contention procedure that relies on a prio... | 02/09/2010 |
| 7643810 | Method and system for noise floor calibration and receive signal strength detection A system for detecting the level of the noise floor due to circuit noise as seen at the ADC for a wireless receiver. The system measures power after digitizing and filtering, and subtracts off any variable gain used in the analog front end to determine differentiall... | 01/05/2010 |
| 7642856 | Amplifier capable of using a power supply voltage higher than its process voltages An amplifier can advantageously use a power supply voltage source that provides a voltage greater than all breakdown voltages of the process associated with transistors of the amplifier. Specifically, cascoded configurations can be used to reduce the gate-drain and ... | 01/05/2010 |
| 7636641 | Data compaction techniques Many areas of technology need highly accurate data compression to provide small, multifunctional devices. In the area of communication governed by the IEEE 802.11 standards, a wireless device could significantly improve its performance by using its calibration data.... | 12/22/2009 |
| 7636400 | Decoding system and method for digital communications A Viterbi decoding system interprets bits in received QAM constellations as many-valued parameters rather than binary valued parameters. It performs the Viterbi algorithm using these many-valued parameters to provide results superior to hard decision decoding. Rathe... | 12/22/2009 |
