Did You Know...
...that Charles Goodyear performed some of his experiments on rubber while in debtor's prison? He was there so often he referred to it as his "hotel". Chronically in debt because of poor business sense and ill health, Goodyear depended on the generosity of friends and family. Even after he unlocked the secret to vulcanizing rubber, he was unable to improve his financial situation. When he died, his estate was $200,000 in debt.
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8183698 | Bond pad support structure for semiconductor device According to certain embodiments, integrated circuits are fabricated using brittle low-k dielectric material to reduce undesired capacitances between conductive structures. To avoid permanent damage to such dielectric material, bond pads are fabricated with support ... | 05/22/2012 |
| 8180600 | Input/output buffer information specification (IBIS) model generation for multi-chip modules (MCM) and similar devices In one embodiment, the invention is a method for modeling electrical behavior of a packaged module having multiple integrated circuits (ICs), such as a multi-chip module (MCM). The method includes: (a) identifying one or more pin groups in the module, wherein a pin ... | 05/15/2012 |
| 8179898 | Packet processing using braided tries Packets are processed (e.g., routed or classified) in accordance with a braided trie, which represents the combination of two or more different original tries (e.g., representing different forwarding/classification tables). The different tries are combined by twisti... | 05/15/2012 |
| 8175179 | Calculating peak-to-average power ratio reduction symbols for multi-carrier modulated signals using a gradient-descent approach In one embodiment, the present invention is a method for reducing the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of a multi-carrier modulated symbol, such as an orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) symbol. The method first transforms a set of data symbols into a... | 05/08/2012 |
| 8170165 | Clock calibration in sleep mode In one embodiment, an improvement is described for synchronization between devices in, e.g., a wireless network, wherein at least one device includes both a slow clock and a fast clock for different modes of operation. The fast clock for an active mode of operation ... | 05/01/2012 |
| 8165149 | Medium reservation with channel selectivity A medium-reservation mechanism improves transmission efficiency in a multiple-channel network that includes stations with limited-selectivity receivers. The mechanism employs a medium-request signal that conveys channel information. In this network, stations check t... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8164499 | Shared-array multiple-output digital-to-analog converter In an exemplary decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) of a serializer/deserializer (SerDes) receiver, a single current mirror array is shared by multiple current digital-to-analog converter (IDAC) functions. The DFE has an initial amplifier stage that applies an initial... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8161345 | LDPC decoders using fixed and adjustable permutators In one embodiment, the present invention is a low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoder that has a plurality of variable node units (VNUs) that generate variable node messages and a plurality of check node units (CNUs) that generate check node messages. The variable n... | 04/17/2012 |
| 8160263 | Noise reduction by mobile communication devices in non-call situations In a preferred embodiment, the invention is a mobile communication device having a digital signal processor (DSP), a speaker output node, a local audio source, and an analog front-end (AFE), wherein: (1) the DSP receives a first audio signal corresponding to sound c... | 04/17/2012 |
| 8155534 | Optical modulator for higher-order modulation According to one embodiment of the invention, a 16-QAM optical modulator has a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) coupled to a drive circuit that drives the MZM based on two electrical binary signals. The output of the MZM corresponds to an intermediary constellation cons... | 04/10/2012 |
| 8154378 | Thermal actuator for a MEMS-based relay switch A representative embodiment of the invention provides a thermal actuator for a MEMS-based relay switch. The thermal actuator has an “active” arm that is movably mounted on a substrate. The “active” arm has (i) a thermal expansion layer and (ii) a resistive h... | 04/10/2012 |
| 8150955 | Wireless LAN with channel swapping between DFS access points The present invention enhances the dynamic frequency selection 9DFS) algorithms used in Wireless LANs by adding a channel swapping mechanism. The aim of the traditional DFS algorithm is to dynamically select channels in a wireless LAN in such a way that the best per... | 04/03/2012 |
| 8149971 | Multiple-branch wireless receiver A wireless receiver detects signals received at two or more antennas, with each antenna coupled to an input receive chain. A switch is employed to couple selected input receive chains to one or more corresponding output receive chains during listening, coarse-detect... | 04/03/2012 |
| 8149752 | Media-access-control protocol for a network employing multi-user wireless channels A medium-access-control (MAC) scheduler, according to one embodiment of which a station of a wireless network evaluates data throughputs corresponding to three different transmission configurations for transmission of a packet over a first of that station's wireless... | 04/03/2012 |
| 8149529 | Dibit extraction for estimation of channel parameters In one embodiment, a storage-device-implemented method for estimating one or more channel parameters of a storage device including a read channel and a storage medium with a bit sequence stored on the storage medium. The method includes: (a) the storage device readi... | 04/03/2012 |
| 8143746 | Automatic tuning for wireless power transfer In one embodiment, a wireless power transfer system has a wireless power transmitter and receiver. The transmitter has a transmitting resonant circuit that resonates at a first frequency and a signal generator that generates a signal at a second frequency. The trans... | 03/27/2012 |
| 8139677 | Method for selecting constellation rotation angles for quasi-orthogonal space-time and space-frequency block coding In one embodiment, the present invention generates a single rotation angle that may be used to maximize diversity of a quasi-orthogonal space-time block code that encodes groups of four data symbols. Two rotation angles corresponding the first two data symbols in a ... | 03/20/2012 |
| 8139433 | Memory device control for self-refresh mode To ensure that a memory device operates in self-refresh mode, the memory controller includes (1) a normal-mode output buffer for driving a clock enable signal CKE onto the memory device's CKE input and (2) a power island for driving a clock enable signal CKE_prime o... | 03/20/2012 |
| 8139412 | Systematic error correction for multi-level flash memory In accordance with exemplary embodiments, a multi-level flash memory employs error correction of systematic errors when reading multi-level flash memory. Error correction includes i) detection of each systematic error, ii) feedback of the systematic error to circuit... | 03/20/2012 |
| 8135383 | Information security and delivery method and apparatus A method includes storing at least one user datum received from a user in a secure storage portion of a memory within a mobile communication device. Authentication information is received into the mobile communication device. The at least one user datum is transmitt... | 03/13/2012 |
| 8134934 | Tracking network-data flows A network-equipment-implemented method and apparatus for tracking durations of flows received at a network node in consecutive intervals utilizes two counting bloom filters in ping-pong operation to reduce memory and processing. Identifiers for flows that exceed a p... | 03/13/2012 |
| 8132212 | Enhanced television services A method and system to permit TV viewers to interact with program content broadcast over a subscriber network, such as cable, satellite, internet, or cellular telephone. The details of the ability for the viewer to interact is embedded as data in the program signal.... | 03/06/2012 |
| 8131308 | Active-call intercom-enabled cordless telephone A method of using an intercom on a cordless telephone during an active call. The active call is put on hold while the intercom is in use. Once the call is re-activated, the intercom is shut off. This system may be designed for a cordless telephone with one handset o... | 03/06/2012 |
| 8122330 | Rate-adaptive forward error correction for optical transport systems An optical transport system (OTS) having a plurality of optical transponders (OTs) connected via one or more optical links and adapted to communicate with one another using respective rate-adaptive forward-error-correction (FEC) codes. In one embodiment, the OTS has... | 02/21/2012 |
| 8114579 | Manufacturing data-storage media using light-curable material Instances of data-storage media having pits and lands, such as individual DVDs or CDs, are manufactured by selectively illuminating a light-curable material to form cured regions corresponding to the lands. The selective illumination of the light-curable material ca... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8111612 | Link-based recovery with demand granularity in mesh networks A protected communication network utilizes a link-based recovery strategy that supports independent recovery paths for individual demands, where each link includes one or more lines and each line can support one or more demands. Failure of one or more—or even all... | 02/07/2012 |
| 8109638 | Diffuser configuration for an image projector According to one embodiment, an image projector has a spatial light modulator (SLM) adapted to modulate illumination from a laser with a spatial pattern such that the modulated illumination projects an image on a viewing screen. The image projector further has an op... | 02/07/2012 |
| 8102930 | Demodulation of 16-QAM, DCM data symbols using two hybrid-QPSK constellations In one embodiment, a demapper uses two hybrid-QPSK constellations to demap pairs of equalized data symbols recovered from 16-QAM, DCM OFDM symbols, wherein the equalized data symbols in a pair correspond to the same four-bit group. A first hybrid-QPSK constellation ... | 01/24/2012 |
| 8098844 | Dual-microphone spatial noise suppression Spatial noise suppression for audio signals involves generating a ratio of powers of difference and sum signals of audio signals from two microphones and then performing noise suppression processing, e.g., on the sum signal where the suppression is limited based on ... | 01/17/2012 |
| 8090401 | Virtual gateway node for dual-mode wireless phones The invention is a virtual gateway that mediates between a dual-mode subscriber device and an IP-based PBX. In particular, the virtual gateway includes a WLAN interface for communicating with the dual-mode subscriber device and a network interface (wired or wireless... | 01/03/2012 |
| 8090122 | Audio mixing using magnitude equalization According to one embodiment, during mixing of an N-channel input signal to generate an M-channel output signal, in at least one frequency sub-band, magnitude equalization is applied to the mixed channel signals such that an amplitude sum magnitude for the N input ch... | 01/03/2012 |
| 8089713 | Detection of hard-disc defect regions using soft decisions In a hard-disc drive, a defect region on the hard disc is detected by generating two statistical measures (e.g., β1(k) and β2(k)) based on signal values (e.g., x[n] or y[n]) and soft-decision values (e.g., L[n]) corresponding to the signal va... | 01/03/2012 |
| 8085837 | Characterizing non-compensable jitter in an electronic signal One embodiment of the present invention processes a signal of interest through an optional reference channel, combines the resulting signal with white noise, and then processes the noisy signal through a reference receiver. Two metrics are calculated from the result... | 12/27/2011 |
| 8081131 | Multi-polarized antenna array In one embodiment, the present invention is a dual-polarized antenna array constructed from first and second instances of a planar antenna that are co-located and orthogonal to one another. The planar antenna comprises three conducting elements and a transmission li... | 12/20/2011 |
| 8081114 | Strip-array antenna A representative embodiment of the invention provides an antenna having an electrically conducting ground plane and an array of electrically conducting strips located at an offset distance from the ground plane. Electrically conducting pathways, each attached to the... | 12/20/2011 |
| 8081011 | Method and apparatus for regulating a power supply of an integrated circuit Disclosed is a circuit for adjusting a voltage supplied to an IC by a power supply circuit that produces a regulated-output voltage based on an output-control signal generated by a resistive voltage divider. The circuit includes a PVT detector configured to generate... | 12/20/2011 |
| 8078197 | Location-based search-result ranking for blog documents and the like In one embodiment, a mobile communication device is adapted to provide geography-enhanced blog search results. In response to a blog-search query entered by a user, the mobile communication device is adapted to determine a current geographical location for the mobil... | 12/13/2011 |
| 8078065 | Polarization tracking and signal equalization for optical receivers configured for on-off keying or pulse amplitude modulation signaling According to one embodiment, an optical receiver adapted to recover OOK or PAM data carried by a modulated optical carrier has an optical detector adapted to produce a sequence of vector pairs having first and second digital vectors indicative of complex values of f... | 12/13/2011 |
| 8077820 | Detection of frequency correction bursts and the like In one embodiment, a frequency correction (FC) burst is detected in a complex signal received by a mobile station of a GSM/EDGE wireless communications network by applying the complex signal to one or more correlation paths of a burst detector within the mobile stat... | 12/13/2011 |
| 8077812 | Reduced-complexity multiple-input, multiple-output detection A wireless receiver detects signals generated with a multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) transmitter. The receiver applies maximum-likelihood detection (MLD) for soft-output signal detection, where an MLD exhaustive search across all candidate vectors is performe... | 12/13/2011 |
