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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8166286 | Data pipeline with large tuning range of clock signals The invention relates to a data pipeline comprising a first stage with a data input for receiving a digital data input signal, a clock input and a data output, and a first bi-stable element being adapted to be switched in response to an edge of a first clock signal,... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8164386 | Methods and apparatus to control rail-to-rail class AB amplifiers In one example, an amplifier for providing stable output quiescent current comprising includes a number of supply rails, an output device configured for providing an output voltage, the output device coupled to the plurality of supply rails, and an output quiescent ... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8164364 | Circuitry and method for preventing base-emitter junction reverse bias in comparator differential input transistor pair A differential input circuit (1-1) includes first (Q0) and second (Q1) input transistors having control electrodes coupled to first (Vin+) and second (Vin−) input signals, respectively. A pass... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8159382 | Low power converter and shutdown SAR ADC architecture With Successive Approximation Register (SAR) analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), there are several different architectures. One of these architectures is a “convert and shut down” architecture, where an internal amplifier is powered down during the sampling pha... | 04/17/2012 |
| 8159207 | Low drop voltage regulator with instant load regulation and method An LDO regulator (10) produces an output voltage (Vout) by applying the output voltage to a feedback input (6) of a differential input stage (10A) and applying an output (3) of the differential input stage to a gate of a first follower tr... | 04/17/2012 |
| 8154350 | PLL with continuous and bang-bang feedback controls An apparatus is provided. The apparatus comprising a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), an amplifier, a switch, a calibration capacitor, and a control loop. The VCO includes a capacitive network that receives a first tuning voltage that is based at least in part o... | 04/10/2012 |
| 8148228 | Surface patterned topography feature suitable for planarization A method for manufacturing a semiconductor device that comprises implanting a first dopant type in a well region of a substrate to form implanted sub-regions that are separated by non-implanted areas of the well region. The method also comprises forming an oxide lay... | 04/03/2012 |
| 8143944 | Method and apparatus for sensing a current for varying impedance loads Recently, there has been an increased desire to measure load currents of class-D amplifiers to improve performance. The traditional solution has been to include one or more discrete components in series with the load, but this degrades performance. Here, however, ci... | 03/27/2012 |
| 8143812 | Clamp to enable low voltage switching for high voltage terminal applications An output stage for an LED driver is provided. In particular, a low voltage clamp, which uses several cascode circuits, is provided to protect low voltage switching transistors in the range of two times higher voltage application under both normal and fault conditio... | 03/27/2012 |
| 8140881 | Circuitry and method for detection of network node aging in communication networks The network node includes a local crystal oscillator for providing a time reference derived from the clock signal produced by the local crystal oscillator, a reset stage for resetting the network node in response to a bus reset pulse received through the network and... | 03/20/2012 |
| 8138828 | Active mute scheme for an amplifier Conventional muting circuitry for amplifiers (which usually uses clamps) generally has about 20-30 dB of attenuation. Here, an integrated circuit or IC is provided that includes an amplifier, switch networks, and a controller. The controller provides control signals... | 03/20/2012 |
| 8134710 | Particulate detector system A particulate detector system is provided that can sense particulates (such as smoke in the air). The system employs a reflected light system that generally avoids making measurements of light intensity. Instead, coded signals are compared with one another to determ... | 03/13/2012 |
| 8134318 | System and method of current shaping control for retract A system for implementing current shaping for retract of a voice coil motor (VCM) includes drive circuitry coupled to drive the VCM according to a logic state of the system. Current shaping circuitry is configured to temporarily decrease the bandwidth of a VCM trans... | 03/13/2012 |
| 8130481 | Electrostatic discharge trigger circuits for self-protecting cascode stages Electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuits for self-protecting cascode stages are disclosed. In one example, an ESD protection circuit is described. A cascode stage is configured to selectively couple an output pad to a reference terminal. An ESD sensor may d... | 03/06/2012 |
| 8130129 | Analog-to-digital conversion One embodiment of the present invention includes an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) system. The system includes an ADC configured to generate digital samples that are digital versions of at least one analog signal at a sampling frequency and a memory configured to... | 03/06/2012 |
| 8130047 | Open loop coarse tuning for a PLL In many types of wireless applications (like wireless modems), it is important that the phase locked loops (PLLs) be able to synthesize clock frequencies in a wide tuning range. Because of the complexity of many conventional PLLs (which were deigned to cover wide tu... | 03/06/2012 |
| 8129682 | On-chip calibration system and method for infrared sensor A radiation sensor includes an integrated circuit radiation sensor chip (1A) including first (7) and second (8) thermopile junctions connected in series to form a thermopile (7,8) within a dielectric stack (3). The first thermopile... | 03/06/2012 |
| 8126164 | Digital compensation of analog volume control gain in a digital audio amplifier A digital audio system including a combination of analog and digital volume control is disclosed. A variable power supply voltage biases a power amplifier for each channel, and applies a bias voltage corresponding to an analog volume control signal. In one disclosed... | 02/28/2012 |
| 8125553 | Solid-state imaging device An imaging apparatus is provided. The apparatus generally comprises an array and storage elements. The array includes photosensitive cells that are arranged in a plurality of columns and a plurality of rows such that each column includes a set of photosensitive cell... | 02/28/2012 |
| 8125273 | Apparatus and method for driving an LED Here, a driver for an light emitting diode (LED) is provided. Within this driver, several differential pairs of bipolar transistors are employed in an input stage and output stage along with a control loop. Collectively, these components operate together to drive th... | 02/28/2012 |
| 8115523 | Circuit to spread the spectrum of a PWM signal An apparatus is provided. The apparatus comprises a first current source and a second current source that charge and discharge a capacitor. Coupled between the capacitor and the second current source is a switch that can be actuated and deactuated by a controller. P... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8115464 | Boost circuit and power supply device The objective of this invention is to provide a boost circuit that reduces power consumption and prevents malfunctioning when the input voltage becomes greater than a target voltage for the output voltage. Control circuit module 5 sets both control signals HC... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8115345 | Variable timing switching system and method A low-EMI switched circuit comprises two or more switches, wherein impedance transitions of the switches are overlapped and the overlap is varied using variable switch timing based on an output power level of the switched circuit. The variable timing results in a va... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8115337 | Soft-start circuit An apparatus is provided. The apparatus comprises an input circuit, a startup circuit, and a current limiter. The input circuit is coupled to a first source and is adapted to provide a first voltage and a first current to a load having a capacitance. The startup cir... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8115272 | Silicon dioxide cantilever support and method for silicon etched structures An apparatus includes a semiconductor layer (2) having therein a cavity (4). A dielectric layer (3) is formed on the semiconductor layer. A plurality of etchant openings (24) extend through the dielectric layer for passage of etchant for ... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8114779 | Silicon dioxide cantilever support and method for silicon etched structures An apparatus includes a semiconductor layer (2) having therein a cavity (4). A dielectric layer (3) is formed on the semiconductor layer. A plurality of etchant openings (24) extend through the dielectric layer for passage of etchant for ... | 02/14/2012 |
| RE43191 | Adaptive Weiner filtering using line spectral frequencies An acoustic noise suppression filter including attenuation filtering with a noise-free estimate based on a codebook of line spectral frequencies. ... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8111092 | Register with process, supply voltage and temperature variation independent propagation delay path A digital data register is disclosed that provides setup and hold timing on the pre-register side, clock centering on the post-register side, and constant propagation delay time over variations in process, supply voltage and temperature (PVT) using a novel means to ... | 02/07/2012 |
| 8110997 | LED drive circuit A LED drive circuit equipped with oscillator 18, up/down counter 20, and DAC 22 in order to drive multiple LEDs 10(1)-10(m) in a block. Up/down counter 20 carries out count-up/down operations in sync with clock... | 02/07/2012 |
| 8094050 | Bandwidth mismatch estimation in time-interleaved analog-to-digital converters With high speed, high resolution time-interleaved (TI) analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), bandwidth mismatches between the various ADC branches can pose a significant problem. Previously, though, no adequate solution has been found. Here, a method and apparatus ar... | 01/10/2012 |
| 8093925 | Current driver circuit An integrated regulated current drive circuit for driving a squib of an inflatable airbag has a current sense resistor connected in series with a load, and a reference resistor connected in series with a reference current source. Both resistors are matched to define... | 01/10/2012 |
| 8093070 | Method for leakage reduction in fabrication of high-density FRAM arrays A method is provided for fabricating a ferroelectric capacitor structure including a method for etching and cleaning patterned ferroelectric capacitor structures in a semiconductor device. The method comprises etching portions of an upper electrode, etching ferroele... | 01/10/2012 |
| 8085008 | System for accounting for switch impendances A Universal Serial Bus (USB) switch matrix is provided. The switch matrix generally comprises a switch network, and amplifier, a adjustable current source, and variable resistors. The switch network is able to output a differential output signal and a common mode si... | 12/27/2011 |
| 8072262 | Low input bias current chopping switch circuit and method A chopper-stabilized circuit (1) includes pre-chopping circuitry (26) for chopping an input signal (Vin) at a first frequency to generate a first signal. Input chopping circuitry (9) chops the first signal at a second frequency substantially gre... | 12/06/2011 |
| 8060929 | Method and system for providing security to processors There are various methods of securing programs and data on a processor. The external address enable pin of the processor is sampled upon a power-on or reset to the processor, to determine whether or not accesses to external memory are allowed. Other changes to the e... | 11/15/2011 |
| 8058860 | Single pin multi-VID bit interface circuit for dynamic voltage change of a DC/DC converter A controller for a DC/DC converter is provided. The controller comprises an error circuit, control logic, a high side driver, a low side driver, and an interface circuit. The error circuit is coupled to a feedback terminal so as to receives a feedback signal and is ... | 11/15/2011 |
| 8050148 | Flash time stamp apparatus One embodiment of an apparatus for generating a time stamp includes a clock input, an event signal input and a time stamp output. A DLL is connected to the clock input, with a plurality of delay elements inside the DLL. An output of each of the delay elements is con... | 11/01/2011 |
| 8049654 | Digital trimming of SAR ADCs Successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) generally employ capacitive digital-to-analog converters (CDACs) to perform data conversions. In these CDACs, matching of capacitive values is important, and for conventional high resolution... | 11/01/2011 |
| 8049534 | Low-power high-speed differential driver with precision current steering In bipolar CMOS or BiCMOS process technologies, drivers (such as mixed mode or hybrid mode drivers) using both bipolar and CMOS transistors (i.e., field effect transistors or FETs) may have undesirable properties, such as reduced speed, ringing, latch-up, or lower e... | 11/01/2011 |
| 8046199 | System and method for computing parameters for a digital predistorter Digital predistortion system, methods and circuitry for adapting a predistortion system linearizing a non-linear element. The system is a multiply partitioned architecture that addresses long or “memory” effects, and separately addresses shorter duration effects... | 10/25/2011 |
