...that several people are credited with the invention of the flush toilet? Most people have heard of Thomas Crapper (1837-1910), the sanitary engineer who invented the valve-and-siphon arrangement that made the modern toilet possible. Another claimant to "the throne" was British inventor Alexander Cumming who patented a toilet in 1775. Then there's a nameless Minoan (a native of ancient Crete) who lived 4,000 years ago who supposedly was ahead of his time and created the first flush toilet!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7440522 | Method of evaluating a readout signal, and optical disc apparatus A method of evaluating the quality of a read signal from the viewpoint of the detection margin of a Viterbi decoder in the PRML method in which a target signal level varies depending on the read signal, and an optical disc apparatus implementing the method. A method... | 10/21/2008 |
| 7424074 | Optimizing detector target polynomials in read/write channels to achieve best error rate performance in disk drives Embodiments of the invention provide techniques for optimizing the detector target polynomials in read/write channels to achieve the best error rate performance in recording devices. In one embodiment, a method of obtaining a detector target polynomial of a read/wri... | 09/09/2008 |
| 7302192 | Methods of spread-pulse modulation and nonlinear time domain equalization for fiber optic communication channels Methods, apparatus, and systems for an optical communication channel. A data signal is preconditioned prior to transmission over a fiber optic cable to minimize signal distortion and transmitted over a fiber optic cable. Preconditioning may include none, one or more... | 11/27/2007 |
| 7289568 | Spectrum management apparatus, method, and system A reconfigurable partial response encoder manages the emitted spectrum of a digital signal. ... | 10/30/2007 |
| 7286762 | Apparatus with spread-pulse modulation and nonlinear time domain equalization for fiber optic communication channels A transmitter and transceiver for an optical communication channel may include a data encoder, a partial response (PR) precoder, a pulse filter, and an electrical-to-optical converter to transmit a spread pulse signal over an optical communication channel. The data ... | 10/23/2007 |
| 7259929 | Device and signal processing circuit for magnetic recording, magnetic recording apparatus A magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus includes a partial-response equalization circuit having frequency characteristic of cutting off low-frequency signal components inclusive of DC components; and a maximum-likelihood decoder, in which a reproduced signal outp... | 08/21/2007 |
| 7257172 | Signal processing device utilizing partial response maximum likelihood detection A partial response (PR) waveform generator generates a digital value sequence of an expected PR waveform based on the output of a soft-decision Viterbi detector included in, for example, a first-stage decoder unit incorporated in an iterative decoder. The generator ... | 08/14/2007 |
| 7242712 | Decision feedback equalizer (DFE) for jitter reduction A decision feedback equalizer (DFE) for a receiver that can reduce jitter is disclosed. The DFE uses an equalizer structure that employs a symbol sampling operation at a decision device, also known as a slicer. In a receiver, the phase of a signal, such as an equali... | 07/10/2007 |
| 7234096 | Decoding method and recording-medium reproducing apparatus At the preceding stage of a first one of two APP decoders that constitute a turbo decoder, there is provided a logarithmic-likelihood computing circuit that creates and outputs logarithmic likelihoods L(y′i|yi) of a reproduced signal y′ | 06/19/2007 |
| 7218689 | Method and apparatus for determining the log-likelihood ratio with precoding An apparatus and method for recovering data transmitted in a wireless communication system is claimed. A plurality of signal points, the signal point including a plurality of modulation symbols from a plurality of coded bits, is received. A first subset of signal po... | 05/15/2007 |
| 7206351 | Signal evaluation devices and signal evaluation methods, signal quality evaluation methods and reproducing devices and recording devices A signal evaluation device for evaluating a decoded signal of maximum likelihood decoding includes: a differential metric circuit for finding differential metrics; comparators for judging whether a difference of differential metrics exceeds a predetermined threshold... | 04/17/2007 |
| 7203884 | Shaped spectral coding and recording systems therefor In the MSN encoded form, the symbols of each block of the present invention define a running digital sum (RDS) value, defined as RDS([a0a1 . . . aN−1])=−Σi(−1)ai where the symbols ai | 04/10/2007 |
| 7191386 | Method and apparatus for additive trellis encoding A method of additive encoding of data words includes receiving a plurality of data words, and searching a trellis representation of additive code words to identify a path in the trellis representing a sequence of patterns to be used to encode the data words. The tre... | 03/13/2007 |
| 7191083 | Method and apparatus for calibrating data-dependent noise prediction Disclosed herein is an apparatus and method of calibrating the parameters of a Viterbi detector 138 in which each branch metric is calculated based on noise statistics that depend on the signal hypothesis corresponding to the branch. An offline algorithm for ... | 03/13/2007 |
| 7177352 | Pre-cursor inter-symbol interference cancellation Methods and apparatus for canceling pre-cursor inter-symbol interference (ISI) are disclosed. In a digital communication system, a significant amount of noise can be attributed to the pre-cursor portion of the ISI. In a receiver, it can be relatively difficult to co... | 02/13/2007 |
| 7173784 | Apparatus for providing data dependent detection in a data read channel An apparatus for providing data dependent detection in a data read channel is disclosed. Parameters in a read channel are dynamically adjusted according to data dependent noise. For example, a comparison in an add-compare-select (ACS) unit of a Viterbi decoder may b... | 02/06/2007 |
| 7173961 | Frequency domain partial response signaling with high spectral efficiency and low peak to average power ratio The system includes a transmitter for generating a signal in the time domain and transforming the signal to the frequency domain, wherein the transmitter suppresses a plurality of sub-carriers of the signal, The resulting truncated signal is transmitted to the recei... | 02/06/2007 |
| 7167518 | Bandwidth-efficient modulation in communication systems A transmitter of digital data includes a modulator with an input for a carrier signal and an input for a first stream of control symbols. The modulator modulates the carrier signal with a second stream of symbols produced by the modulator. Each symbol of the second ... | 01/23/2007 |
| 7165000 | Method and apparatus for calibrating data-dependent noise prediction Disclosed herein is an apparatus and method of calibrating the parameters of a Viterbi detector 138 in which each branch metric is calculated based on noise statistics that depend on the signal hypothesis corresponding to the branch. An offline algorithm for ... | 01/16/2007 |
| 7139142 | Determination of magnetic tape write quality employing write equalization transitions A signal sampler digitally samples magnetic signals detected by read head(s) of a magnetic tape drive, and a signal quality system extracts from the digital samples of a format required signal of the magnetic signals, such as a data set separator pattern, an estimat... | 11/21/2006 |
| 7123429 | Method and apparatus for providing write pre-compensation using a read timing path A method and apparatus for providing write pre-compensation using a read timing path is disclosed. The present invention generates a first phase clock signal having a first phase and being synchronized with a read signal of a read path, generates a second phase cloc... | 10/17/2006 |
| 7110461 | Technique to enlarge data eyes in wireline communication systems A method and apparatus for enlarging data eyes in a wireline communication system involves pre-coding a data signal before transmission to generate a constant frequency characteristic independent of a state of the pre-coded data signal. The receiving circuit include... | 09/19/2006 |
| 7092181 | Magnetic recording apparatus A method of enhancing the thermal stability of gray codes is disclosed. The gray code block in a servo area is recorded with a combination of two different magnetization directions. When the two different magnetization directions are expressed as “+” and “−... | 08/15/2006 |
| 7050493 | Bandwidth-efficient modulation in communication systems A transmitter of digital data includes a modulator with an input for a carrier signal and an input for a first stream of control symbols. The modulator modulates the carrier signal with a second stream of symbols produced by the modulator. Each symbol of the second ... | 05/23/2006 |
| 7023912 | Hybrid adaptive equalizer for optical communications systems A method equalizes a received signal in an optical communications system. The received signal is passed through an analog delay line where it is tapped to generate a set of delayed copies of the received signal. In a set of analog multipliers, each delayed copy of t... | 04/04/2006 |
| 7019930 | Digital filtering and digital automatic gain control for a variable speed read channel A method and system are disclosed for providing a variable speed digital read channel. The read channel includes an analog portion and a digital portion. The read channel includes an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for converting an analog read signal into a sampl... | 03/28/2006 |
| 7002764 | Method and apparatus for providing generalized write pre-compensation A method and apparatus providing generalized write pre-compensation is disclosed. The present invention provides multiple phase signals to choose from for provide a shift to received write data to achieve a desired pre-compensation. ... | 02/21/2006 |
| 6999503 | Partial response signaling for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing The system includes a transmitter for generating a signal and a cyclic prefix, wherein the transmitter suppresses a plurality of sub-symbols of the signal to produce a partial response signal. A portion of the partial response signal is dropped and the resulting tru... | 02/14/2006 |
| 6973135 | Reduced delay implementation of fourier transform based channelizers and de-channelizers In a wireless telecommunications system, data processing delays associated with digital channelization and de-channelization may be reduced through the use of a technique that involves processing data blocks in conjunction with the transformation of the data blocks ... | 12/06/2005 |
| 6970522 | Data retrieval A digital data storage (DDS) system for reading DDS tapes employs a partial response maximum likelihood detection system which utilises redundancy in the 8-10 DC free modulation encoding to reduce low frequency noise. The system incorporates a time-varying trellis d... | 11/29/2005 |
| 6836511 | Apparatus for processing a reproduced digital signal A digital signal processing apparatus for reading out a signal from a recording medium of a digital recording apparatus of high-frequency cutoff type is provided which includes: a read head 2 for reading out the recorded signal from the recording medium 2;... | 12/28/2004 |
| 6788482 | Method and apparatus for Viterbi detector state metric re-normalization A method and apparatus for Viterbi detector state metric re-normalization. The method includes fabricating a Viterbi detector (138) having a predetermined number of states, wherein the Viterbi detector (138) stores a state metric value and a branch met... | 09/07/2004 |
| 6751276 | Method and apparatus for decoding a digital signal A method of decoding a digital signal includes processing the digital using a delay operation in accordance with a frequency characteristic of 1+D, where D is an output signal of the delay element. The processed digital signal is then converted to a three level conv... | 06/15/2004 |
| 6718502 | Precoders for partial response channels Precoders and their corresponding logic schemes, together with a method of using the precoders and their schemes to generate a media code sequence of symbols for data storage channels, with partial response equalization and a multilevel encoding/modulation scheme. P... | 04/06/2004 |
| 6717990 | Communication system and method for multi-rate, channel-optimized trellis-coded quantization A communication system (20) employs fixed rate channel-optimized, trellis-coded quantization (COTCQ) at a plurality of diverse encoding bit rates. COTCQ is performed through a COTCQ encoder (40) and COTCQ decoder (54). The COTCQ encoder and deco... | 04/06/2004 |
| 6718511 | Method and apparatus to detect a signal received from a channel signal Disclosed is an apparatus for detecting a signal received from a channel signal and for transforming this signal into a binary code sequence via a signal processing apparatus, which can perform a maximum likelihood detection of the reproduced data from an optical di... | 04/06/2004 |
| 6654413 | Phase synchronization method for extended partial response, and phase synchronization circuit and read channel circuit using this method "100", which is one of the (1, 7) RLL codes, is used as a clock acquisition pattern. After temporarily judging the sample output to be one of (1, -1), the phase error computing result for three samples (symbols) is added so as to cancel the errors of phas... | 11/25/2003 |
| 6647070 | Method and apparatus for combating impulse noise in digital communications channels This invention is particularly useful as a system for digital communications over channels that suffer from impulse noise, and particularly over return cable TV channels, downstream cable TV channels, and digital subscriber loops (DSL) channels for high s... | 11/11/2003 |
| 6470474 | Method and apparatus for identifying errors in a detected sequence of values A method and apparatus are provided for identifying errors in a detected sequence of values generates the detected sequence of values from channel samples using a detector designed for a channel with a first channel response characteristic. The detected s... | 10/22/2002 |
| 6396885 | Co-channel interference reduction in wireless communications systems Co-channel interference with a desired signal in a receiver arrangement of a TDMA cellular radio communications system having two antennas and receivers for providing two received signals is reduced. Two sampled signals are derived from each of the two re... | 05/28/2002 |