Provided are a Raman amplifier and a Raman pumping method. A light source unit outputs a pumping light having a wavelength that periodically changes. A light intensity control unit varies a light intensity of the pumping light using the pumping light to improve the gain flatness of a Raman gain. A control unit directs the light intensity control unit to control the light intensity of the pumping light in synchronization with changes in the wavelength of the pumping light.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a Raman amplifier of a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical transmission system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In large-capacity WDM optical transmission systems, erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA) and Raman amplifiers are used to obtain a broad gain bandwidth and a small noise figure.
The Raman amplifiers couple outputs from pump lasers of several different wavelengths using WDM optical couplers, send the coupled outputs from the pump lasers to optical fibers that is transmission paths, and amplify signal light.
Raman amplifiers use a plurality of pump lasers of different wavelengths to get good Raman gain flatness in a signal bandwidth. However, since pump lasers of different wavelengths generate Raman interaction with one another, the pump laser of the shortest wavelength requires an output much higher than the other pump lasers. Also, four-wave mixing may occur among the pump lasers wavelengths in a specific other transmission fiber type.
C. R. S. Fludger suggests a time division multiplexing (TDM) method in his paper "Novel Ultra-broadband High Performance Distributed Raman Amplifier Employing Pump Modulation" (OFC2002, WB4, pp. 183–184 (2002)). In the TDM method, pump lasers of different wavelengths are sequentially turned on and off over time in turn. Therefore, the pump lasers of difference wavelengths do not overlap in the fiber. The TDM method eliminates Raman interactions among pump lasers of different wavelengths, but requires many pump lasers of different wavelengths like conventional Raman amplifiers.
L. F. Mollenauer demonstrates in his paper "Time-Division Multiplexing of Pump Wavelengths to Achieve Ultra-broadband, Flat, Backward-Pumped Raman Gain" (Optics Letters, vol 27, pp. 595 (2002)) that it is possible to effectively design a Raman amplifier having a broad gain bandwidth and superior gain flatness using a single pump laser that has the features of a changeable and tunable wavelength.
When wavelengths of pump lasers change, contribution to Raman gain at each of the wavelengths is controlled by changing the duration of each of the wavelengths. In the paper, outputs from pump lasers are assumed to remain constant when the wavelengths of the pump lasers are changed. However, in practice, there is no pump laser whose output remains constant when the wavelength of the pump laser changes. Also, since a change in wavelength affects laser dynamics, outputs from pump lasers become unstable or transient phenomena occur when the wavelengths of the pump lasers change.

Raman amplifier and raman pumping method

Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute


Puck and collar alignment device embodiments facilitate simultaneous insertion of free end portions of screw shafts into open end portions of complementary drive couplings. The embodiments have alignment keys that correct deviations in alignment and rotation introduced while moving the screw shafts though a barrel of an extruder. Tapered front faces of the alignment keys incrementally adjust coaxial alignment, and tapered side faces of the alignment keys incrementally adjust rotational position cooperatively between the alignment devices and drive couplings. The coaxial and rotational position adjustments cooperate to simultaneously guide multiple alignment keys to fit within corresponding keyway sections while providing alignment of external splines on the screw shafts to interlock in a timed relationship with internal splines on the drive couplings during the simultaneous insertion.

Output shafts of an extruder drive motor gearbox rotate according to a precise timing relative to each other. The precise timing is transferred to drive couplings attached to the output shafts, and then to screw shafts attached to the couplings, by tight fitting (precise tolerance) complementary splines. The complementary splines between the screw shafts and drive couplings interlock when free end portions of the screw shafts are inserted into open end portions of drive couplings at precise orientations. The precise orientations maintain the correct timing of intermeshing screws in an extruder barrel as the intermeshing screws rotate about longitudinal axes in response to drive motor force to apply shear forces to raw materials and thereby form a finished product.

Extruder screw shaft alignment apparatus and method


An ultrasonic wire bonder including apparatus for testing a bond includes a bonding tool ultrasonically driven for welding a wire on an underlying substrate and a clamp for holding the wire to be bonded by the bonding tool. The same clamp or other pulling apparatus moves the wire that has been bonded with a pre-established force to determine whether the bond will withstand the force. The accompanying method for testing a bond includes holding the wire after the bond has been made with the same holder and pulling the wire with a pre-established force substantially along the direction of the wire's longitudinal axis to determine the strength of the bond.

1. Field of the Invention
The field of this invention lies within the wire bonding art. It particularly lies within the art of ultrasonic wire bonding as it relates to ultrasonically bonding a wire on such items as electronic circuits and components. The invention is more specifically directed to testing wire bonds through a pull testing system. The pull testing system specifically integrates the process of the pull test with the process of wire bonding.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior to this invention the art of pull testing wire bonds was generally done with a pulling device or hook positioned underneath the loop of the bonded wire.
The pulling device or hook lifts up against the wire and places it in tension. This can be seen in FIG. 1 which shows an example of the prior art. The equipment is generally of a type that is stand alone equipment that either functions manually or automatically.
One method of pull testing is by means of a force being applied to the bonded wire loop by a motor driven loading arm. The hook or arm, which is connected to the free end of a flexible cantilever provides a certain force and a strain gauge on the beam measures the deflection. In this manner, the applied pulling force can be indicated by a signal corresponding to the measured force. Further to this extent, the system signifies the distance the hook moves when the strain gauge starts to generate its signal.
Other bonding tests incorporate certain devices to measure the bond's integrity by applying a known and infinitely variable tensile force to the wire under test.
Pull testing when used as a quality check for a bond is generally done in a non-destructive manner. A force is used to stress the bond so as to not cause damage to the wire or the bond. Further pull testing in the prior art can also be done in a destructive manner where the bond is pulled to its failure point. This method is only used on a sample basis since it destroys the bond it is measuring.
The pull force used to non-destructively pull test bonds uses a conventional pulling hook and is limited to a relatively low force. A high force can not be used inasmuch as the hook which is pulling across the axis of the length of the wire imparts a permanent kink, bend, bow or set in the wire. In other words, it bows the wire up, and distorts it from its original relationship as it overlies the circuit, or substrate.
A practical limit to non-destructive pulling forces is within ten to fifteen percent of the yield strength of the wire.
It has been thought that in order to eliminate the bow, the kink, or the angular upward orientation after a pull test is effectuated, the wire should be pulled along its axis. In such a manner, the pull test pulls the wire to a higher level of forces without damaging the wire. This invention enables this pull force along the length of the wire as opposed to across the wire.
Certain patents incorporate devices for testing wire bonds in the entire unit or bond head that moves to and from the bond to be tested. A gauge is incorporated which uses wire grasping hooks operatively connected to the gauge. After grasping a wire in a bonded configuration of a circuit, the gauge is moved away from the support until the wire bond fails and the force is registered by the gauge. In such destructive testing, as well as tests which limit destruction of the bond, substantial complexity of equipment is encountered.
The utilization of pulling hooks is limited in many conditions. The hooks are usually round and have a diameter that is two to three times the diameter of the wire that is to be tested. The hooks can also have a 90.degree. bend forming them into an L shape. These characteristics of the hooks limit them for use on wires that have a very low loop or are not substantially standing away from the surface between which the hooks must engage the wire. Furthermore, the hooks can not be used on wires that are closely bonded together, nor on wires that cross underneath other wires.
The state of the art for pull testing in the semiconductor and the hybrid industries is to use the pull testing as a quality check for the bonding process. It is generally a separate process that is performed after the bonding process is completed. In most cases, there is a significant time span between the bonding and the pull testing. This is not desirable, because in the time it takes to get results from the pull testing, several more rejected parts could be produced by the bonder. Thus, it is desirable to have a system that checks the quality of the bonding as soon as possible after making the bond.
Other methods of checking the quality of wire bonds is to monitor other variables during the bonding process such as the ultrasonic impedance, bond deformation, or frequency shifts. These second order monitoring systems have proven to be valuable in detecting some process variations, but are not as reliable as actually testing the bond through a pull test.
Some ultrasonic wire bonders incorporate a measure of bond quality obtained through non-destructive testing of the bond by developing a voltage proportional to the amplitude of the transverse motion of the ultrasonic bonding tool. The methods develop, by means of a transducer, a second voltage proportional to the tangential component of the forces applied during bonding. The voltages are then fed into a logic circuit to derive their ratio which is a measure of the bonding quality. These methods are not always reliable.
Further bond quality monitoring systems incorporate an analysis of the relative quality of bonding by means of the transducer power signal. In such cases, a series of analog computations based upon the logarithm of the impedance of the transducer is used in order to create a measure of bond quality.
Still other testers incorporate the utilization of a plurality of frequency readings that are taken and measured during the formation of the ultrasonic bond. The information is employed to calculate a bond quality rating, and predicting whether a good bond has been made. This is done by means of providing a signal indicative of a predetermined plurality of cycles from an ultrasonic generator in a stable source of pulses applied to a second counter. Here again, such methods are not deemed to be reliable.
A substantial object of this invention is to overcome the deficiencies of the foregoing prior art.
Another object of this invention is to provide a method and apparatus for pull testing wires that are closely oriented.
A further object is to provide a method of tensile stressing the wire and bond without degrading the bond.
Another object is to provide a fast and inexpensive way to test wire bonds.
Still further, the method and apparatus provides a method of stopping the wire bond process immediately after an inferior bond has been made.
Another object provides a method of testing wire bonds that eventually might become inaccessible by further assembly processes.
Still yet another object is to provide apparatus and a process for testing bonds that have a low loop of wire from the surface that would be incapable of normal conventional bond testing.
A further object is to provide a method of testing bonds that is not influenced by the angle of the wire forming the loop between the bonds.
Yet another object of this invention is to provide a method of pull testing a first bond independent of a second bond.

Integrated pull tester with an ultrasonic wire bonder


A laundry treating appliance comprising a tub with a tub access opening, a rotatable drum located within the tub and partially defining a treating chamber, a drying air duct having an inlet formed in the tub and defining a cross-sectional area of the inlet, and a filter overlying the inlet and having a surface area greater than the cross-sectional area of the drying air duct.

Laundry treating appliances, such as clothes washers, clothes dryers, combination washer/dryers, refreshers, and non-aqueous systems, can have a configuration based on a rotating drum, located within a tub, which is located within a cabinet. The drum defines a treating chamber having an access opening and the cabinet has a corresponding opening. An annular bellow can extend between the cabinet opening and the tub and/or drum.
A filter can be placed in an air flow circuit providing air to the drum in order to aid in the capture, or reduction of lint from the circulating fluid flow within the laundry treating appliance. The filter ensures that lint is collected at a central location and not passed through various components of the laundry treating appliance used during the drying phase (e.g., blowing fans, heaters, condensers, etc.). During operation, lint can accumulate on the filters. This lint accumulation can negatively affect performance of the laundry appliance, specifically during drying phases. The lint can, for example, accumulate at an inlet of the drying air duct (e.g., inlet of a recirculation system, or blower) and restrict the airflow from the tub to the drying air duct, therefore, reducing the drying efficiency of the laundry treating appliance.

Laundry treating appliance with a filter


An adjustable lower back restoration device comprising an elevated base portion and a set of leg receiving channels divided by an upwardly upstanding central portion to position the legs of the user bent at the knees at approximately 90 degrees. The base has a height adjustment system to adjust the height of the base to the length of the upper legs of the user.

Chronic lower back pain is a common problem. The muscles of the lower back are tonic and almost always in a contracted state, due to the naturally extended position of the lower back and to the fact that these muscles are postural. Even when sleeping, these muscles are often contracted to some degree, depending on a person's sleeping position. Overuse and fatigue of these muscles contribute to lower back pain. Other contributing causes of lower back pain may include poor posture and poor movement patterns or injuries and strains, often attributed to overuse.
Further, when a person is lying on his or her back, stress is placed on the coccyx and sacroiliac joints and can result in sciatic nerve strain. In order to overcome this stress, a person will often lie on his or her side. However, this results in the upper leg crossing over the lower leg, placing the hips out of alignment and causing the twisting of the pelvis and spine. These may cause the rotation of the lower vertebrae, which in turn results in torsional strain on the spine and muscles of the lower back and related soft tissues. In order to overcome such problems during sleep, it is often recommended to sleep with a pillow between the knees. The pillow helps to keep the two legs and hips more even, with the legs in a more spread-apart position. This helps to reduce pelvic rotation for a more restful sleep.
Two of the only postural positions which provide relief of both chronic muscular back pain and any twisting of the lower spine, especially when a person is at rest or sleeping, are: 1) when a person is laying on his or her back but with the upper legs elevated such that they are angled at approximately 90 degrees to the upper body and, 2) when a person is laying on his or her side, in the same position and also with the legs at approximately 90 degrees, but with the knees separated such that the hips are perfectly even, in-line and straight, resulting in a perfectly straight and untwisted spine. Both positions result in the relative relaxation and neutral—neither contracted nor stretched—state of the otherwise tonic and always contracted lower back muscles. They also result in a straight, unstrained and untwisted spine. These positions are uncommon but very comfortable and often result in immediate pain relief and also a restorative and therapeutic relaxation of the lower back, gentle decompression of the lower vertebrae and spine along with all of the related muscles and connective tissues.
However, use of a conventional pillow for this purpose has proved difficult and unwieldy since any motion may act to dislodge the pillow. Further, the soft nature of many pillows does not maintain these beneficial positions. Various cushions, pillows and supports for positioning and supporting the legs/knees in a parted position have been disclosed in prior art. However, each has failed to provide a simple, yet effective positioning apparatus. Further, many do not address the issue of providing an effective position to create neutral lower back muscles. Nonetheless, this has resulted in a significant variety of products designed to try and provide greater back comfort, pain relief, health and support.
Most of these products have one fixed design. As all individuals vary anatomically, and as everyone may have a personal preference, the varying possibilities would render customization to all individuals to be impractical. Many of these inventions are made of materials that are either too hard for normal, healthy blood circulation, normal movement and adequate comfort, or too soft for adequate stability and effectiveness. One of the major issues with the current pillows that are placed between a user's legs during sleep is their inability to remain in the desired position throughout the night. As a user moves during the night, the pillow slips out from between the legs. Further, they do not address the problem of the relative position of the lower back.
The present invention provides a device to support a user in an optimal position and uniquely minimize spinal and lower back muscular stress. It is also completely customizable to fit the particular needs of each individual of any size, body and leg length. In addition, the unique design and form of the present invention provides one single solution regardless as to whether the user is lying down face up, or turns to one side or the other, or when they are in transition from one position to the others and back again. Further, the present invention also works when the user is sitting.

Adjustable, lower back restoration device


An agricultural unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) includes a fuselage, a flight power apparatus, a plurality of spray nozzles, a plurality of water pumps, and a controller. The flight power apparatus is mounted at the fuselage. The plurality of spray nozzles are installed below the flight power apparatus. The plurality of water pumps are connected to the plurality of spray nozzles and configured to deliver liquid to the spray nozzles. The controller is electrically coupled to the plurality of water pumps, and configured to selectively control one or more of the plurality of water pumps to pump the liquid to one or more of the spray nozzles connected to the one or more of the water pumps.

Conventional multi-rotor agricultural unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) generally use a single water pump connected to a pipeline. One end of the pipeline is connected to a spray nozzle, such that a spray liquid path is formed. The method can only realize on-off of the liquid circuit system and cannot realize precisely controlled spraying.


A system for completing a well with multiple zones of production includes a casing having a plurality of valves that are integrated therein for isolating each well zone. Communication is established between each underlying formation and the interior of the casing, and a treatment fluid is delivered to each of the multiple well zones. Mechanisms for actuating one or more of the valves include, but are not limited to, a dart, a drop ball, a running tool, and a control line actuating system.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to recovery of hydrocarbons in subterranean formations, and more particularly to a system and method for delivering treatment fluids to wells having multiple production zones.
2. Background of the Invention
In typical wellbore operations, various treatment fluids may be pumped into the well and eventually into the formation to restore or enhance the productivity of the well. For example, a non-reactive "fracturing fluid" or a "frac fluid" may be pumped into the wellbore to initiate and propagate fractures in the formation thus providing flow channels to facilitate movement of the hydrocarbons to the wellbore so that the hydrocarbons may be pumped from the well. In such fracturing operations, the fracturing fluid is hydraulically injected into a wellbore penetrating the subterranean formation and is forced against the formation strata by pressure. The formation strata is forced to crack and fracture, and a proppant is placed in the fracture by movement of a viscous-fluid containing proppant into the crack in the rock. The resulting fracture, with proppant in place, provides improved flow of the recoverable fluid (i.e., oil, gas or water) into the wellbore. In another example, a reactive stimulation fluid or "acid" may be injected into the formation. Acidizing treatment of the formation results in dissolving materials in the pore spaces of the formation to enhance production flow.
Currently, in wells with multiple production zones, it may be necessary to treat various formations in a multi-staged operation requiring many trips downhole. Each trip generally consists of isolating a single production zone and then delivering the treatment fluid to the isolated zone. Since several trips downhole are required to isolate and treat each zone, the complete operation may be very time consuming and expensive.
Accordingly, there exists a need for systems and methods to deliver treatment fluids to multiple zones of a well in a single trip downhole.

System for completing multiple well intervals


Iron containing substrates are electrically polarized in a pre-plating composition which activates the surface of the steel substrate to receive thin tin or tin alloy. The thin tin or tin alloy is electroplated onto the activate surface of the steel substrate. The thin tinplate and alloy have reduced amounts of pores in the surface.

Tinplate has been successfully used for packaging foodstuffs by virtue of a fortuitous redox-potential reversal. Under normal oxygenated conditions, a steel substrate is anodic to the tin coating and any porosity of the tin coating exposes the steel to the unfortunate predicament of being a small anode-connected-to-a-big-cathode, leading to rapid red-rusting under atmospheric exposure, or pinhole perforation when exposed as a foodstuff package, i.e. a tin can. However, assuming an initial pore-free tin coating, the oxygen in a newly enclosed tin can (oxygen would be found in the headspace and be dissolved in the foodstuff) would be consumed by corrosion of the exposed free-tin during the stoving process in which the food can is heated, cooking the contents. This etching of the free-tin may expose the electrolytically inert FeSn2 intermetallic layer, an interfacial layer formed by reaction of the molten tin with the steel substrate during the reflow-melting process used in tinplate manufacture, or expose the steel substrate, if the FeSn2 intermetallic layer is porous, leading to can failure. Assuming no porosity of an exposed intermetallic layer, the free-tin corrosion continues until the can is fully de-oxygenated, at which point the electrochemical couple between tin and steel reverse: the steel substrate is now cathodic. Any steel then exposed by slow dissolution of the tin coating is cathodically protected by corrosion of the surrounding free-tin, resulting in a can life determined by the amount of available free tin (i.e. that not bound in the inert FeSn2 intermetallic layer).
The overall suitability and quality of tinplate for food packaging is thus determined by:                The gross porosity of the tin coating; the steel substrate should not be exposed during stoving, thereby forestalling rapid initial can failure.        The impermeability of the FeSn2 intermetallic layer. This layer should be dense and pore-free.        The amount of free tin higher amounts both allow for greater oxygen-removal during stoving and also permit long shelf-lives under deoxygenated conditions.
Porosity is the principle factor in determining tinplate corrosion resistance, both bulk porosity and porosity of the FeSn2 intermetallic layer. Porosity of tinplate is commonly due to either sub-optimal tin electrodeposition, poor blackplate (the unplated steel substrate) activation (cleaning and pickling) and also gross surface inhomogeneities such as carbon residues, oils, oxide or other steel substrate inclusions.
There are different grades of tinplate, normally differentiated by their tin coating-weight, with lighter weights<2.8 g/m2 being used in an epoxy-lacquered state and thicker coatings>5.6 g/m2 being used in applications requiring superior corrosion resistance such as white-fruits such as pineapple, asparagus, or sulfide-stain resistant meats. For corrosion resistance, the impermeability of the intermetallic layer plays a role and tinplate manufacturers aim for impermeability by producing thicker intermetallic layers. As the FeSn2 intermetallic layer is formed by consumption of the free tin, a thick FeSn2 intermetallic layer typically requires a high initial tin coating weight and an extended reflow-melting time.
With the rising price of tin metal, tin packaging has been shifting to lighter coating weights in an effort to reduce cost, but have hit a technological barrier in that electrolytically produced tinplate for food packaging is traditionally considered to be porous at coating weights below 2.8 g/m2. Certain foodstuffs rely on the dissolved tin for further preservation of color, texture and flavor and cannot easily switch to a lacquered can. There thus exists a need for thin-tin and thin-tin alloy tinplate that has corrosion resistance equal to that of higher coating weight material.


Passive tags use two antennas with only limited mutual coupling, one of which receives a power/clock field and the other of which receives a data signal. An area-reading antenna, or two or more antennas, are deployed to generate the power/clock field, from a base station. The base station, or active tags, or both, generate the data signals from time to time. This topology together with the use of low frequencies permits area reads, and permits small and economical passive tags, and further permits localization of a particular passive tag as being nearby to a particular active tag.

Radio Frequency Identity tags, or RFID tags, have a long history and have in recent times RFID has become synonymous with "passive backscattered transponders." Passive transponders obtain power and a clock reference from a carrier and communicate by detuning an antenna, often with a fixed pre-programmed ID. These tags are designed to replace barcodes and are capable of low-power two-way communications. Much of the patent literature surrounding these radio tags and RFID tags, as well as the published non-patent literature, use terminology that has not been well defined and can be confusing.
Many of the patents referenced do not make many distinctions outlined in the glossary and their authors may not at that time been fully informed about the functional significance of the differences outlined above. For example, many of the early issued patents (e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 4,724,427, U.S. Pat. No. 4,857,893, U.S. Pat. No. 3,739,376, U.S. Pat. No. 4,019,181) do not specify the frequency for the preferred embodiment yet it has become clear that dramatic differences occur in performance and functional ability depending on the frequency.
One of the first references to a radio tag in the patent literature was a passive radiating transponder described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,406,391, Vehicle Identification System, issued in 1968. The device was designed to track moving vehicles. U.S. Pat. No. 3,406,391 teaches that a carrier signal may be used to communicate to a radio tag as well as provide power. The tags were powered using microwave frequencies and many subcarrier frequencies were transmitted to the tag. The radio tag was programmed to pre-select several of the subcarriers and provided an active re-transmission back when a subcarrier message correspond to particular pre-programmed bits in the tag. This multifrequency approach limited data to about five bits to eight bits and the range of the devices was limited to only a few inches. U.S. Pat. No. 3,541,257, Communication Response Unit, issued in 1970 further teaches that a digital address may be transmitted and detected to activate a radio tag. The radio tag may be capable of transmitting and receiving electromagnetic signals with memory and the radio tag may work within a full addressable network and has utility in many areas. Many other similar devices were described in the following years (e.g. The Mercury News, "RFID Pioneers Discus Its Origins," Sun, Jul. 18, 2004).
U.S. Pat. No. 3,689,885, Inductively Coupled Passive Responder and Interrogator Unit Having Multidimension Electromagnetic Field Capabilities, issued in 1972 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,859,624, Inductively Coupled Transmitter-Responder Arrangement also issued in 1972. These patents teach that a passive radiating digital radio tag may be powered and activated by induction using low frequencies (e.g., 50 kHz) and transmit coded data back modulated at a higher frequency (e.g., 450 kHz) to an integrator. It also teaches that the clock and 450 kHz transmitting carrier from the radio tag may be derived from the 50 kHz induction power carrier. The ceramic filter required to increase the frequency from 50 kHz to a high frequency is, however, an expensive large external component, and phase-locked loops or other methods commonly used to multiply a frequency upward would consume considerable power. These tags use a low frequency "power channel" to power the tag, to serve as the time base for the tag, and finally to serve as the trigger for the tag to transmit its ID. Thus, the power channel contains a single bit of on/off information.
This is shown in FIG. 1. The active low frequency transceiver tag consists of four basic components:
1. the antenna, typically a wound loop or coil, that has been tuned to low frequency (50 kHz)
2. a ceramic filter to multiply the low frequency up to a higher frequency (e.g. 450 kHz)
3. logic and
4. storage to generate an active signal that drives an antenna and transmits the tag's ID.
In contrast, as will be described in detail below, the present invention uses the carrier only as a power source and time-base generator. It does not necessarily use the carrier to trigger the transmission of the ID. This makes it possible for the tag to use half-duplex protocol that makes it possible for the tag to be written and read by an active radiating tag.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,713,148, Transponder Apparatus and System, issued in 1973 teaches that the carrier to the transponder may also transmit digital data and that the interrogation means (data input) may also be used to power the transponder. This patent also teaches that nonvolatile memory may be added to store data that might be received and to track things like use and costs for tolls. The inventors do not specify or provide details on frequency or antenna configurations.
The devices referenced above all rely on the antenna in radiating transceiver mode, where the power from the radio tag is actually "pumped" into a tuned circuit that includes a radiating antenna, which in turn produces an electromagnetic signal that can be detected at a distance by an interrogator.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,427,614, Wireless and Radioless (Nonradiant) Telemetry System For Monitoring Conditions, issued in 1969 was among the first to teach that the radio tag antenna may communicate simply by detuning the antenna rather than radiating power through the tuned antenna. The change in tuned frequency may be detected by a base-station generating a carrier. This non-radiating mode reduces the power required to operate a tag and puts the detection burden on the base station. In effect the radio tag's antenna becomes part of a tuned circuit created by the combination of the base-station, and a carrier. Any change in the radio tag's tuned frequency by any means can be detected by the base-station's tuned carrier circuit. This is also often referred to as a back-scattered mode and is the basis for most modern RF-ID radio tags.
Many Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) systems also function using this backscattered non-radiating mode (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,774,504; U.S. Pat. No. 3,500,373; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,103,234, Electronic Article Surveillance System) and most are also inductive frequencies. Many other telemetry systems in widespread use for pacemakers, implantable devices, and sensors in rotating centrifuges (U.S. Pat. No. 3,713,124, Temperature Telemetering Apparatus) also make use of this backscattered mode to reduce power consumption. U.S. Pat. No. 4,361,153 (Implant Telemetry System) teaches that low frequencies (Myriametric) can transmit though conductive materials and work in harsh environments. Most of these implantable devices also use backscattered communication mode for communication to conserve battery power.
Thus, more recent and modern RF-ID tags are passive, backscattered transponder tags and have an antenna consisting of a wire coil or an antenna coil etched or silk-screened onto a PC board (e.g. see U.S. Pat. No. 4,857,893: Single chip transponder device, 1989; U.S. Pat. No. 5,682,143, Radio Frequency Identification Tag). These tags use a carrier that is reflected back from the tag. The carrier is used by the tag for four functions:
1. The carrier contains the incoming digital data stream signal; in many cases the carrier only performs the logical function to turn the tag on/off and to activate the transmission of its ID. In other cases the data may be a digital instruction.
2. The carrier serves as the tag's power source. The tag receives a carrier signal from a base station and uses the rectified carrier signal to provide power to the integrated circuitry and logic on the tag.
3. The carrier serves as a clock and time base to drive the logic and circuitry within the integrated circuit. In some cases the carrier signal is divided to produce a lower clock speed.
4. The carrier may also in some cases serve as a frequency and phase reference for radio communications and signal processing. The tag can use one coil to receive a carrier at a precise frequency and phase reference for the circuitry within the radio tag for communications back through a second coil to the reader/writer making accurate signal processing possible. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,879,756 Radio Broadcast Communication Systems).
Thus the main advantage of a passive backscattered transponder is that it eliminates the battery as well as a crystal in LF tags. HF and UHF tags are unable to Use the carrier as a time base because the speed would require high speed chips and power consumption would be too high. It is therefore generally assumed that a passive backscattered transponder tag is less costly than an active or transceiver tag since it has fewer components and is less complex.
These modern non-radiating, transponder backscattered RFID tags typically operate at frequencies within the Part 15 rules of the FCC (Federal Communication Commission) between 10 kHz to 500 kHz (Low Frequency or Ultra Low Frequency ULF), 13.56 MHz (High Frequency, HF) in or 433 MHz (MHF) and 868/915 MHz or 2.2 GHz (Ultra High Frequency UHF). The higher frequencies are typically chosen because they provide high bandwidth for communications, on a high-speed conveyor for example, or where many thousands of tags must be read rapidly. In addition, it is generally believed that the higher frequencies are more efficient for transmission of signals and require much smaller antennas for optimal transmission. (It may be noted that a self-resonated antenna for 915 MHz can have a diameter as small as 0.5 cm and may have a range of tens of feet.)
The major disadvantage of the backscattered mode radio tag, however, is that it has limited power, limited range, and is susceptible to noise and reflections over a radiating active device. This is not because of loss of communication signal but instead is largely because the passive tag requires a minimum of 1 volt on its antenna to power the chip. As a result many backscattered tags do not work reliably in harsh environments and require a directional "line of sight" antenna.
One proposed method to extend the range of a passive backscattered tag has been to add a thin flat battery to the battery to the backscattered tag so that the power drop on the antenna is not the critical range limiting factor. However, since all of these tags use high frequencies the tags must continue to operate in backscattered mode to conserve battery life. The power consumed by any electronic circuit tends to increase with the frequency of operation. Thus, if a chip were to use an industry standard 280 mAh capacity CR2525 Li cell (which is the size of a quarter) we would expect battery life based solely on operating frequency to be:
TABLE 1Assumes a 280 mAh Li Battery:Power (uAHr)FrequencyCurrent (uA)Predicted LifeUnits128 kHz131.00Years13.56 MHz  1023.78Months915 MHz7,0311.66Days
Thus most recent active RFID tags that may have a battery to power the tag circuitry, such as active tags and devices operating in the 13.56 MHz to 2.3 GHz frequency range, also work as backscattered transponders (U.S. Pat. No. 6,700,491: Radio frequency identification tag with thin-film battery for antenna, 2004; also see US Patent No. 2004/0217865A1, RFID tag 2004, for detailed overview of issues). Because these tags are active backscattered transponders they cannot work in an on-demand peer-to-peer network setting, and they require line-of-sight antennas that provide a carrier that "illuminates" an area or zone or an array of carrier beacons.
Active radiating transceiver tags in the high-frequency range (433 MHz) that can provide on-demand peer-to-peer network of tags are available (e.g. SaviTag ST-654, U.S. Pat. No. 5,485,166: Efficient electrically small loop antenna with a planar base element, 1996) and full visibility systems described above (U.S. Pat. No. 5,686,902, U.S. Pat. No. 6,900,731). These tags do provide full functionality and what might be called Real-Time Visibility, but they are expensive (over $100.00 US) and large (videotape size, 6¼×2⅛×1⅛ inches) because of the power issues described above and must use replaceable batteries since even with such a 1.5 inch by 6 inch Li battery these tags are only capable of 2,500 reads and writes.
It is also generally assumed that a an HF or UHF passive backscattered transponder radio tags will have a lower cost-to-manufacture as compared with an LF passive backscattered transponder because of the antenna. An HF or UHF tag can obtain a high-Q 1/10-wavelength antenna by etching or use of conductive silver silk-screening the antenna geometry onto a flexi circuit. An LF or ULF antenna cannot use either because the Q will be too low due to high resistance of the traces or silver paste. So LF and ULF tags must use wound coils made of copper.
Thus, in summary a passive transponder tag has the potential to lower cost by eliminating the need for a battery as well as an internal frequency reference means. An active backscattered transponder tag eliminates the extra cost of a crystal but also provides for enhanced amplification of signals over a passive backscattered transponder and enhanced range. In addition, it is also possible to use a carrier reference to provide enhanced anti-collision methods so as to make it possible to read many tags within a carrier field (U.S. Pat. No. 6,297,734, U.S. Pat. No. 6,566,997, U.S. Pat. No. 5,995,019, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,591,951). Finally active radiating transceiver tags require large batteries, are expensive and may cost tens to hundreds of dollars.
A second major area of importance to this technology is the use of two co-planar antennas in radio tags placed in such a way as to inductively decouple the antennas from each other so they may be independently tuned. U.S. Pat. No. 2,779,908, Means for Reducing Electro-Magnetic Coupling 1957 teaches that electromagnetic coupling of two co-planar air-core coils may be minimized by shifting the coils as well as placing a neutralizing shorted coil inside the area of the two coils. U.S. Pat. No. 4,922,261 (Aerial systems) teaches that this may be used in a passive transponder tag in that two frequencies and two antennas may be used, one for transmitting data and a second for receiving data thereby providing double the communication speed with full-duplex data transfers. U.S. Pat. No. 5,012,236 (Electromagnetic Energy Transmission and Detection Apparatus) makes use of decoupled coils to enhance range and minimize sensitivity to angles. FIG. 2 shows the arrangement and method to decouple two antennas described by U.S. Pat. No. 4,922,261. In this case one antenna is used for transmitting data, and the second is used for receiving data. The antenna arrangement makes it possible to have two data communication frequencies so the tag can communicate with a full-duplex protocol.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,584,301, Inductive Reader Device and Method with Integrated Antenna and Signal Coupler, also discloses a co-planar geometry that minimizes coupling between two coils. The purpose was to enable a two-frequency full-duplex mode of communication to enhance communications speed. In most cases the speed of communication is not a critical issue in visibility systems and other applications described below. FIG. 3 shows this coil arrangement to decouple two antennas. Coil 6 is shifted in the same plane from coil 5. The primary purpose disclosed in the prior art is to provide higher data communication speeds between tag and the base station.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,176,433, (Reader/writer Having Coil Arrangements to Restrain Electromagnetic Field Intensity at a Distance) makes use of a co-planar coil to enhance range of a backscattered transponder tag used as an IC card and using a 13.56 MHz carrier. The isolated antennas may be used to communicate to the tag and to maximize power required to transmit to the tag under within the limits of the Wireless Communications Act.
Many publications and patents teach the advantages of using RFID tags for tracking products in warehouses, packages etc. In some cases passive transponders may be used but additional location and automated systems may be required for the base-station (e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 6,705,522, Mobile Entity Tracker, 2004). However, most investigators now recognize that a fully integrated peer-to-peer on-demand network approach using active radio tags has many functional advantages in these systems over a system (U.S. Pat. No. 6,705,522: Mobile Entity Tracker; U.S. Pat. No. 6,738,628: Electronic Physical Asset Tracking; US Pub. Patent Application No. 2002/0111819A1, Supply chain visibility for real-time tracking of goods; U.S. Pat. No. 6,900,731, Method for Monitoring and Tracking Objects; U.S. Pat. No. 5,686,902, Communication system for communicating with tags; U.S. Pat. No. 4,807,140, Electronic Label Information Exchange System). One of the major disadvantages of a passive nonradiating system is that it requires the use of handheld readers or portals to read tags and changes in process control (e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 6,738,628: Electronic Physical Asset Tracking). A system that provides data without process change and without need to carry out portal reads is more likely to be successful as a visibility system.
It will also be appreciated that the prior art has assumed low frequency tags to be slow, short range, and too costly. For example, both U.S. Pat. No. 5,012,236, U.S. Pat. No. 5,686,902 discuss the short-range issues associated with magnetic induction and low frequency tags. Because of the supposed many apparent disadvantages of ULF and LF, the RF-ID frequencies now recommended by many commercial (Item-Level Visibility In the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: A Comparison of HF, UHF RFID Technologies, July 2004, Texas Instruments, Phillips Semiconductors, and TagSys Inc.), government organizations (see Radio Frequency Identification Feasibility Studies and Pilot, FDA Compliance Policy HFC-230, Sec 400. 210, November, 2004, recommend use of LF, HF or UHF) as well as standards associations (EPCglobal, web page tag specifications, January 2005, note LF and ULF are excluded) do not mention or discuss the use of ULF as an option in many important retail applications. Many of the commercial organizations recommending these higher frequencies believe that passive and active radio tags in these low frequencies are not suitable for any of these applications for reasons given above.
In addition, several commercial companies actually manufacture both ULF and LF radio tags (e.g. both Texas Instruments and Philips Semiconductor. See Item-Level Visibility In the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: A Comparison of HF, UHF RFID Technologies, July 2004, Texas Instruments, Phillips Semiconductors, and TagSys Inc.) yet only recommend the use of 13. 56 MHz or higher again because of the perceived disadvantage of ULF and LF outlined above, and the many perceived advantages of HF and UHF).
In sum, system designers for modern applications have chosen not to use LF radio tags because:
1. ULF is believed to have very short range since it uses largely inductive or magnetic radiance that drops off proportional to 1/d3 while far-field HF and UHF drops off proportional to 1/d, where d is distance from the source. Thus, the inductive or magnetic radiance mode of transmission will theoretically limit the distance of transmission, and that has been one of the major justifications for use of HF and UHF passive radio tags in many applications.2. The transmission speed is inherently slow using ULF as compared to HF and UHF since the tag must communicate with low baud rates because of the low transmission carrier frequency.3. Many sources of noise exist at these ULF frequencies from electronic devices, motors, fluorescent ballasts, computer systems, power cables.4. Thus ULF is often thought to be inherently more susceptible to noise.5. Radio tags in this frequency range are thought to be more expensive since they require a wound coil antenna because of the requirement for many turns to achieve optimal electrical properties (maximum Q). In contrast HF and UHF tags can use antennas etched directly on a printed circuit board and ULF would have even more serious distance limitations with such an antenna.6. Current networking methods used by high frequency tags, as used in HF and UHF, are impractical due to such low bandwidth of ULF tags described above in point 3 immediately above.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.


A system, in one embodiment, includes an optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging system having a light source configured to emit light. The OCT imaging system further includes a beam splitter configured to receive the light from the light source, split the light into a first light portion directed along a sample arm comprising a sample and a second light portion directed along a reference arm comprising a reference mirror, receive a first reflected light portion from the sample arm and a second reflected light portion from the reference arm, combine the first and second reflected light portions to obtain an interference signal. Further, the OCT imaging system includes a controller having logic configured to perform an auto-ranging process to match the reference arm with the sample arm.

Embodiments of the present invention relate to systems, methods, and devices for imaging and, more particularly, to optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging techniques.
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive imaging technique that is often used in clinical applications to obtain high-resolution cross-sectional images of subsurface in vivo (living) biological tissue and other materials. For example, OCT imaging techniques are used in a variety of medical fields, including ophthalmology, cardiology, and dermatology, to name just a few. In particular, OCT imaging is popular in ophthalmology for ocular diagnostic purposes, where it may be used to obtain detailed images of a retina or other structures within a human eye. For instance, OCT imaging has been known to be capable of delineating layers of the retina with a very high degree of clarity. Currently, some OCT imaging techniques are capable of producing images at micrometer, or even sub-micrometer, scale resolutions.
OCT imaging systems operate on the principle of interferometry, in which subsurface light reflections are resolved to provide a tomographic visualization of a sample (e.g., the tissue or object being imaged). Generally, OCT imaging systems split light provided by a light source along a first optical path containing the sample, usually referred to as a "sample arm," and a second optical path containing a reference mirror, usually referred to as a "reference arm." The combination of reflected light from the sample arm and reflected reference light from the reference arm gives rise to an interference pattern, but generally only if light from both arms have traveled the "same" optical distance, wherein "same" means a difference of less than a coherence length. Thus, when acquiring images using an OCT imaging system, an operator may be tasked with ensuring that the reference and sample arms have the same path length, which may involve adjusting the length of the reference arm manually, so that an interference pattern is properly generated. As can be appreciated, due to variations in the size or dimensions of a particular sample type, such as human eyes, the path length of the sample arm may vary, thus requiring the path length of the reference arm to vary to match the sample arm. Moreover, because the path lengths are to be adjusted until they match (e.g., typically with a tolerance of a few millimeters, or even micrometers), this task may not only be difficult to perform accurately, but may also be subject to human error.
Further, once the reference and sample arms are matched, the operator may also be tasked with manually adjusting the focal position of one or more focusing lenses of the OCT system to ensure that the acquired image is in focus. As can be appreciated, manually determining an optimal focusing position may be difficult, particularly when such adjustments are sometimes on the order of micrometers (μm). Moreover, since the focus quality of such adjustments may be subjectively determined based on an operator's vision, what is perceived to be an optimal focus position for the lens may not always correspond to what is actually the optimal focus position. Accordingly, there exists a need for an OCT imaging system that is capable of automating the manual tasks discussed above, thus removing the labor-intensive aspects of OCT imaging while improving the performance and accuracy of OCT imaging systems.

System and method for auto-ranging in optical coherence tomography


A method for patterning a chemically sensitive organic thin film such as pentacene comprising (a) forming a protective material layer on the surface of a chemically sensitive organic thin film, said protective material layer being chemically resistant; (b) forming a photoresist on an exposed surface of said protective material layer; (c) patterning the photoresist; and (d) transferring the pattern to the protective material layer and the chemically sensitive organic thin film by dry etching.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for patterning organic thin films that are difficult to pattern using conventional means such as lithography and etching.
2. Background of the Invention
Organic thin films such as pentacene, hexathiophene and polythiophene have been used in various applications, and continued research on such material is presently ongoing. Organic thin films are typically used in electronic devices, such as organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) and organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Unfortunately, many organic materials which have useful electronic properties are intolerant of solvent exposure after deposition, and therefore cannot be patterned using ordinary lithographic processes.
Researchers in this field thus normally either use unpatterned films or use a shadow mask during deposition to pattern the organic material. Recently, M. Roussy, et al. have developed an isolation technique which employs topographic discontinuities to isolate the devices (see, M. Roussy, et al. xe2x80x9cForming a Passive matrix Addressed OLED with a Lift-Off Photoresistxe2x80x9d, Abstracts of the Materials Research Society, 1998 Fall Meeting, p. 374). In this technique, the photoresist is laid down, exposed and caused to swell; the swelling creates gaps in the surface topography. A material is then vapor deposited at an appropriate angle to prevent bridging of the gaps thus formed thereby effectively isolating the devices. This technique developed by M. Roussy, et al. requires that the semiconductor material and the photoresist remain in inactive areas. This restriction can be a severe limitation for many applications. A subtractive technique for isolating devices has not been found in the prior art.
There are several disadvantages to using unpatterned films and topographic techniques to isolate the active areas in OFETs and OLEDs. The disadvantages include:
(i) In OFET and OLED applications, it is often desirable that inactive areas are optically clear; this can only be achieved by removing the material from the inactive areas.
(ii) In OFET and OLED applications, deposition of additional active layers (such as additional material to vary OLED emission color, or OLEDs onto an OFET controlled device) may be desired. This will require removal of inactive material and a flat topography.
(iii) Topography isolation techniques may only be used when the organic thin film material is deposited by a strongly directional process, such as vacuum deposition.
Sputtered or spun-on organic thin films will not be patterned.
(iv) Using unpatterned organic material in OFET applications permits fringe current flow through an ungated area, which leads to a decrease in the on/off ratio, a significant figure of merit, which in unpatterned devices adversely affects the contrast ratio in analog applications and the noise margin in digital applications.
The use of shadow masks, on the other hand, provides patterning of the material without some of these disadvantages. There are however several limitations associated with using shadow masks. These limitations include:
(i) The minimum feature size definable by a shadow mask is much larger than that which can be lithographically processed.
(ii) Shadow masks may only be used in vapor deposited processes, such as molecular beam deposition; spun-on material cannot be patterned in this way.
(iii) Use of a shadow mask requires contact with the substrate; this can introduce scratches and other undesirable defects to the electronic device.
(iv) The edge of devices created using shadow masks are susceptible to adhesion to the mask; creating poorly defined edges.
(v) Thin and fragile masks must be used due to the small dimensions involved; such masks often develop defects and break quickly.
(vi) Shadow masks must be cleaned; this is time consuming and often damages the mask.
(vii) Because the mask is so thin, large areas cannot be covered with a shadow mask.
It is also possible in the prior art to pattern organic thin films using a photoresist. In such techniques, the photoresist is applied directly to the surface of an organic thin film and then patterned using lithography and etching. A major drawback of this technique is that the photoresist and the solvent it contains as well as the etchants used come into direct contact with the organic thin film. Such direct contact can cause damage or alter the structure and properties of some organic films.
In view of the numerous drawbacks with the above mentioned prior art processes, there remains a need for developing a method in which organic thin films can be patterned without damaging the surface of the organic thin film.
One object of the present invention is to provide a subtractive etch patterning method for patterning organic thin films which are difficult to etch using conventional lithography and etching processes and do not tolerate contact with solvents and other chemicals without resulting in damage to the organic thin film or alteration of its structure and properties.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method for isolating active areas of organic thin films not tolerant of solvent or other chemical exposure.
A yet other object of the present invention is to provide a method which uses substantially subtractive means to perform the isolation, leaving other areas free of material.
Other objects of the present invention include:
To provide an isolation method which operates independently of the method of deposition of the organic thin film.
To provide an isolation method which operates independently of the chemical resistance of the organic thin film material and the composition of the photoresist used.
To provide an isolation method which requires no contact with the substrate or the use of a fragile component.
These and other objects and advantages can be obtained in the present invention by utilizing a method wherein a protective material layer is employed and is used to protect an underlying chemically sensitive organic thin film. It is noted that the term xe2x80x9cthinxe2x80x9d, when used in conjunction with the chemically sensitive organic thin film, denotes a thickness about 10,000 xc3x85 or less. The term xe2x80x9cchemically sensitivexe2x80x9d denotes a material that is highly responsive, i.e., susceptible, to solvent, etchant or other chemical exposure such that upon contact with the chemical it may be damaged, while the term xe2x80x9cchemically resistantxe2x80x9d denotes a material that is not susceptible to damage or alteration of properties and structure by exposure to most chemicals and especially the ones used in the patterning process. However, it should be etchable with reactive-ion etching (RIE) or any other dry etching processes.
Specifically, the method of the present invention comprises the steps of:
(a) forming a protective material layer on the surface of a chemically sensitive organic thin film, said protective material layer being chemically resistant;
(b) forming a photoresist on an exposed surface of said protective material layer;
(c) patterning the photoresist; and
(d) transferring the pattern to the protective material layer and the chemically sensitive organic thin film by dry etching.
The method of the present invention can be used in conjunction with typical processing steps that are used in fabricating OTFTs and OLEDs.

Method for patterning sensitive organic thin films

International Business Machines Corporation


A single membrane insulation material comprising a flexible fluoropolymer coated substrate, an insulating material laminated to one side of said substrate, and an anti-porosity fluid barrier associated with said substrate and shielded by said insulating material from elevated temperatures at said one side. Also disclosed is the inclusion of a a melt bondable fluoropolymer adhesive layer between the flexible fluoropolymer coated substrate and the insulating material.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to flexible expansion joint materials for use in industrial flue ducts and other like applications, and is concerned in particular with an improved single membrane expansion joint material capable of withstanding elevated temperatures on the order of 500-1000.degree. F. and higher.
2. Description of the Prior Act
Flexible expansion joints permit interconnected sections of large flue ducts to undergo relative shifting in response to thermal changes. This is particularly important where normal operating temperatures range from 600-800.degree. F.
Fluoroplastic/fiberglass composites adequately serve as expansion joint materials in operating temperature ranges below about 500.degree. F. Higher temperatures cause thermal deterioration, thereby necessitating additional layers of insulation, usually uncoated fiberglass. The additional insulation layers are bulky, friable, difficult to install, and prone to sag when inverted. Sagging reduces insulating quality and interferes with the flow of gases through the duct.
A primary objective of the present invention is the provision of a single membrane expansion joint material capable of withstanding exposure to high temperature gases without undergoing thermal deterioration.
Companion objectives of the present invention include the provision of an expansion joint material which is relatively compact, easy to handle and install, with an insulation layer which remains intimately bonded to adjacent components of the composite, irrespective of the physical orientation of the material during installation and subsequent use.


A system includes a first heater located at the leading edge of a gas turbine structural member, a second heater located aft of the first heater, and a third heater located aft of the second heater. The first, second and third heaters are electrically-powered to prevent icing of the gas turbine structural member. Each of the heaters has a Watt density, and the Watt densities of the heaters differ from one another as a function of a magnitude of a cooling coefficient for airflow passing the vicinity of each heater.

During operation, gas turbine engines, especially those used in aerospace applications, face an undesirable risk of ice accretion on engine components. Ice that forms on engine inlet components can break loose and be ingested by the engine, potentially causing damage or wear to the engine. In order to avoid such problems, it is desired to provide an ice protection system that reduces ice formation on engine structural components while also maintaining relatively low power expenditures by the ice protection system.

Engine inlet ice protection system with power control by zone


A method of preparing a carbon thin film, and electronics including the carbon thin film.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of preparing a carbon thin film, electronics including the carbon thin film, and an electrochemical device including the carbon thin film.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, carbonaceous materials may be classified into diamond, graphite, graphene, a-few-layer graphene (FLG), and amorphous carbon. While, diamond does not have electrical conductivity because its carbon atoms are connected to each other by sp3 bonds, graphite has excellent electrical conductivity since its carbon atoms are connected to each other by sp2 bonds. Meanwhile, since there are both sp3 bonds and sp2 bonds in amorphous carbon, amorphous carbon has lower electrical conductivity than graphite. Due to electrical conductivity similar to that of metal, the use of graphite is limited in the semiconductor industry. Graphene, which has drawn attention recently, has high electrical conductivity and high electron mobility, and thus, diverse research into graphene has been conducted due to its many potential uses in the semiconductor industry.
Carbonaceous materials having conductivity may be prepared by using a nano fiber or by separating graphene from graphite using a Scotch™ tape.

Method of preparing carbon thin film, electronics comprising carbon thin film, and electrochemical device comprising carbon thin film


A high quality speech synthesizer in various embodiments concatenates speech waveforms referenced by a large speech database. Speech quality is further improved by speech unit selection and concatenation smoothing.

A concatenation-based speech synthesizer uses pieces of natural speech as building blocks to reconstitute an arbitrary utterance. A database of speech units may hold speech samples taken from an inventory of pre-recorded natural speech data. Using recordings of real speech preserves some of the inherent characteristics of a real person's voice. Given a correct pronunciation, speech units can then be concatenated to form arbitrary words and sentences. An advantage of speech unit concatenation is that it is easy to produce realistic coarticulation effects, if suitable speech units are chosen. It is also appealing in terms of its simplicity, in that all knowledge concerning the synthetic message is inherent to the speech units to be concatenated. Thus, little attention needs to be paid to the modeling of articulatory movements. However speech unit concatenation has previously been limited in usefulness to the relatively restricted task of neutral spoken text with little, if any, variations in inflection.
A tailored corpus is a well-known approach to the design of a speech unit database in which a speech unit inventory is carefully designed before making the database recordings. The raw speech database then consists of carriers for the needed speech units. This approach is well-suited for a relatively small footprint speech synthesis system. The main goal is phonetic coverage of a target language, including a reasonable amount of coarticulation effects. No prosodic variation is provided by the database, and the system instead uses prosody manipulation techniques to fit the database speech units into a desired utterance.
For the construction of a tailored corpus, various different speech units have been used (see, for example, Matt, D. H., "Review of text-to-speech conversion for English," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 82(3), September 1987). Initially, researchers preferred to use phonemes because only a small number of units was required—approximately forty for American English—keeping storage requirements to a minimum. However, this approach requires a great deal of attention to coarticulation effects at the boundaries between phonemes. Consequently, synthesis using phonemes requires the formulation of complex coarticulation rules.
Coarticulation problems can be minimized by choosing an alternative unit. One popular unit is the diphone, which consists of the transition from the center of one phoneme to the center of the following one. This model helps to capture transitional information between phonemes. A complete set of diphones would number approximately 1600, since there are approximately (40)2 possible combinations of phoneme pairs. Diphone speech synthesis thus requires only a moderate amount of storage. One disadvantage of diphones is that they lead to a large number of concatenation points (one per phoneme), so that heavy reliance is placed upon an efficient smoothing algorithm, preferably in combination with a diphone boundary optimization. Traditional diphone synthesizers, such as the TTS3000 of Lernout & Hauspie Speech and Language Products N.V., use only one candidate speech unit per diphone. Due to the limited prosodic variability, pitch and duration manipulation techniques are needed to synthesize speech messages. In addition, diphones synthesis does not always result in good output speech quality.
Syllables have the advantage that most coarticulation occurs within syllable boundaries. Thus, concatenation of syllables generally results in good quality speech. One disadvantage is the high number of syllables in a given language, requiring significant storage space. In order to minimize storage requirements while accounting for syllables, demi-syllables were introduced. These half-syllables, are obtained by splitting syllables at their vocalic nucleus. However the syllable or demi-syllable method does not guarantee easy concatenation at unit boundaries because concatenation in a voiced speech unit is always more difficult that concatenation in unvoiced speech units such as fricatives.
The demi-syllable paradigm claims that coarticulation is minimized at syllable boundaries and only simple concatenation rules are necessary. However this is not always true. The problem of coarticulation can be greatly reduced by using word-sized units, recorded in isolation with a neutral intonation. The words are then concatenated to form sentences. With this technique, it is important that the pitch and stress patterns of each word can be altered in order to give a natural sounding sentence. Word concatenation has been successfully employed in a linear predictive coding system.
Some researchers have used a mixed inventory of speech units in order to increase speech quality, e.g., using syllables, demi-syllables, diphones and suffixes (see, Hess, W. J., "Speech Synthesis—A Solved Problem, Signal processing VI: Theories and Applications," J. Vandewalle, R. Boite, M. Moonen, A. Oosterlinck (eds.), Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., 1992).
To speed up the development of speech unit databases for concatenation synthesis, automatic synthesis unit generation systems have been developed (see, Nakajima, S., "Automatic synthesis unit generation for English speech synthesis based on multi-layered context oriented clustering," Speech Communication 14 pp. 313–324, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., 1994). Here the speech unit inventory is automatically derived from an analysis of an annotated database of speech—i.e. the system 'learns' a unit set by analyzing the database. One aspect of the implementation of such systems involves the definition of phonetic and prosodic matching functions.
A new approach to concatenation based speech synthesis was triggered by the increase in memory and processing power of computing devices. Instead of limiting the speech unit databases to a carefully chosen set of units, it became possible to use large databases of continuous speech, use non-uniform speech units, and perform the unit selection at run-time. This type of synthesis is now generally known as corpus-based concatenative speech synthesis.
The first speech synthesizer of this kind was presented in Sagisaka, Y., "Speech synthesis by rule using an optimal selection of non-uniform synthesis units," ICASSP-88 New York vol. 1 pp. 679–682, IEEE, April 1988. It uses a speech database and a dictionary of candidate unit templates, i.e. an inventory of all phoneme sub-strings that exist in the database. This concatenation based synthesizer operates as follows.    (1) For an arbitrary input phoneme string, all phoneme sub-strings in a breath group are listed,    (2) All candidate phoneme sub-strings found in the synthesis unit entry dictionary are collected,    (3) Candidate phoneme sub-strings that show a high contextual similarity with the corresponding portion in the input string are retained,    (4) The most preferable synthesis unit sequence is selected mainly by evaluating the continuities (based only on the phoneme string) between unit templates,    (5) The selected synthesis units are extracted from linear predictive coding (LPC) speech samples in the database,    (6) After being lengthened or shortened according to the segmental duration calculated by the prosody control module, they are concatenated together.
Step (3) is based on an appropriateness measure—taking into account four factors: conservation of consonant-vowel transitions, conservation of vocalic sound succession, long unit preference, overlap between selected units. The system was developed for Japanese, the speech database consisted of 5240 commonly used words.
A synthesizer that builds further on this principle is described in Hauptmann, A. G., "SpeakEZ: A first experiment in concatenation synthesis from a large corpus," Proc. Eurospeech '93, Berlin, pp. 1701–1704, 1993. The premise of this system is that if enough speech is recorded and catalogued in a database, then the synthesis consists merely of selecting the appropriate elements of the recorded speech and pasting them together. It uses a database of 115,000 phonemes in a phonetically balanced corpus of over 3200 sentences. The annotation of the database is more refined than was the case in the Sagisaka system: apart from phoneme identity there is an annotation of phoneme class, source utterance, stress markers, phoneme boundary, identity of left and right context phonemes, position of the phoneme within the syllable, position of the phoneme within the word, position of the phoneme within the utterance, pitch peak locations.
Speech unit selection in the SpeakEZ is performed by searching the database for phonemes that appear in the same context as the target phoneme string. A penalty for the context match is computed as the difference between the immediately adjacent phonemes surrounding the target phoneme with the corresponding phonemes adjacent to the database phoneme candidate. The context match is also influenced by the distance of the phoneme to its left and right syllable boundary, left and right word boundary, and to the left and right utterance boundary.
Speech unit waveforms in the SpeakEZ are concatenated in the time domain, using pitch synchronous overlap-add (PSOLA) smoothing between adjacent phonemes. Rather than modify existing prosody according to ideal target values, the system uses the exact duration, intonation and articulation of the database phoneme without modifications. The lack of proper prosodic target information is considered to be the most glaring shortcoming of this system.
Another approach to corpus-based concatenation speech synthesis is described in Black, A. W., Campbell, N., "Optimizing selection of units from speech databases for concatenative synthesis," Proc. Eurospeech '95, Madrid, pp. 581–584, 1995, and in Hunt, A. J., Black, A. W., "Unit selection in a concatenative speech synthesis system using a large speech database," ICASSP-96, pp. 373–376,1996. The annotation of the speech database is taken a step further to incorporate acoustic features: pitch (F0), power and spectral parameters are included. The speech database is segmented in phone-sized units. The unit selection algorithm, operates as follows:    (1) A unit distortion measure Du(ui, ti) is defined as the distance between a selected unit ui and a target speech unit ti, i.e. the difference between the selected unit feature vector {uf1, uf2, . . . , ufn} and the target speech unit vector {tf1, tf2, . . . , tfn} weights vector Wu{w1, w2, . . . , wn}.    (2) A continuity distortion measure Dc(ui ui−1) is defined as the distance between a selected unit and its immediately adjoining previous selected unit, defined as the difference between a selected units unit's feature vector and its previous one multiplied by a weight vector Wc.    (3) The best unit sequence is defined as the path of units from the database which minimizes:
      ∑          i      =      1        n                    (                                        D            c                                          (                                          u                i                            ,                              u                                  i                  -                  1                                                      )                          *                  W          c                    +                                    D            u                                          (                                          u                i                            ,                              t                i                                      )                          *                  W          u                      )  where n is the number of speech units in the target utterance.
In continuity distortion, three features are used: phonetic context, prosodic context, and acoustic join cost. Phonetic and prosodic context distances are calculated between selected units and the context (database) units of other selected units. The acoustic join cost is calculated between two successive selected units. The acoustic join cost is based on a quantization of the mel-cepstrum, calculated at the best joining point around the labeled boundary.
A Viterbi search is used to find the path with the minimum cost as expressed in (3). An exhaustive search is avoided by pruning the candidate lists at several stages in the selection process. Units are concatenated without doing any signal processing (i.e., raw concatenation).
A clustering technique is presented in Black, A. W., Taylor, P., "Automatically clustering similar units for unit selection in speech synthesis," Proc. Eurospeech '97, Rhodes, pp. 601–604, 1997, that creates a CART (classification and regression tree) for the units in the database. The CART is used to limit the search domain of candidate units, and the unit distortion cost is the distance between the candidate unit and its cluster center.
As an alternative to the mel-cepstrum, Ding, W., Campbell, N., "Optimising unit selection with voice source and formants in the CHATR speech synthesis system," Proc. Eurospeech '97, Rhodes, pp. 537–540, 1997, presents the use of voice source parameters and formant information as acoustic features for unit selection.
Each of the references mentioned above is hereby incorporated herein by reference.

Speech synthesis using concatenation of speech waveforms


An underwater communication method is provided. EM signals are transmitted via a seabed using an underwater electrically insulated magnetically coupled antenna. By making use of the low loss properties of the seabed, EM signal attenuation can be reduced and consequently the transmission range can be increased. The underwater electrically insulated magnetically coupled antenna may be located within a body of water or may be buried in the seabed.

WO01/95529 describes an underwater communications system that uses electromagnetic signal transmission. This system has a transmitter and a receiver, each having a metallic aerial that is surrounded by a waterproof electrically insulating material. Underwater communications systems are also described in GB0511939.1 and U.S. 60/690,966. These use magnetically coupled antennas for the transmission and reception of electromagnetic signals. Whilst employing electromagnetic (EM) radiation for underwater communications offers significant advantages over traditional acoustic techniques such as immunity to acoustic noise and higher bandwidth, the attenuation of EM radiation through water is significant.

Transmission of underwater electromagnetic radiation through the seabed


Method and systems to voice-enable a user interface using a voice extension module are provided. A voice extension module includes a preprocessor, a speech recognition engine, and an input handler. The voice extension module receives user interface information, such as, a hypertext markup language (HTML) document, and voice-enables the document so that a user may interact with any user interface elements using voice commands.

Much of software used in business today takes the form of complex graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Complex GUIs allow users to perform many tasks simultaneously while maintaining the context of the rest of their work; however, such systems are often mouse- and keyboard-intensive, which can be problematic or even impossible to use for many people, including those with physical disabilities. Voice interfaces can provide an accessible solution for physically disabled users, if steps are taken to address inherent usability problems, such as user efficiency and ambiguity handling. Additionally, voice interfaces may increase the efficiency of performing certain tasks.
Large resources have been expended to develop web-based applications to provide portable, platform-independent front ends to complex business applications using, for example, the hypertext markup language (HTML) and/or JavaScript™.
Because software applications have typically been developed with only the visual presentation in mind, little attention has been given to details that would facilitate the development of voice interfaces.
In most computer or data processing systems, user interaction is provided using only a video display, a keyboard, and a mouse. Additional input and output peripherals are sometimes used, such as printers, plotters, light pens, touch screens, and bar code scanners; however, the vast majority of computer interaction occurs with only the video display, keyboard, and mouse. Thus, primary human-computer interaction is provided through visual display and mechanical actuation. In contrast, a significant proportion of human interaction is verbal. It is desirable to facilitate verbal human-computer interaction to increase access for disabled users and to increase the efficiency of user interfaces.
Various technologies have been developed to provide some form of verbal human-computer interactions, ranging from simple text-to-speech voice synthesis applications to more complex dictation and command-and-control applications. The various types of verbal computer-human interaction applications may be described by two factors: (1) the presence or absence of a visual component; and (2) the extent to which the underlying application and interaction is changed when a voice interface is added.
Many research organizations building verbal human-computer interaction systems focus on the second factor: creating new interaction styles that may be used in conjunction with or in lieu of a visual display. For example, various organizations have created the following systems: CommandTalk; ATIS; TOOT; and ELVIS. Each of these systems focuses on providing improved models for verbal human-computer interaction, fundamentally changing the interaction style. For example, CommandTalk maintains a traditional GUI, while fundamentally changing the interaction style to improve usability. ATIS, an air travel information system, maintains a traditional visual component by presenting answers to user queries in a visual tabular format; however, ATIS modifies conventional interaction styles, moving from a database query interface to a natural language query interface. Similarly, TOOT, a train schedule information system, attempts to present tabular data to users; however, TOOT provides the tabular data by voice, eliminating the need for a visual component. Finally, the ELVIS system for accessing email messages by voice has been tested with several interaction styles, which differ from the visual interaction to varying degrees. The system-initiative style makes use of many of the same command names found in the visual interface, while providing a mixed-initiative style significantly changes conventional interactions.
Many commercial systems tend to maintain conventional interaction styles with varying degrees of visual components. Windows access tools such as ViaVoice™ and SUITEKeys mirror the keyboard/mouse interaction to a greater degree than any of the dialogue systems mentioned above. SUITEKeys even goes so far as to directly mimic the interaction of moving the mouse by hand and pressing individual keys. Similarly, many telephony applications mimic the keypad interaction directly with interactions that take the form of "press or say 1."
Enormous resources have been used to develop business applications requiring complex GUIs to present large quantities of information, display complicated interactions within the information, and manage the complexity of maximizing user capability, configuration, and control. Existing applications provide limited support for controlling an application using voice. Some existing systems allow dictation or limited access commands; however, there is a need for systems and techniques to increase the extent of verbal human-computer interaction in conventional and legacy application to provide increased accessibility for disabled users and increased efficiency of interaction for all users.

Adapting a user interface for voice control


An image processing apparatus converts an input color signal into a color signal which falls within a color reproduction range of an image output device. The image processing apparatus includes a representative color setting unit that sets plural representative colors, a first hue setting unit that sets hue for an equi-hue line connecting the representative color and black, a hue correcting unit that corrects hue of the input color signal referring to the first hue setting unit, and a mapping unit that maps the input color signal after whose hue is corrected to a color signal within a color range of the image output device.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing method, an image processing apparatus, a computer program product for image processing, and a recording medium for image processing. More specifically, the present invention relates to an image processing technique for converting color image information of an input system into color image information that falls within a color reproduction range of an output system when the color-reproduction range of the input device is different from the color reproduction range of the output device. More specifically, the present invention relates to a suitable technique for color-image output device such as a color facsimile, a color printer, and a color copier, and software for generating a color-conversion parameter employed in the image output device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Display devices such as Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) and printing devices such as printers are known as devices that output color images. These devices, however, are known to have differences in reproducible color range due to differences in manner of output. When a user tries to output images using different output devices based on identical image data, e.g., when the user tries to print an image created on a CRT using a printer, some colors may not be reproduced. Therefore, when the color image is handled on plural devices, color conversion processing called "gamut processing" is required. The "gamut processing" is a technique for mapping input color-image signals to colors reproducible in the output device.
One of the gamut processing techniques is described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H10-84487. According to this technique, colors represented by the input color signals but irreproducible in the output device are reproduced as colors whose color difference with the original color is minimum and which is reproducible by the output device. The color difference is calculated based on difference in brightness, saturation, and hue with the use of various weights.
According to another known technique, a target projection point is set on an achromatic axis or on a chromatic axis which has the same hue as the hue of an input color signal. Then, the hue of out-of-gamut colors, i.e., colors which fall out of the gamut of the output device, is set to a fixed value and the out-of-gamut colors are subjected to compression mapping to the gamut of the output device (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. H9-168097 and H9-18727, for example).
When the compression mapping is performed in the gamut processing on the hue plane of the same hue as that of the input color signal as described above, hue distortion in Lab space makes blue color reproduced as violet color. A technique described in Japanese Patent No. 3337697 intends to solve this problem by defining a nonlinear line for each hue and performing the gamut processing using the nonlinear lines.
Further, as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2000-184221, 2002-262120, and 2003-143425, it is possible to perform the conversion of an input signal value into an output signal value by first performing hue conversion and then mapping the brightness and the chroma at a hue angle obtained by the hue conversion. Further, according to a technique described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-94799, an input signal value is first converted (compressed) into a value within an intermediate mapping color reproduction range, and the converted value is further converted (expanded) into an output signal value. According to this technique, (nonlinear) brightness range adjustment, hue angle conversion, and chroma conversion are performed first, and then the brightness is mapped onto an output color reproduction range in a nonlinear manner.
The conventional gamut processing as described above have various problems in terms of optimal color control. The technique described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H10-84487 is advantageous in that the color shift in the color reproduction processing is trivial since the mapping direction is switched to a direction where the hue difference is the least based on the shape of the color reproduction range. According to this technique, however, since the mapping direction depends on the shape of the color reproduction range of the output system, the continuity in the mapping direction sometimes cannot be maintained. As a result, continuous input colors may be mapped to discontinuous colors in various mapping directions, causing degradation in image quality such as collapse of gradation, and gradation jump.
The technique described in Japanese Patent No. 3337697 is advantageous in that the mapped hue is more acceptable for the human perception in comparison with the hue obtained in the hue-fixed gamut processing in the Lab space as in the Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. H9-168097 and H9-18727 since the nonlinear lines are set for chroma-based correction of hue distortion. However, this technique basically intends to perform compression mapping to the same hue of the input color signal. Therefore, the shape of the gamut of the printer is not taken into consideration in determining the reproduced hue.
Contrary to the above-mentioned techniques, the techniques described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2000-184221, 2002-262120, 2003-143425, and 2001-94799 take into consideration the shape of the gamut of the printer in determining the reproduced hue of a specific color and control the entire hue in line with the reproduced hue of the specific color. These techniques are advantageous in that colors can be reproduced more clearly than in mapping of the saturated colors of the primary and the secondary colors onto colors of the same hue, and that a reproduced color can be more close to the expectation of the user. These techniques, however, perform the identical hue conversion to the colors on the same hue plane or of the same saturation. Therefore, though the hue continuity is easily maintained, the colors for which no hue correction is required are also corrected.
The above problem will be described in more detail. FIG. 19 is a graph of a relation between a gamut of a display and a gamut of a printer for a cyan hue. In FIG. 19, the colors represented by a portion surrounded by a dotted line cannot be reproduced by a printer, and therefore need to be mapped to reproducible colors. When the above-described technique is employed, the color reproduction can be achieved with a minimum color shift particularly with respect to the saturated colors. However, colors other than the saturated colors are all reproduced in the same hue as the hue of the saturated colors. Therefore, the color shift becomes highly noticeable. The colors represented by a bold line in FIG. 19 are examples of colors to which the hue correction is performed even though these colors are reproducible in the printer. Particularly in a shadow area, the reproduced colors are largely different from colors shown on the display.
The technique of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-94799 can control the hue angle more subtly than the techniques mentioned above since this technique employs a hue mapping function that corresponds to the brightness. However, since the (nonlinear) brightness range adjustment, the hue angle conversion, and the brightness conversion are performed independently of each other, the input color signal is sometimes converted into an unintended printer output color, and sometimes the gradation jump cannot be suppressed. Further, when the adjustment of hue angle is desired, the hue mapping function must be corrected for each level of brightness in consideration of continuity. Thus, the color adjustment becomes complicated.
As described above, the color gamut processing according to the conventional techniques has difficulties in performing appropriate hue control in such a manner that the hue continuity and constancy in appearance are maintained for continuous colors ranging from white, a specific color, and to black. For example, when the hue of the primary cyan color of the display is shifted for reproduction to a preferable color, the hue of the intermediate colors placed between the cyan and black is also shifted even when these colors are reproducible in the printer.

Image processing method, image processing apparatus, computer program product, and recording medium for image processing


A dark exposure control device comprises a dark exposure performing processor, an aperture-stop, and an aperture-stop driving processor. The dark exposure performing processor detects an image signal generated by an imaging device while the shutter is closed. The aperture-stop adjusts the amount of light incident on the imaging device. The aperture-stop driving processor adjusts the opening degree of the aperture-stop to smaller than the opening degree set for a main exposure while the dark exposure performing processor is operated.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for controlling an exposure for an imaging device provided in a digital camera, and more particularly to a device for controlling a dark exposure in order to detect a noise component of an image signal caused by a dark current generated by the imaging device.
2. Description of the Related Art
A dark current is generated in an imaging device when the imaging device does not receive light. The longer the exposure time, the greater the influence on the photographed image. Conventionally, there is known a device in which a dark exposure is carried out every time a main exposure is performed, and image data obtained by the dark exposure is subtracted from image data obtained by the main exposure to reduce the influence of the dark current, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,729,288.
In the dark exposure, the blockage of light may be insufficient when closing only the shutter. For example, when a car passes a place where astronomical photography is being carried out, if strong light from the headlights enters the camera body through the photographing lens, the light may leak into a light-receiving surface of the imaging device through the closed shutter. In a conventional single-reflex camera, a dark exposure is carried out while the mirror is moved down, and part of the light passing through the photographing lens is blocked by the mirror. Therefore, an amount of light entering the imaging device is relatively small. Conversely, in a mirrorless-type camera, which is a recent development, light passing through the photographing lens strikes the shutter directly, and thus the light may easily enter the imaging device.