A display device having an NFC communication function includes a display panel, wherein an NFC antenna is integrated in the display device, the NFC antenna is disposed on a display surface side of the display panel, and the NFC antenna is made of a transparent conductive material. The NFC antenna is integrated in the display device, the NFC antenna is disposed on a display surface side of the display panel, therefore the sensitivity and reliability of the NFC signals are high, the NFC antenna is not easy to be broken and misaligned, and as the NFC antenna is made of a transparent conductive material, it can be placed in the display area, which is conducive to the design of a narrow frame for a module.

There are various display technologies, including liquid crystal display (LCD) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display. The OLED display is very attractive, which has the advantages of self light-emitting, lightness, thinness, power saving, and can be made into a flexible display based on flexible materials, so that it can be curled, folded, or as a part of a wearable device. The light-emitting principle of the OLED is to deposit a very thin organic light-emitting material between two electrodes, and light-emitting is caused due to the injection and coupling of carrier when the organic light-emitting material is energized with electric current.
Graphene is the thinnest and hardest nanomaterial as currently known in the world. It is almost completely transparent and absorbs only 2.3% of light, and the resistivity of graphene is extremely low, which is only 10−8 Ω·m. Therefore, it is a transparent conductor with excellent prospects. It is suitable for making transparent touch screens, light boards, and even solar cells. Further, relevant researches show that the layered nanostructure of graphene has the characteristics of electromagnetic wave absorption and is a new type of material for absorbing wave.
Silver nanowire technology is to coat silver nanowire ink material on a plastic or glass substrate, and then use laser photolithography to produce a transparent conductive film with conductive mesh pattern of nanoscale silver wire. In addition to the excellent conductivity of silver, silver nanowire has excellent light transmittance and flexure resistance due to the nanometer size effect, so it is regarded as the most likely substitute for traditional ITO transparent electrode. Further, the silver nanowire thin film has a small bending radius, and a small resistance change rate when it is bent. It is more advantageous when it is applied to the equipment with surface display, such as smart watch, hand ring.
Near field communication (NFC) is a short-range wireless communication technology, which allows non-contact point to point data transmission between electronic devices (in the range of ten centimeters). This technology evolves from the non-contact radio frequency identification (RFID) and is downward compatible with RFID, and is mainly used to provide M2M (machine to machine) communication in handset devices, e.g., mobile phone. As near field communication has natural security, NFC technology is considered to have great application prospects in mobile payment and other fields.
Currently, except for commonly used mobile phones, more and more electronic devices, especially wearable products, begin to integrate with NFC function. However, due to the restriction of the outer profile of the wearable products and other small-sized electronic devices, the requirements for the size and integration of electronic components are relatively high. At present, a usual manner of integrating the NFC antenna into an inside of the product is that the NFC antenna is formed on a PCB board or an FPC soft board and made into a coil by metal wire, and then the PCB board or the FPC soft board with the coil is attached to a battery or a shell. The shortcomings of which are:
(1) NFC antenna occupies a large space inside the device, and cannot meet the design requirement of small-sized electronic devices.
(2) Conventional NFC antenna is a coil structure made of metal wire on PCB board or FPC soft board, and then the PCB board or the FPC soft board with the coil is attached to a battery or a shell. However, repeated assembly and disassembly of the battery and the shell will cause wear out or misalignment for the NFC antenna, thereby affecting the transmission of NFC signals.
(3) Due to the close distance of NFC communication, some electronic devices, such as the wrist watch, put forward the demand for the NFC antenna to be disposed on the display surface, in order to ensure the intensity and stability of NFC signals.
An existing solution of integrating the NFC antenna into the front of display screen is that the NFC antenna is made of conductors such as silver, copper, the coil of the NFC antenna must be put outside the display area, and a middle area thereof is made into being hollow to avoid the NFC antenna blocking the display area. However, in such solution, in order to ensure the space for the NFC antenna, the frame for the NFC antenna will be very large, thereby increasing the size of the frame of the whole module around the display area. This solution solves the problem of easy wear out and misalignment of the conventional NFC antenna to some extent, but the too large size of the module frame is also not conducive to the design of small-sized electronic devices.

Display device having NFC communication function

SUZHOU QINGYUE OPTOELECTRONICS TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD.


This patent discloses a support structure for a yard hydrant. The support structure may include a casing, a cap, a cap clamp, a first spacer, a second spacer, and a second spacer clamp. The casing may have a first end and a second end, where the first end includes a first cutout and a second cutout that may fit about a supply line for the yard hydrant. The cap may around a riser pipe of the yard hydrant and the cap clamp may secure the cap to the second end of the casing. The first spacer and second spacer of the support both may fit within the casing and fit about a nipple of the yard hydrant. The first spacer may be supported by a joint in the supply line and the second spacer may be supported by a second spacer clamp fixed about the nipple.

1. Field of Endeavor
The description relates to yard hydrants and more particularly to a system to support and service a yard hydrant.
2. Background Information
A hydrant is an outlet from a fluid main often consisting of an upright pipe with a valve attached from which fluid such as water or fuel may be tapped. An adjective, such as fire, water, and yard may be added to the term hydrant to characterize the type of fluid involved.
Utility yard hydrants are similar to common household water spigots except that yard hydrants usually are located far away from any structure and the yard hydrant has a different construction. Yard hydrants provide clean water to various locations during all seasons of the year, including when the temperature drops below freezing. Typically, they are manufactured and installed in such a way that they will operate throughout the winter without auxiliary heat being supplied to the yard hydrant.
In particular to the installation, a valve end of the yard hydrant is buried underground to a depth typically of at least three feet. Many city ordinances dictate varying soil composition and compact requirements. Complying with the city ordinance usually requires hiring a contractor and is difficult and expensive.
Yard hydrants are essential to farms, rural household locations, and other remote locations. They provide running water for livestock, lawns, and garden from a pressurized water supply pipe line connected to a main water service line. Where these outdoor hydrants are exposed to freezing temperatures, the hydrant sometimes becomes frozen.
Should a yard hydrant freeze, prudence requires that the frozen yard hydrant be thawed as soon as possible to avoid damage. If the yard hydrant is frozen below ground level, the yard hydrant head assembly conventionally is removed have to be removed and hot water poured down the inside of the riser pipe. This usually is accomplished by soldering a copper tube to a funnel and pouring the hot water through the funnel and tube to the point inside the riser pipe where the ice has formed. The tube is pushed down the riser pipe as the ice melts. This is a time consuming, cumbersome, and exhausting task, especially during the freeze of winter when a yard hydrant typically freezes.
A frozen riser pipe may burst. When the riser pipe bursts, the yard hydrant must be replaced. Conventionally, to replace the yard hydrant, the dirt around the valve portion of the hydrant first must be dug up. Then, the old hydrant is unscrewed from the supply line, the new hydrant is installed, and the dirt is filled back in and compacted to meet city ordinance requirements. This is a time consuming and exhausting task, especially during the freeze of winter when a yard hydrant typically bursts.
What is needed is system to more easily support a yard hydrant and reduce the effort needed to replace a broken yard hydrant.

System to support and service yard hydrants


The present invention relates to systems, apparatus and methods for the computation and use of session, device and/or user signatures for determining communications session types, device types, and/or user signatures. An exemplary system in accordance with an embodiment of the invention includes: a first device, the first device including: a receiver that receives a first set of session control messages belonging to a first communications session, said first set of session control messages including at least one session control message; a feature extractor that extracts a first set of device features from the first set of session control messages; and a first neural network that determines a device signature from the first set of session control messages based on said set of device features.

Unified Communications or UC (in some cases the acronym UCC is used to emphasize the addition of Collaboration) refers to the integration of multiple forms of real-time communications including voice, video, collaboration and text messaging. Businesses are augmenting or replacing traditional voice-centric PBX systems with Unified Communications solutions to improve employee productivity and collaboration as well as to support mobility and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives.
New devices and increased connectivity have offered users more ways to communicate but have also driven a dizzying array of disparate contacts, alerts and conversations. Unified Communications and Unified Communications systems allow for the use, integration, and management of various technologies and forms of communication by customers, e.g., enterprise system customers and network operator customers.
However, to accomplish this Unified Communications (UC) signaling has become extremely complex, supporting many different call flows and devices. This is true of all Unified Communications call signaling protocols but is particularly applicable to Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), whereby the number of Request For Comment (RFC) specifications (e.g., Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) RFC specifications) run into the 100s, with many more added each year. Add on top of that the 1000s of different devices, device types, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) agents, Back to Back User Agent's (B2BUA's), servers, registrars and other devices that may be involved in a call, and the problem of ensuring any particular device and call flow works successful becomes an extremely non-trivial complex task.
One of the many roles or functions that a Session Border Controller (SBC) is expected to provide in a network is to help facilitate this interworking, whilst simultaneously securing one or more networks from accidental or malicious bad traffic. This sets up an inherent conflict whereby the SBC is both attempting to be liberal (allow flexibility in signaling permutations) and strict (block unwanted permutations).
For example, when a device is added to a system, the installation and configuration of the device and other devices, e.g., Session Border Controllers, which have to interact with the new device can be extremely complex so as to ensure that the interoperability of the signaling from the new device works correctly in the system, for example that calls can be placed and completed as intended and that calls/sessions and the features and/or services related to the calls operate without error. During initial installation an attempted call may fail to complete due to signaling interoperability or an attempted call may be completed but features may not operate properly such as no video or audio content being provided or features (e.g., conferencing, call detail records) may not properly function.
The aforementioned interoperability problem is traditionally solved by providing a very large range of controls at the SBC. This allows the operator to "tune" the signaling to the desired level of openness or flexibility. However, this in itself increasingly becomes onerous, as the exponentially increasing number of permutations and controls becomes unwieldy for any one individual to truly understand and apply correctly. This leads to the two extremes of problems—"good" devices/calls fail, and/or "bad" devices/calls are permitted.
Further to this, it is common for an SBC to be expected to "fix" issues or problems with the signaling, such that peering elements do not need to be exposed to every vulgarity of the signaling. This normalization of the signaling may occur via the activation of inbuilt functionality designed to solve a specific situation, or it may invoke the execution of one or more user defined programs. Such programs are known by a range of terms in the industry (Session Initiation Protocol Message Manipulation (SMM) being one such example) and are common for simple to moderate modifications of the signaling, (e.g. remove an unwanted header, add a missing important header, modify the encoding format of a parameter). These typically take the form of domain-specific scripting languages used to provide instructions on how to modify the signaling.
These in turn extend the problem, in that the operator is now expected to understand which rules (programs) need to be applied to make any particular combination work or in some cases to define new rules to make the signaling work.
From the foregoing, it can be understood that generally speaking what is needed is new and/or improved methods, system and apparatus that provide a more efficient and effective automated way to identify and categorize signaling, such that correct configuration (including defining and/or applying modification programs or device configurations) can be easily—and in some cases automatically—selected and implemented.
More particularly, there is a need for new and/or improved methods, systems and apparatus for overcoming the technical problem of how to effectively and efficiently detect, identify, classify and/or categorize signals and/or communications sessions, e.g., communications sessions corresponding to signals as "good" signals or communications sessions (i.e., signals or communications sessions which will be permitted to proceed) and "bad" signals or communications sessions (i.e., signals or communications sessions which will not be permitted to proceed).
Furthermore, there is a need for new and/or improved methods, systems and apparatus for automating the detection, identification, classification and/or categorization of signals and/or communications sessions corresponding to signals such that correct signal configurations for interoperability can be efficiently and effectively implemented.
There is a further need for new and/or improved methods, apparatus and systems for automating the selection and application of signaling modification programs to correctly modify and configure signals to achieve needed interworking or interoperability among the various diverse user and network communications devices. There is still a further need for new and/or improved methods, apparatus and systems for generating or defining new rules by which to modify signals to make signals, e.g., SIP signals corresponding to a communications session, e.g., a call, work in the communications network. There is still a further need for identifying "bad" signals or communications sessions corresponding to the signals (e.g., signals or communications sessions with unwanted signaling permutations) and a set of one or more signal modification rules that when implemented modify portions of future "bad" signals, e.g., from the same device, transforming the signal from a "bad" signal into a "good" signal (e.g., signals or communications sessions with acceptable signaling permutations) that will be permitted to proceed and will not be blocked or discarded.
There is also a need for new and/or improved methods, systems and apparatus for sharing of information learned by an equipment or service provider in one or more customer environments across all of the deployed customers of the equipment or service provider. For example, there is a need for matching communications session flows to similar communications session flows so that learnings about signaling controls such as the IP Signaling Profile, the SIP trunk group, SMM rules (SIP Message Manipulation (SMM) of a "flexible programming/scripting" environment used to provide domain specific signaling modification), etc. can be replicated in a new environment in an efficient manner that reduces the amount of time required to determine which communications session flows are similar by automating the process and even suggesting and/or implementing prior learnings to new communications sessions or device configurations.
It is to be understood that a communications session can be for example a call session, a Voice Over Internet Protocol session, a multi-media session, an unified communications session, a WebRTC session, an audio session, a video session, a Rich Communications Services session, an instant messaging session, a text messaging session, a real-time communications session, a presence information sharing session, a user registration session, a device registration session, a conferencing session, an interactive collaborative multi-party session, an electronic whiteboard session, a desktop share session, and a Session Initiation Protocol session.
Furthermore, among the technical problems for which a solution is needed is how to define a representative "group signature" for a communications session flow such that two communications session flows that are functionally similar will have the same signature and two flows that are not will have different signatures.
Computing such a signature is a particularly difficult problem in the case of SIP signaling where the protocol: (a) is textual; (b) allows a wide variety of headers and bodies; (c) headers and parameters can be repeated (d) headers and parameters can be placed in any order; (e) many headers (and parameters) are not independent, (f) certain related information (such as SDP contents, or even RTP/RTCP media attributes) may also need to be included and are not necessarily considered part of the core protocol.
On this type of corpus, simple signature schemes based on textual comparisons or hashing produce unusably pessimistic results (i.e., they rarely produce matches). Other approaches based on clustering, such as K-means clustering, rely on a proper distance metric, but such a metric in this case pre-supposes an understanding of the underlying relationship among headers and parameters in a message, e.g., session control message such as a SIP message, something which is unknown in this environment.
From the foregoing it should also be understood that there is a need for new and/or improved methods, systems and/or apparatus for use in computing signatures, e.g., group, session, device and user signatures, that not only meets the requirements of signatures presented, but also does not require a-priori knowledge of the essential content in loosely structured textual protocols. Furthermore, there is a need for new and/or improved methods, system and apparatus that are customizable to allow for the tuning of the level of specificity of the signature (i.e. the number of distinct groups generated for a particular corpus) so there is flexibility in identifying information (e.g., message manipulation rules or device configuration rules) of known good communications session with the same group session signature that can be evaluated when trying to determine "fixes" to problems identified with communications session e.g., from new devices or make determinations as to whether new devices will be able to operate (e.g., place or initiate communications sessions) without causing problems with the network.
Furthermore, with the ever more complex and diverse methods of communicating such as described in connection with the Unified Communications Systems and Services described above, there have been rapid increases in both the number of nodes within a communications session flow, and the variety of interacting protocols. This complexity and diversity of interacting technology has pushed the management of Unified Communications systems beyond the cognitive capacity of the operator-monitored and controlled paradigm. This problem has previously arisen at lower layers of the networking stack (Internet Protocol (IP) level) and various Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) frameworks were developed to address the shortcomings. However, these SIEM frameworks lose their value when applied at higher levels of the stacks because the salient information necessary for usable Unified Communications monitoring and control is at the application specific protocol level. This is certainly the case for unified communications applications where anomalies can only be tracked or are most effectively tracked with detailed understanding of the UC level interactions such as, for example, who is initiating a session with whom and when, what type of media do they typically exchange, etc. Among what is missing in the state of the art for Unified Communications is a holistic system that monitors the Unified Communications network, detects anomalies, and applies Unified Communications policies to the network all in a closed loop with incremental additions or reductions to achieve a desirable operating point. With the complexity and diversity of the technologies involved, there is also a rise in the need for better and more efficient ways to provide security protection services taking into account the diversity and complexity of technology and the increase of communications sessions as well as diversity of session types and session control signals being used to manage the communications sessions.
From the foregoing it is apparent that there is a need for a technological solution to how to effectively, efficiently and in a cost-efficient manner monitor, detect and/or mitigate threats and/or anomalies in networks that solves one, some, or all of the aforementioned problems.
Moreover, with the ever more complex and diverse methods of communicating such as described in connection with the Unified Communications Systems and Services described above, it is readily evident that there is also a need to provide identity verification/security services, user & traffic profiling services, and threat detection and prevention services to protect the customers and networks of such systems and services.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Methods, systems and apparatus for using session, device and/or user signatures

Ribbon Communications Operating Company, Inc.


A personal safety device for protection from a firearm attack includes a conventional accessory item adapted for use other than as a personal safety device and a bullet resistant panel that is integrated into the conventional accessory item. The conventional accessory item may take the form of a clipboard, a backpack or other item. Integration of the panel with the selected item is conducted in such a manner as to cause the panel to be placed in the path of fire when a person engages in natural defensive posturing. The clipboard is provided with a light, multiple spring clips and a suitably sized handle to encourage proper grasp of the clipboard for the intended purpose.

Notwithstanding the evolution of society, violent crime persists as a threat to virtually anyone at any time. In fact, with the passage of time, the manner and circumstances in and under which one may fall victim to violence have only increased. For example, firearms are now readily available to virtually any individual desiring to inflict violence and, in the age of instant broadcast of news of violent attacks, any "new" manner of inflicting violence is typically copied by others resulting in "waves" of attacks on law enforcement or security officers, school shootings and the like.
Because no amount of gun control or other preventive measures is likely to result in the unavailability of firearms to the elements of society who truly wish to do harm to others, it is left to the remainder of society to take precautions for personal safety. This fact of life is daily exemplified by the wearing by law enforcement officers of bullet resistant garments and the constant admonishment to children that they should avoid talking to strangers or taking a shortcut home through the proverbial "dark alley."
Unfortunately, the foregoing longstanding measures continue to fall short—law enforcement and security officers are still killed or seriously wounded by gunfire and children or others are still not completely safe even in the most public places. Furthermore, because most people, including law enforcement and security officers, are not routinely the victims of firearms attacks, training in defensive tactics often fails under the stress of an actual attack.
It is therefore a primary object of the present invention to improve upon the personal safety devices presently available by providing personal safety devices that function in cooperation with a victim's natural defensive instincts for the delivery of protection. Additionally, it is an object of the present invention to provide such devices that are also integrated into the daily routine of those who possess the devices in order that the devices are readily available if ever needed.

Methods and apparatus for personal safety


A system for ophthalmic surgery on an eye includes: a pulsed laser which produces a treatment beam; an OCT imaging assembly capable of creating a continuous depth profile of the eye; an optical scanning system configured to position a focal zone of the treatment beam to a targeted location in three dimensions in one or more floaters in the posterior pole. The system also includes one or more controllers programmed to automatically scan tissues of the patient's eye with the imaging assembly; identify one or more boundaries of the one or more floaters based at least in part on the image data; iii. identify one or more treatment regions based upon the boundaries; and operate the optical scanning system with the pulsed laser to produce a treatment beam directed in a pattern based on the one or more treatment regions.

Cataract extraction is one of the most commonly performed surgical procedures in the world with estimates of 2.5 million cases being performed annually in the United States and 9.1 million cases worldwide. This is expected to increase to approximately 13.3 million cases by 2006 globally. This market is composed of various segments including intraocular lenses for implantation, viscoelastic polymers to facilitate surgical maneuvers, disposable instrumentation including ultrasonic phacoemulsification tips, tubing, and various knives and forceps. Modern cataract surgery is typically performed using a technique termed phacoemulsification in which an ultrasonic tip with an associated water stream for cooling purposes is used to sculpt the relatively hard nucleus of the lens after performance of an opening in the anterior lens capsule termed anterior capsulotomy or more recently capsulorhexis. Following these steps as well as removal of residual softer lens cortex by aspiration methods without fragmentation, a synthetic foldable intraocular lens (IOL's) inserted into the eye through a small incision. This technique is associated with a very high rate of anatomic and visual success exceeding 95% in most cases and with rapid visual rehabilitation.
One of the earliest and most critical steps in the procedure is the performance of capsulorhexis. This step evolved from an earlier technique termed can-opener capsulotomy in which a sharp needle was used to perforate the anterior lens capsule in a circular fashion followed by the removal of a circular fragment of lens capsule typically in the range of 5-8 mm in diameter. This facilitated the next step of nuclear sculpting by phacoemulsification. Due to a variety of complications associated with the initial can-opener technique, attempts were made by leading experts in the field to develop a better technique for removal of the anterior lens capsule preceding the emulsification step. These were pioneered by Neuhann, and Gimbel and highlighted in a publication in 1991 (Gimbel, Neuhann, Development Advantages and Methods of the Continuous Curvilinear Capsulorhexis. Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery 1991; 17:110-111, incorporated herein by reference). The concept of the capsulorhexis is to provide a smooth continuous circular opening through which not only the phacoemulsification of the nucleus can be performed safely and easily, but also for easy insertion of the intraocular lens. It provides both a clear central access for insertion, a permanent aperture for transmission of the image to the retina by the patient, and also a support of the IOL inside the remaining capsule that would limit the potential for dislocation.
Using the older technique of can-opener capsulotomy, or even with the continuous capsulorhexis, problems may develop related to inability of the surgeon to adequately visualize the capsule due to lack of red reflex, to grasp it with sufficient security, to tear a smooth circular opening of the appropriate size without radial rips and extensions or technical difficulties related to maintenance of the anterior chamber depth after initial opening, small size of the pupil, or the absence of a red reflex due to the lens opacity. Some of the problems with visualization have been minimized through the use of dyes such as methylene blue or indocyanine green. Additional complications arise in patients with weak zonules (typically older patients) and very young children that have very soft and elastic capsules, which are very difficult to mechanically rupture.
Finally, during the intraoperative surgical procedure, and subsequent to the step of anterior continuous curvilinear capsulorhexis, which typically ranges from 5-7 mm in diameter, and prior to IOL insertion the steps of hydrodissection, hydrodilineation and phaco emulsification occur. These are intended to identify and soften the nucleus for the purposes of removal from the eye. These are the longest and thought to be the most dangerous step in the procedure due to the use of pulses of ultrasound that may lead to inadvertent ruptures of the posterior lens capsule, posterior dislocation of lens fragments, and potential damage anteriorly to the corneal endothelium and/or iris and other delicate intraocular structures. The central nucleus of the lens, which undergoes the most opacification and thereby the most visual impairment, is structurally the hardest and requires special techniques. A variety of surgical maneuvers employing ultrasonic fragmentation and also requiring considerable technical dexterity on the part of the surgeon have evolved, including sculpting of the lens, the so-called "divide and conquer technique" and a whole host of similarly creatively named techniques, such as phaco chop, etc. These are all subject to the usual complications associated with delicate intraocular maneuvers (Gimbel. Chapter 15: Principles of Nuclear PhacoEmulsification. In Cataract Surgery Techniques Complications and Management. 2nd ed. Edited by Steinert et al. 2004: 153-181, incorporated herein by reference).
Following cataract surgery one of the principal sources of visual morbidity is the slow development of opacities in the posterior lens capsule, which is generally left intact during cataract surgery as a method of support for the lens, to provide good centration of the IOL, and also as a means of preventing subluxation posteriorly into the vitreous cavity. It has been estimated that the complication of posterior lens capsule opacification occurs in approximately 28-50% of patients (Steinert and Richter. Chapter 44. In Cataract Surgery Techniques Complications and Management. 2nd ed. Edited by Steinert et al. 2004: pg. 531-544 and incorporated herein by reference). As a result of this problem, which is thought to occur as a result of epithelial and fibrous metaplasia along the posterior lens capsule centrally from small islands of residual epithelial cells left in place near the equator of the lens, techniques have been developed initially using surgical dissection, and more recently the neodymium YAG laser to make openings centrally in a non-invasive fashion. However, most of these techniques can still be considered relatively primitive requiring a high degree of manual dexterity on the part of the surgeon and the creation of a series of high energy pulses in the range of 1 to 10 mJ manually marked out on the posterior lens capsule, taking great pains to avoid damage to the intraocular lens. The course nature of the resulting opening is illustrated clearly in FIG. 44-10, pg. 537 of Steinert and Richter, Chapter 44 of In Cataract Surgery Techniques Complications and Management. 2nd ed (see complete cite above).
What is needed are ophthalmic methods, techniques and apparatus to advance the standard of care of cataract and other ophthalmic pathologies.

Apparatus for patterned plasma-mediated laser ophthalmic surgery


Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communication are described. A method may include measuring channel quality of a reference signal communicated via a control channel, determining a code rate for a control channel based on the measured reference signal, generating feedback data for the control channel based on the code rate, and transmitting the feedback data. Another method may include transmitting a reference signal in a control channel, receiving channel quality feedback data for the control channel in response to the reference signal, and transmitting a control channel transmission in the control channel using a modulation and coding scheme selected based on the feedback data.

The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to dedicated channel state information reporting for a control channel.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, (e.g., a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, or a New Radio (NR) system). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations or access network nodes, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
A base station may transmit information to a UE to allocate resources for transmission. A portion of the resources (i.e., time and frequency resources) may be designated for transmission of this information. The base station may also use different communication channels to provide the information to the UE. For example, the base station may use a control channel to transmit control information to the UE, and a data channel to transmit data to the UE. In some scenarios, the information may relate to ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC) with mission critical (MiCr) applications. These applications generally specify a low error rate and low latency. In cases where transmission of information between the base station and the UE is unsuccessful due to conditions of a communication channel, the base station may retransmit the information one or more times. In some scenarios, the base station may be unable to meet error rate and latency specifications due to the base station retransmitting information one or more times. Improving the efficiency of retransmission may provide reliability to a wireless communication system.

Dedicated channel state information reporting for a control channel


A device for controlling the gas-burner rings of a cooking surface includes a gas tap equipped with a control knob and a catenary element for control of ignition of the gas-burner rings. The catenary element includes a microswitch actuated selectively by a bushing carried via snap action by an axially mobile element of the gas tap provided with the control knob. The bushing is made of a synthetic plastic material and includes a sleeve for installation on the mobile element of the gas tap and a flange configured to bear upon the microswitch to actuate it as a result of a motion of translation of the mobile element of the gas tap. The bushing is internally provided with a detent and has a radial slit, which interrupts its continuity and in a corresponding angular position of which the bushing is also provided with a pair of opposed circumferential slots that interrupt the continuity of the detent.

Known devices for controlling gas-burner rings of a cooking surface (both of the type which can be installed built-in and of the type forming part of a combined electrical household appliance, including, for example, an oven and/or a dish-washer) comprise for each gas-burner ring a gas tap and a catenary element provided with microswitch, actuation of which energizes a service gas-lighter circuit of the cooking surface, of a known type, which produces a spark on one or all of the gas-burner rings. In general, the gas tap is provided with an axially mobile and rotatable element, equipped with a control knob, rotation of which (possible, for safety reasons, only by a simultaneous axial translation of the mobile element) enables supply of the combustible gas to the gas-burner ring.
In order to guarantee ignition of the combustible gas as this is supplied to the gas-burner ring, the axial movement of the mobile element/control knob is used also to actuate the microswitch, thus producing generation of the ignition spark simultaneously with supply of gas.
In known devices the microswitch is actuated either via a contrast element carried by the mobile element of the gas tap, a contrast element which in general consists of a snap ring or else a bushing fixed on the mobile element of the gas tap via a snap ring, or else via a contrast shoulder made directly on the control knob.
The solutions of the first type, however, can be applied only in the presence of catenaries with spring actuation (which are more costly than the springless ones), in so far as, in order to enable installation of the bushing and/or of the snap ring, both must present a sufficiently extensive radial discontinuity in the angular direction so as to enable its deformation to fix it via snap action. Said discontinuity, in fact, in the absence of a spring, would not guarantee actuation of the microswitch in any angular position for installation of the bushing/snap ring.
The solution of the second type, which uses the control knob as contrast member, is costly and inconvenient, in so far as it does not enable use of catenaries of a standard type, but it is necessary to provide catenaries specifically tailored for each type of cooking surface.

Universal integrated device for controlling gas-burner rings of a cooking surface including a gas tap and a catenary element


The supply voltage for a module of an integrated circuit managed to support protection against side channel attacks. Upon startup of the integrated circuit, one action from the following actions is selected in response to a command: supplying the module with the supply voltage having a fixed value that is selected from a plurality of predetermined values, or varying the value of the supply voltage in time with a pulsed signal.

In particular, a logic circuit, for example a logic gate, has a different current consumption during a transition of the signal delivered by its output terminal from a low state to a high state than during a transition from a high state to a low state.
These consumptions also vary from one logic gate to the next. Thus, for example, in the case of a transition from a low state to a high state, the consumption of an inverter logic gate will be different from the consumption of an AND gate.
By analyzing the consumption of the circuit, by virtue of dedicated mathematical algorithms, it is therefore possible to obtain information on the operations carried out and on the data manipulated and/or on their occurrences. This is referred to in the art as a side channel attack.
In particular, during the switching of its logic components, an integrated circuit produces electromagnetic signals via metal tracks of the integrated circuit through which the consumed current flows. It is possible to analyze the current consumption of the integrated circuit via these electromagnetic signals.
Solutions for masking the current consumption of an integrated circuit do exist, for example by forming a plurality of additional logic gates that are not involved in the secure operations, by switching these additional logic gates randomly so as to cause the integrated circuit to consume additional power and hence produce additional electromagnetic emissions that are independent of the secure operations.
However, although this solution is advantageous, it may in certain cases be difficult to implement.
Furthermore, there is a need to provide more economical solutions.

Method for managing the value of the supply voltage for a module of an integrated circuit, and associated integrated circuit


In a semiconductor memory device, a plurality of main word lines a plurality of pairs of first and second sub word lines, a plurality of first sub word line drive circuits and a plurality of second sub word line drive circuits are provided. Each of the first word line drive circuits is connected to one of the main word lines and at least two pairs of the pairs of first and second sub word lines for activating and deactivating one of the first sub word lines and deactivating the second sub word lines. Each of the second sub word line drive circuits is connected to one of the main word lines and at least two pairs of the pairs of first and second sub word lines for activating and deactivating one of the second sub word lines and deactivating the first sun word lines.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor memory device where word lines are divided into sub word lines.
2. Description of the Related Art
As semiconductor memory devices such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) devices have been highly integrated, the number of memory cells connected to one word line has been increased, which increases the load of the word line.
In a prior art DRAM device, in order to decrease the load of word lines, each of the word lines are divided into a plurality of sub word lines. In other words, a plurality of sub word lines are under one main word line. This will be explained later in detail.
Even in the prior art device, when the number of memory cells connected to one sub word line is increased, the length of the sub word line is increased so that the load thereof is increased. As a result, rising and falling of the voltage at the terminal of the sub word line opposite to a corresponding sub word line drive circuit is remarkably delayed, which decreases the access speed.
In order to increase the access speed, an additional reset transistor may be connected to the terminal of the sub word line (see JP-A-60-167193). In this case, however, the connections for the additional reset transistors are required, which increases the chip area and decreases the integration.

Semiconductor memory device capable of effectively resetting sub word lines


Electronic devices are often equipped with a camera for capturing video content and/or a display for displaying video content. However, amateur users often capture video content without regard to composition, framing, or camera movement, resulting in video content that can be jarring or confusing to viewers. There is a need to automate the processing and presentation of video content in an aesthetically pleasing manner. The embodiments described herein provide a method of automatically cropping video content for presentation on a display.

Electronic devices are often equipped with a camera for capturing video content and/or a display for displaying video content. However, amateur users often capture video content without regard to composition, framing, or camera movement, resulting in video content that can be jarring or confusing to viewers.
Furthermore, for amateur users, determining a desirable cropping presentation while capturing video content can impose a heavy cognitive burden and a substantial time commitment, making the task so unappealing as to be avoided. Furthermore, inefficiencies in determining a desirable cropping presentation can cause unnecessary power consumption in battery powered devices.


Power consumption in a portable computer device that provides true-color simulation on a liquid crystal display can be realized by selectively operating a graphics controller that drives the LCD to selectively enable or disable true color simulation. Disabling dithering which provides true color simulation in an LCD, can significantly reduce power consumption by a portable computer device.

Many portable computer devices such as laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and portable video game consoles use liquid crystal displays (LCDs) as an output display device. A problem that such devices contend with is battery life. Battery life in portable electronic equipment that use a liquid crystal display is adversely affected when a color-capable liquid crystal display is operated in a so-called true-color simulation mode.
True-color simulation on a color LCD attempts to improve color quality by a technique known as dithering. Dithering is a process by which true color can be simulated or approximated on an LCD by having successive frames of an image displayed with different colors in each successive frame so as to blend or merge the color displayed in one frame, with the color displayed in a subsequent frame thereby giving an observer the impression that the displayed color is a mix or dither of the different colored pixels in each frame.
A problem with true color simulation on a LCD is the amount of electric power that true color simulation requires. Because a liquid crystal display is a capacitive device, each pixel color change from one frame to the next requires charging and discharging a capacitor. Charging and discharging a capacitor in order to provide dithering, consumes more power than a non-dithered display. Although dithering can provide better picture quality, dithering consumes more power than a non-dithered display. In portable computer devices that use LCDs, a method and apparatus by which a portable computer device user can select either a reduced-power consumption mode or a higher-picture quality dithering mode would be an improvement over the prior art.

Extended power management via frame modulation control


A method is provided for handling subscription data in a telecommunications network having first, second, and third network entities, the first network entity providing the functions of at least one of a Home Subscriber Server (HSS) and a Home Location Register (HLR), the second network entity providing the functions of at least one of a Visitor Location Register (VLR) and a Mobile Management Entity (MME), and the third network entity providing routing functionality. The method includes: storing first subscription data; receiving, by the third network entity, a first message with regard to the subscriber; and sending, by the third network entity, a second message to the first network entity.

In mobile telecommunications networks, it is necessary for subscriptions to be set up before they can be put it use, that is before they are activated. Setting up a subscription is referred to as "provisioning" and involves creating a complete subscription which is active in the relevant network database/register, e.g. a Home Location Register (HLR). Prior to being an active (or complete) subscription, a subscription is also called a provisional subscription or a pre-provisioned subscription. It is typical for a significant number of subscribers to a wireless network service to be pre-paid subscribers with the others being post-paid subscribers. Network operators use methods of pre-provisioning of subscriptions to create the subscriptions in the network system before they are handed over to subscribers to enable flexible SIM card delivery via appropriate retail chains. This means that subscribers need to be pre-provisioned in Core Elements of mobile telecommunications networks as well as in Service Elements of mobile telecommunications networks before the SIM card (Subscriber Identity Module card) can actually be used for the first time in the network. In a mobile network, storage of subscriber-related data is costly due to associated fees like license fees, hardware requirements and system performance requirements. Most operators of mobile telecommunications networks pre-provision the Home Location Register (HLR) with a default profile as part of the logistics/supply-chain of SIM cards. Pre-provisioning means the main parts (at least the required identities and the authentication data) of a subscription are created in the network, either in a back-end repository or even directly in an HLR. The subscription data is valid but the subscription is not yet active, i.e. the subscription is provisional. An example is described, e.g., in European Patent Application EP 2 114 063 A1.
Conventional systems and methods require a routing node (typically called an STP or SRR) to route the messages related to pre-provisioned inactive subscribers to a pre-provisioning system/center for the purpose of provisioning the subscriber in the commercial HLR/HSS and the Service Nodes. A routing node contains a database that maps the IMSI of active subscribers to the correct HLR/HSS. In this way the routing node is able to route the messages for active subscribers to the HLR that contains subscription data of that specific subscriber.
Such a routing node can also be extended by a second database containing IMSIs of pre-provisioned not yet active subscribers. The IMSIs for these subscribers are then mapped to a pre-provisioning system/center. Messages related to pre-provisioned not yet active subscribers can then be routed to a pre-provisioning system/center (e.g., as described in WO 2002/098156 A1, US 2006/058028 or WO 2009/053918 A2) or a system that combines HLR functionality with a provisioning capability (e.g., as described in WO 2004/028191 A1).
According to other conventional methods and systems, the Home Location Register (HLR) is required to perform additional operations compared to the standard Home Location Register (HLR). This requires development efforts and associated costs on existing Home Location Register (HLR) platforms. Such a modification is costly as a multitude of existing interfaces between existing network entities would need to be modified and kept up to date. Furthermore, conventional solutions related to pre-provisioning are restricted to the pre-provisioning of the Home Location Register (HLR), i.e. the pre-provisioning of the Home Subscriber Server (HSS) and other service nodes (e.g. IN/SCP) are not addressed.
Most conventional systems and methods require storing subscriber information related to pre-provisioned subscribers on the pre-provisioning center. Furthermore, conventional systems and methods require the routing node to inform the pre-provisioning center/system to provision the HLRs if a subscriber becomes active on the network.
Some conventional systems and methods even require the provisioning of provisional subscriber information both on a routing node as well as on a pre-provisioning system/center.
Some conventional systems and methods provide a temporary restricted service as part of the provisioning process after the subscriber attempts to access the network for the first time. Other conventional systems and methods require the subscriber to switch-off and switch on the device to complete the provisioning process.

Method, network entity, telecommunications network and computer program product for handling subscription data in a telecommunications network


A bridging arrangement for coupling a first terminal to a second terminal includes a plurality of particles of a first type forming at least one path between the first terminal and the second terminal, wherein the particles of the first type are attached to each other; a plurality of particles of a second type arranged in a vicinity of a contact region between a first particle of the first type and a second particle of the first type, wherein at least a portion of the plurality of particles of the second type is attached to the first particle of the first type and the second particle of the first type.

This disclosure relates to arrangements for coupling at least two surfaces, e.g., in terms of a thermal, electric or mechanical connection between the surfaces. Further methods for manufacturing a bridging arrangement or device for coupling two surfaces are presented. The disclosure also relates to devices and methods for filling a gap region between two surfaces, as for example an underfill for flip-chip packages.
In many applications, gap regions that are confined by at least two surfaces are filled with particles and cured resins, to provide for a bridging between the surfaces. Often the obtained fillings should have desired physical properties. For example, certain applications may require electrically conducting underfills. Other applications may rely on mechanical rigidity or a specific thermal dissipation through the filling.
In modern electronic devices, for example, substantial gains in performance are achieved by means of circuit miniaturization and by the integration of single-package multi-functional chips. The scalability and performance of such electronic devices are related to their ability to dissipate heat. In typical flip chip arrangements, one integrated circuit (IC) surface is used for heat removal through a heat sink, while the other for power delivery and data communication. Power is delivered throughout solder balls attached to electrical pads on the IC chip that are reflowed and coupled to the main circuit board.
To minimize mechanical stress in the on-chip wiring layers and the solder balls and to protect them electrically, mechanically, and chemically the gap region between, e.g., IC chip and board (created due to the presence of solder balls) is conventionally filled with electrically non-conductive materials, known as underfills. Current efforts towards 3D chip integration, with solder balls as electrical connection between silicon dies, demand high thermally conductive underfills to efficiently dissipate the heat of lower dies to the heat removal embodiment.
Conventional underfills consist of a curable matrix (e.g., epoxy resin) loaded with silica filler particles, which have a similar thermal expansion coefficient (CTE) to that of the silicon. Currently, the requirement of matching CTE dictates the type, and volumetric fill of fillers to be employed in a given underfill. For thermal underfills bridging the surface of an IC chip and a substrate or circuit board the thermal conductivity of filler materials which are used to increase the thermal contact and enhance heat dissipation between connected surfaces should be high. Therefore, Al2O3, AlN, BN or other metal and nonmetal materials are used, for example.
The application of underfills in gap regions is limited by the filler volume fraction, since the resulting viscosity depends on the filler content. According to some conventional methods the underfill material is applied to the chip periphery and capillary forces transports the viscous media into the gap, within a certain time period, prior to a temperature assisted curing. Generally, a high particle load, e.g., >30 vol % is needed to reach thermal conductivity values>0.5 W/m/K. Then the viscosity of the applied medium may become too high to efficiently fill the gaps.

Bridging arrangement and method for manufacturing a bridging arrangement

International Business Machines Corporation


A radio receiver supporting cancellation of thermal and phase noise in a down-converted RF signal. An inbound RF signal and blocking signal are provided directly to a passive mixer for down-conversion into a first baseband signal having data, thermal noise, and reciprocal mixing (RM) noise components. The inbound signals are also provided to a transconductance circuit, the output of which is provided to a second passive mixer for conversion into a current signal having data and blocking signal components, and a RM image. The blocking signal component and the RM image are mixed with a second LO signal, derived from the blocking signal, to produce a RM noise cancellation signal. The data component of the current signal is converted into a second baseband signal having data and thermal noise components. The first baseband signal, second baseband signal and RM noise cancellation signal are then combined through harmonic recombination.

1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to wireless communications and, more particularly, to noise cancellation in a receiver front-end.
2. Description of Related Art
The wide adoption of wireless communication standards has created a crowded radio frequency (RF) spectrum with unprecedented levels of interference. For example, a radio receiver receiving a wanted signal must often contend with relatively large and unwanted signals on nearby frequencies (e.g., adjacent channels). These signals are often referred to as "blocking signals" or "blockers", and are known to cause issues such as gain compression in a receiver. Interference problems may be exacerbated when multiple radios are integrated in a single device, leading to "coexistence" blockers.
In addition, during down-conversion in a receiver, reciprocal mixing of the phase noise of a local oscillator (LO) with an unwanted blocker may deposit additive noise, proportional to the blocker amplitude, on top of a desired signal. Receiver desensitization due to reciprocal mixing can be mitigated, in some instances, by filtering unwanted blocking signals prior to down-conversion using fixed radio frequency (RF) bandpass filters placed immediately after the antenna. Such filters are expensive, require discrete filtering components, and, generally, are undesirable in certain applications, such as true Software-Defined-Radios (SDRs) that require wide bandwidth operation.
The undesirable effects of reciprocal mixing may also be mitigated by implementing local oscillators that have relatively minimal phase noise, such as LC-oscillators utilizing integrated resonators. However, the phase noise improvement provided by an LC-oscillator comes at the expense of increased power dissipation, the requirement of an integrated inductor, and other design trade-offs.

Highly linear receiver front-end with thermal and phase noise cancellation


An improvement in a wavelength division multiplexer and/or a dense wavelength division multiplexer (WDM/DWDM) is achieved by incorporating an electronically reconfigurable diffraction grating (108). The introduction of the electronically reconfigurable diffraction grating (108), which is typically fabricated using MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) technology, improves the compact design, durability, and dynamic functionality of the WDM/DWDM system.

Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) and Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) systems are important components in fiber optic communication systems and networks. The essential component of such systems focus on the multiplexer/demultiplexer. Current alternatives include diffractive elements such as dielectric thin film filters, arrayed waveguide gratings and fiber Bragg gratings, each possessing their own advantages and disadvantages for a particular system design. Overall it is desirable in such a system or network application to minimize crosstalk between channels by maximizing channel isolation. This task becomes increasingly more difficult in all fiber DWDM systems where channel spacing and bandwidth is very small. (Pan, Shi, and Loh, WDM Solutions, Laser Focus World Supplement, September 1999, pp. 15–18.) Prior art technology is primarily comprised of devices and systems utilizing the aforementioned diffractive elements, and attention is often given to improving resolution of the system while minimizing crosstalk by improving other system components such as the fiber optic channels.
Reconfigurable multiplexing devices can be achieved in a variety of ways. Several such prior art devices have different levels of reconfigurability, functionality and performance. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,245,681 discloses a reconfigurable wavelength multiplexing device that relies on a fiber optic tree structured switching matrix to provide the reconfigurability of the system. The switching matrix is comprised of several stages of optical couplers that are controlled by the application of a specified voltage. The voltage application is used to control the passage of light through the coupler. The ability to turn on and off the voltages to the individual couplers in the matrix make the device reconfigurable.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,550,818 utilizes an optical fiber network ring in a wavelength division multiplexing system. Cross-connecting switching devices control the signal routing through the system. Again, the switches are based on voltage application to the switch.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,650,835 discloses a reconfigurable optical beamsplitter in which periods of optical phase shift regions are established across a liquid crystal cell to form an optical grating in the liquid crystal that will perform as a multiplexing or demultiplexing device. The desired pattern of phase shift regions across the cell is accomplished by applying corresponding voltage differentials across the cell which can be dynamically reconfigured.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,771,112 provides a reconfigurable device for the insertion and the extraction of wavelengths utilizing a main optical switch connected to a specified number of add/drop multiplexers.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,712,932 provides a dynamically reconfigurable wavelength division multiplexer. The reconfigurable optical routing system is achieved by using fiber-based Bragg grating or a wavelength selecting optical switch in combination with a fiber optic directional coupler.
All of the above-noted prior art relies primarily on some form of an optical switch to allow or disallow signal passage through an established route in the network or system. However, these systems are limited in their ability to redirect a specified wavelength through a different route in the system. An improvement that enables such rerouting would have direct application in and benefits to the communications industry.
A key component in a WDM/DWDM system is the means of separating the incident light by wavelength. Although there are many means to accomplish this, recent advances in micromachining technology have led to the development of reconfigurable diffraction gratings that can be applied to multiplexing. Such micromachined gratings can be used for various electro-optical applications such as multiplexing, spectroscopy, modulated display technology and optical signal processing.
A deformable grating apparatus is presented in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,459,610 and 5,311,360, both by Bloom et al. An array of beams, at initially equal heights and with reflective surfaces, are supported at predetermined fractions of incident wavelength above a similarly reflective base. Below the base is a means of electrostatically controlling the position of the beams by supplying an attractive force which will deflect all of the beams or every other beam to a secondary position. The diffraction of the incident light is dependent upon the position of the reflective beam elements.
An electronically programmable diffraction grating is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 5,757,536 by Ricco, et al. A plurality of electrodes control a series of grating elements whose upper surface diffract incident light. The grating is typically formed by a micromachining process.
Although reconfigurable in nature, the micromachined diffraction gratings discussed above are still limited in their useable bandwidth and the span of available wavelengths for at least the specified application of lightwave multiplexing and demultiplexing. Ideally, the reconfigurable diffraction grating used should at least permit virtually unlimited, dynamic wavelength selection, which the prior art does not permit.

Wavelength division multiplexing system and method using reconfigurable diffraction grating


A signal processing circuit for a solid state image sensor, includes a charge detection circuit for outputting a signal output from the image sensor, a first inverting amplifier receiving the signal output, and a second inverting amplifier having a source-grounded MOS transistor having a gate connected to receive an output of the first inverting amplifier. A threshold of the MOS transistor is set to be the same as a black reference voltage in the input signal applied to the MOS transistor. Thus, a reset noise included in the signal output from the image sensor is suppressed or removed.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a signal processing device, and more specifically to a signal processing device for suppressing a noise in a signal outputted from a charge transfer device type solid state image sensor.
2. Description of Related Art
Referring to FIG. 1, there is shown a conventional charge transfer device type image sensor, typified particularly by a CCD (charge coupled device) type image sensor, generally designated by Reference Numeral 71.
As extremely simply depicted in FIG. 1, the CCD image sensor 71 is basically composed of a number of photosensor cells such as photodiodes 72 arranged in the form of a matrix having a plurality of rows and a plurality of columns, a plurality of vertical charge transfer devices 73 each located along a corresponding column of photodiodes so as to receive an electric charge from all the photodiodes of the corresponding column in parallel and to vertically transfer the received electric charges, a horizontal charge transfer device 79 located along an output end of all the vertical charge transfer devices so as to receive an electric charge from all the vertical charge transfer devices in parallel and to horizontally transfer the received electric charge, and an electric charge detection circuit 74 having an input coupled to an output end of the horizontal charge transfer device.
An analog signal outputted from the electric charge detection circuit 74 is caused to pass through a buffer 78, a clamp circuit 75, a sample-hold circuit 76, a low pass filter 77, and an amplifier 80 for various signal processings. An output of the amplifier 80 is connected to an output terminal "OUTPUT". Thereafter, in some cases, the analog signal outputted from the amplifier 80 is supplied an A/D converter (analog-to-digital converter) (not shown), so that a digital signal is obtained.
In various solid image sensors including the above mentioned conventional CCD solid state image sensor, a so called "reset noise" occurs when there is used a charge detection circuit such as a floating diffusion amplifier type (called a "FDA type" hereinafter) charge detection device or a ring junction gate type charge detector.
Now, for the purpose of explaining a mechanism of generation of the reset noise, the FDA type charge detection device will be explained with reference to FIG. 2, which is a partial diagrammatic sectional view of an output part of the CCD structure including a typical FDA type charge detection device, in combination with potential diagrams showing changes of potentials at various portions for illustrating a charge transfer process.
As shown in FIG. 2, the output part of the CCD structure includes an N-type silicon substrate 85, which has a P-well 86 formed at a principal surface thereof. An N-well 87 is further formed on a surface of the P-well 86. The N-well 87 is terminated by a reset drain 82 which is formed in an end portion of the P-well 86.
A gate oxide film (not shown) is formed to cover the principal surface of the semiconductor substrate 85. On the gate oxide film (not shown), a plurality of transfer electrodes and a final transfer gate electrode (both of which are provided for the CCD transfer structure but are not shown for simplification of the drawing), an output gate electrode 83, and a reset gate electrode 81 are formed in the named order toward to the reset drain 82, so that the reset gate electrode 81 is positioned adjacent to the reset drain 82.
A portion of the N-well 87 between the output gate electrode 83 and the reset gate electrode 81 constitutes an electrically floating diffusion region 84. Between this floating diffusion region and the P-well 86, a charge detection capacitor is formed. This floating diffusion region 84 is connected through an output line 84A to an input of a source follower 13. In addition, a reset transistor is formed of the reset drain 82, the reset gate 81 and the floating diffusion region 84.
With the above mentioned arrangement, the reset drain 82 is biased to a fixed reset drain voltage, for example, a voltage supply voltage V.sub.DD, and the output gate 82 is biased to an appropriate fixed voltage V.sub.OG that does not become a hindrance in the charge transfer. In addition, a reset signal .phi..sub.R is applied to the reset gate electrode 81. When the reset signal .phi..sub.R is applied to the reset gate electrode 81, the charge detection capacitor (floating diffusion region) 84 is reset to the same potential as that of the reset drain voltage V.sub.DD connected to the reset drain 82.
After the charge detection capacitor 84 is reset, the charge detection capacitor is put in a floating condition. In this condition, a signal electric charge transferred from the CCD transfer structure is injected into the charge detection capacitor 84, so that a potential on the charge detection capacitor 84 changes, from the potential on the charge detection capacitor 84 just after the charge detection capacitor 84 is reset, in proportion to the amount of the signal electric charge accumulated in the charge detection capacitor 84. Here, in the case that the signal electric charge is electrons, the lower the potential on the charge detection capacitor 84 is than the after-reset potential which corresponds to a reference level of a black, the more the amount of the signal electric charge accumulated in the charge detection capacitor 84 is. Thus, this change in the potential on the charge detection capacitor 84 is detected as an output signal.
As shown in the potential diagram at the timing T.sub.1 in FIG. 2, the reset transistor is conductive (ON) at the timing T.sub.1. At this time, a voltage substantially equal to the voltage supply voltage V.sub.DD is obtained from the output line 84A.
As shown in the potential diagram at the timing T.sub.2 in FIG. 2, the reset transistor is brought from the ON condition into an OFF condition at the timing T.sub.2. At this time, the charge staying under the reset gate 81 is distributed into a region of the reset drain 82 and a region of the charge detection capacitor 84. The charge flowed into the region of the charge detection capacitor 84 causes to further drop the potential on the charge detection capacitor 84, to a potential lower than the reset drain voltage. Thus, the reset noise occurs.
This reset noise is determined by ambient temperature, the capacitance of the charge detection capacitor and the gate capacitance. The reset noise is also called a "partition noise", which is discussed in detail in N. TERANISHE et al., "Partition Noise in CCD Signal Detection", IDEM--INTERNATIONAL ELECTRON DEVICE MEETING, Dec. 1-4, 1985, pp452-455, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference in its entirety into the present application.
This reset noise is on the order of 500 mV, which is larger than a level of an output signal in a CCD image sensor internally containing a voltage amplifier. In addition, the amplitude of the reset noise is independent of the output signal itself, and therefore, if the reset noise is superposed on the output signal, a dynamic range of the signal processing circuit is restricted by the reset noise, so that it is difficult to obtain a satisfactory signal amplitude. In particular, this problem is remarkable, when a gain of the voltage amplifier is made large because the signal voltage is small.
In a conventional circuit as shown in FIG. 3 for cancelling the reset noise, a charge detection circuit 100 is added with a circuit 100A for generating a signal equivalent to the reset noise superposed on the signal detected in the charge detection circuit 100. The charge detection circuit 100 includes a transistor 11 corresponding to the reset transistor formed of the reset drain 82, the reset gate 81 and the floating diffusion region 84 shown in FIG. 2, and a capacitor 12 corresponding to the charge detection capacitor 84 between the floating diffusion region and the P-well 86 shown in FIG. 2. A gate of the transistor 11 is connected to receive a reset pulse .phi.R. Similarly, the reset noise equivalent signal generating circuit 100A includes a transistor 11A equivalent to the transistor 11 and a capacitor equivalent to the capacitor 12, and a gate of the transistor 11A is similarly connected to receive the reset pulse .phi.R.
An output of the charge detection circuit 100 is applied through a current amplifier 13 to a first input A1 of a differential amplifier 91, and similarly an output of the reset noise equivalent signal generating circuit 100A is applied through a current amplifier 13A to a second input B.sub.1 of a differential amplifier 91. Thus, this differential amplifier 91 outputs a differential signal, in which the reset noise is cancelled.
The differential signal outputted from the differential amplifier 91 is outputted through a first inverting amplifier 14, a second inverting amplifier 15 associated with a clamp circuit 10, and a source follower output circuit 13B.
The above mentioned conventional circuit requires, in addition to the charge detection circuit 100, the reset noise equivalent signal generating circuit 100A for generating a signal equivalent to the reset noise superposed on the signal detected in the charge detection circuit 100. Therefore, an area occupied by the circuit is large, which is not suitable to a pattern design for a high density circuit. In addition, in order to ensure that the reset noise is efficiently suppressed by the differential amplifier, it is necessary that the reset noise equivalent signal generating circuit 100A is wired and located with a good balance. This is not suitable to microminiaturization.
Furthermore, since the differential amplifier itself is complicated, a circuit design is difficult.

Signal processing circuit for solid state image sensor having a structure for suppressing a reset noise


An angular rate sensor includes a base member serving as a base, an angular rate sensing element having a vibrating member, a wiring member having a flexible, electrical insulating tape portion and a electrical wire portion. The wiring member has end portions fixed to the base member and a middle portion positioned between the end portions. The middle portion is separated from the base member and the sensing element is mounted to the middle portion. Thus, due to an elasticity of the wiring member, the sensing element can be isolated from an external vibration.

Typically, a vibration-based angular rate sensor includes a sensing element that has a vibrating member and detects an angular rate based on a vibration of the vibrating member. The sensing element is fixed to a base such as a circuit board or a case through a wiring member.
The vibrating member is forced to vibrate normally in a predetermined direction. When the vibrating member is rotated, the vibrating member is subjected to coriolis forces. The coriolis forces cause a secondary vibration in a different direction from that of the original vibration. By sensing the secondary vibration, the angular rate can be detected. The two (i.e., original and secondary) vibrations are generally of high frequency of several thousand hertz (Hz).
The angular rate sensor has a vibration isolator that reduces a structural resonance frequency of the sensing element in order to prevent the structural resonance frequency from being equal to the secondary vibration frequency. For example, the structural resonance frequency is reduced to a value ranging from tens to several hundred Hz.
In a vibration-based angular rate sensor disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,880,399, a metal lead wire shaped like a spring is used as the wiring member. Due to the spring-like shape, the lead wire acts as the vibration insulator. In this case, the lead wire needs to have flexibility enough to reduce the structural resonance frequency. The flexibility may be increased by increasing the length of the lead wire. However, an increase in the length of the lead wire may increase the size of the sensor and reduce mechanical strength of the lead wire. Therefore, the sensor may have large size and low reliability.


The time needed to encode an input audio stream is reduced by dividing the stream into two or more overlapping segments of audio information blocks, applying an encoding process to each segment to generate encoded segments in parallel, and appending the encoded segments to form an encoded output signal. The encoding process is responsive to one or more control parameters. Some of the control parameters, which apply to a given block, are calculated from audio information in one or more previous blocks. The length of the overlap between adjacent segments is chosen such that the differences between control parameter values and corresponding reference values at the end of the overlap interval are small enough to avoid producing audible artifacts in a signal that is obtained by decoding the encoded output signal.

Audio coding systems are often used to reduce the amount of information required to adequately represent a source signal. By reducing information capacity requirements, a signal representation can be transmitted over channels having lower bandwidth or stored on media using less space. Perceptual audio coding can reduce the information capacity requirements of a source audio signal by eliminating either redundant components or irrelevant components in the signal. This type of coding often uses filter banks to reduce redundancy by decorrelating a source signal using a basis set of spectral components, and reduces irrelevancy by adaptive quantization of the spectral components according to psycho-perceptual criteria.
The filter banks may be implemented in many ways including a variety of transforms such as the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) or the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), for example. A set of transform coefficients or spectral components representing the spectral content of a source audio signal can be obtained by applying a transform to blocks of time-domain samples representing time intervals of the source audio signal. A particular Modified Discrete Cosine Transform (MDCT) described in Princen et al., "Subband/Transform Coding Using Filter Bank Designs Based on Time Domain Aliasing Cancellation," Proc. of the 1987 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), May 1987, pp. 2161-64, is widely used because it has several very attractive properties for audio coding including the ability to provide critical sampling while allowing adjacent source signal blocks to overlap one another. Proper operation of the MDCT filter bank requires the use of overlapped source-signal blocks and window functions that satisfy certain criteria. Two examples of coding systems that use the MDCT filter bank are those systems that conform to the Advanced Audio Coder (AAC) standard, which is described in Bosi et al., "ISO/IEC MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding," J. Audio Eng. Soc., vol. 45, no. 10, October 1997, pp. 789-814, and those systems that conform to the Dolby Digital encoded bit stream standard. This coding standard, sometimes referred to as AC-3, is described in the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) A/52A document entitled "Revision A to Digital Audio Compression (AC-3) Standard" published Aug. 20, 2001. Both references are incorporated herein by reference.
A coding process that adapts the quantizing resolution can reduce signal irrelevancy but it may also introduce audible levels of quantization error or "quantization noise" into the signal. Perceptual coding systems attempt to control the quantizing resolution so that the quantization noise is "masked" or rendered imperceptible by the spectral content of the signal. These systems typically use perceptual models to predict the levels of quantization noise that can be masked by a source signal and they typically control the quantizing resolution by allocating a varying number of bits to represent each quantized spectral component so that the total bit allocation satisfies some allocation constraint.
Perceptual coding systems may be implemented in a variety of ways including special purpose hardware, digital signal processing (DSP) computers, and general purpose computers. The filter banks and the bit allocation processes used in many coding systems require significant computational resources. As a result, encoders implemented by conventional DSP and general purpose computers that are commonly available today usually cannot encode a source audio signal much faster than in "real time," which means the time needed to encode a source audio signal is often about the same as or even greater than the time needed to present or "play" the source audio signal. Although the processing speed of DSP and general purpose computers is increasing, the demands imposed by growing complexity in the encoding processes counteracts the gains made in hardware processor speed. As a result, it is unlikely that encoders implemented by either DSP or general purpose computers will be able to encode source audio signals much faster than in real time.
One application for AC-3 coding systems is the encoding of soundtracks for motion pictures on DVDs. The length of a soundtrack for a typical motion picture is on the order of two hours. If the coding process is implemented by DSP or general purpose computers, the coding will also take approximately two hours. One way to reduce the encoding time is to execute different parts of the encoding process on different processors or computers. This approach is not attractive, however, because it requires redesigning the encoding process for operation on multiple processors, it is difficult if not impossible to design the encoding process for efficient operation on varying numbers of processors, and such a redesigned encoding process requires multiple computers even for short lengths of source signals.
What is needed is a way to use an arbitrary number of conventional audio encoding processes that can reduce encoding time.

Method and system for operating audio encoders utilizing data from overlapping audio segments

Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation


Disclosed is an ostial stent positioner that has the form of a wire for most of its length and having a short cylinder with a longitudinal slit and expandable legs situated at the positioner's distal end. The slit cylinder with its attached wire acts as an introducer sheath to introduce a stent delivery system with a stent into the artery that is to be stented. A second aspect of the present invention is a method for accurately placing a stent at the ostium of an artery that would have an ostial stenosis. Examples of such arteries that have ostial stenoses are the right and left main coronary arteries, a saphenous vein graft as used in coronary bypass surgery and the renal arteries. Also disclosed are designs for the slit cylinder that provides a variable diameter so as to fit snugly within guiding catheters having different inside diameters.

Although most stenoses do not occur at the ostium of an artery, there are thousands of cases each month where the mouth of an artery (the ostium) is substantially obstructed at its aortic take-off; this is called an aorto-ostial lesion. In such cases, the interventional cardiologist or radiologist is frequently unable to place the stent's proximal end within ±2 mm of the ostial plane. Two types of incorrect stent positions are (1) when the stent's proximal end extends more than 2 mm into the aorta, and (2) when the stent's proximal end is placed more than 1-2 mm into the artery distal to the ostial plane.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,458,151, F. S. Saltiel describes an ostial stent positioning device. However, the most important feature of such a device; namely, and expandable distal portion that touches the wall of the aorta near the ostium of the artery to be stented is not optimized for easy usage of such a device. Furthermore, the Saltiel design is essentially a cylindrical sheath within the guiding catheter which sheath extends for the entire length of the guiding catheter. Such a design would have an incredible amount of friction between the cylindrical sheath and the interior wall of the guiding catheter that would make it very difficult to operate. In addition, the Saltiel design would substantially obstruct the internal cross-section of the guiding catheter along its entire length, limiting the injection of contrast material, and the passage of guide wires, balloon catheters, and/or stents.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,749,890, A. Shaknovich utilizes a stent mounted on a catheter that has an inflatable section that touches the wall of the aorta in the vicinity of the ostium of the artery that is to be stented. Such a design precludes an accurate stent positioning system that can be used with the stent delivery system of any manufacturer.

Means and method for the accurate placement of a stent at the ostium of an artery


Electrical waterproof coupler socket is provided with a body including housings containing contacts and openings for passage of opposing contacts of another device. A protective flap is translationally slidably mounted on the body and includes apertures arranged in a same number and manner as the openings of the body, and includes at least one blocking zone. The flap is slidable between at least one blocking position where the at least one blocking zone blocks the openings, and an opening position where the openings and apertures are superimposed, with the at least one blocking zone comprising a plane that is inclined towards the opposing surface of the flap from front-to-rear with respect to the direction in which the flap translates towards the opening position. The openings of the body are surrounded by bevelled edges comprising ridges, with a plane passing through the ridges being parallel to the inclined plane of the at least one blocking zone, so that the at least one blocking zone presses on the ridges in the blocking position. Seals can also be included on the body or on the flap or on both. Water-tightness is thereby ensured while allowing an easy sliding of the flap which does not remain permanently in contact with the edges during its sliding, but which presses perfectly thereon in the blocking position.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical waterproof coupler socket, especially to constitute one of the connection elements of a connector, such as a charging connector, for example, for an electric vehicle.
2. Background and Material Information
Commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 5,478,249 and European Patent Application No. EP 0 619 628, the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference in their entirety herein, describe an electrical connector, and more particularly a charging connector for an electric vehicle, including a coupler socket and a connector outlet adapted for coupling and uncoupling in order to connect, or reciprocally to separate, the opposing contacts with which they are provided.
For safety purposes, the outlet and the coupler socket are provided with a protective member, such as a sliding flap for the coupler socket, to mask the contacts when at rest.
Depending on the conditions of use, the mere masking of the contacts of the coupler socket at rest can prove insufficient, and to further improve safety, it may be necessary to also ensure imperviousness, such as to the entrance of liquids, for example, water.
However, one major difficulty lies in the fact that translational elements are utilized, and it is therefore difficult to both ensure adequate imperviousness and limit the wear and tear without additionally hindering the sliding of the flap.

Electrical waterproof coupler socket with protective flap

Societe d'Exploitation des Procedes Marechal (SEPM) s.a.


A pressure-measuring glow plug for a diesel engine with a plug body (3, 4) for insertion into a cylinder of the diesel engine, a heating rod (1) which is arranged in the plug body (3, 4), and a pressure sensor, which is arranged under an initial tension between the heating rod (1) and the plug body (3, 4), in such a way that the pressure sensor (7) is acted upon by the pressure prevailing in the combustion chamber of the cylinder. The heating rod (1) transmits the pressure in the combustion chamber of the cylinder to the pressure sensor (7) and is arranged so as to be displaceable in a sliding manner in the axial direction relative to the plug body (3, 4). A seal in the form of a bellows-shaped component (2) is provided between the heating rod (1) and the plug body (3, 4).

1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a pressure-measuring glow plug for a diesel engine with a plug body for insertion into a cylinder of the diesel engine, a heating rod which is arranged in the plug body, and a pressure sensor, which is arranged under an initial tension between the heating rod and the plug body in such a way that the pressure sensor is acted upon by the pressure prevailing in the combustion chamber of the cylinder, whereby the heating rod transmits the pressure in the combustion chamber of the cylinder to the pressure sensor and in which the heating rod is arranged in the plug body so as to be displaceable in a sliding manner in the axial direction relative to the plug body, so that the pressure in the combustion chamber leads to an axial motion of the heating rod relative to the plug body, as a result of which motion the pressure sensor is acted upon by a force.
2. Description of Related Art
With a pressure-measuring or pressure gauge glow plug of the above mentioned type, the combustion pressure is transmitted directly via the heating rod to the pressure sensor, without the geometry and the strength of the plug body having an influence or being linked. All the usual functions of the glow plug are retained.
With such a pressure-measuring glow plug, sealing is preferably provided between the heating rod and the plug body. The seal is formed from a metal membrane or by an elastomer seal.
Use of metal membrane as a seal, however, has the drawback of a stiff spring characteristic and a small spring excursion, which leads to component loading. An elastomer seal, on the other hand, is temperature-sensitive.


A conventional carabiner (11) is molded directly into a plastic base (10), with the pivoted end of a closure gate (23) being toward the base. The base may also restrain a bungee cord (9) by having the end thereof and a wire crimp (15) molded into the base, or the base may have a bungee cord passageway (40) with cleat (41), into which the bungee cord may be pulled so as to lock the base in a desired position along the bungee cord.

Bungee cords are extremely common and used in a variety of ways. The most simple and common bungee cord terminus is a stiff wire hook which is crimped to the end of the bungee cord. The position of one form of terminus known in the art is adjustable along the length of the cord; in other forms the position is fixed. A variety of still other forms are known to provide a variety of features to suit different applications. Many have open hooks; others rely on thin plastic closures.

Hampton Products International Corporation