Patents by Inventor Robert Patrick Mullins

Robert Patrick Mullins has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Method and apparatus for supporting TDMA operating over hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) or other channels
    Patent number: 5666358
    Abstract: In a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) communication network, a central office (CO) provides interactive communication between a service provider and a plurality of user terminals. To synchronize transmissions of the user terminals, a timebase timer in the CO generates modulo N-bit cyclical reference counts as time markers. In a downstream direction to the plurality of user terminals, time marker insertion units in the CO receive both (a) separate digital TDMA transport streams having a predetermined data rate including data packets and Media Access Control (MAC) packets that are interspersed between the data packets at predetermined intervals, and (b) the time markers generated by the timebase timer, and insert a currently received time marker count into a concurrently received MAC packet. The resultant downstream TDMA transport streams with the inserted time marker counts in the MAC packets are transmitted in continuous TDMA output transport stream to the remote user terminals.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 16, 1995
    Date of Patent: September 9, 1997
    Assignee: General Instrument Corporation of Delaware
    Inventors: Bernardo Paratore, Robert Patrick Mullins, Michael J. Gittings, Dennis R. Clark
  • Method and apparatus for supporting TDMA operating over hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) or other channels
    Patent number: RE38619
    Abstract: In a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) communication network, a central office (CO) provides interactive communication between a service provider and a plurality of user terminals. To synchronize transmissions of the user terminals, a timebase timer in the CO generates modulo N-bit cyclical reference counts as time markers. In a downstream direction to the plurality of user terminals, time marker insertion units in the CO receive both (a) separate digital TDMA transport streams having a predetermined data rate including data packets and Media Access Control (MAC) packets that are interspersed between the data packets at predetermined intervals, and (b) the time markers generated by the timebase timer, and insert a currently received time marker count into a concurrently received MAC packet. The resultant downstream TDMA transport streams with the inserted time marker counts in the MAC packets are transmitted in continuous TDMA output transport stream to the remote user terminals.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 23, 1999
    Date of Patent: October 12, 2004
    Assignee: General Instrument Corporation
    Inventors: Bernardo Paratore, Robert Patrick Mullins, Michael J. Gittings, Dennis R. Clark