Abstract: A ringing area detector classifies the input image into two regions: a mosquito noise region (i.e. filtering region) and a non-mosquito noise region (i.e. non-filtering region), and uses this classification information to adaptively remove the mosquito noise in a mosquito noise reduction system. The mosquito noise reduction system includes a ringing area detector, a local noise power estimator, a smoothing filter, and a mixer. The ringing area detector includes an edge detector, a near edge detector, a texture detector, and a filtering region decision block. The ringing detection block detects the ringing area where the smoothing filter is to be applied. The local noise power estimator controls the filter strength of the smoothing filter. The smoothing filter smoothes the input image. The mixer mixes the smoothed image and the original image properly based on the region information from the ringing area detection block.

Abstract: A method for forming flanged end of an inner conductor of a coaxial resonator at one end of the conductive body. The flange is formed integral to the conductive body by flaring the end of the conductive body. The size and shape of the flange are selected to achieve a desired capacitance surface area for use in a resonator. A combination of expanding tool and calibration tool are used to control the size and shape of the flange that will be formed on the end of the conductive body.

Abstract: A bedside flashlight cradle for supporting a flashlight from the side of a bed frame for ready access. The cradle includes a grasper end for connection to the bed frame, a middle section, and a cradle. The grasper end may attach to the bed frame without fastener, for example, by sliding over the vertical side wall of the bed frame. The middle section may cant backward in order to support the flashlight flush with the edge of the bed frame. The cradle may be provided in spaced apart pairs to support the flash light or in other configurations such as an integral unit that has sufficient width to support a flashlight or an integral unit that has a single grasper end of sufficient width with a pair of spaced-apart cradles.

Abstract: A method and system is provided for detecting, commanding and controlling diverse home devices currently connected to a home network. An interface is provided for accessing the home devices that are currently connected to a home network. According to the method, a device link file is generated, wherein the device link file identifies home devices that are currently connected to the home network. A device link page is created, wherein the device link page contains a device button that is associated with each home device that is identified in the device link file. A hyper-text link is associated with each device button, wherein the hyper-text link provides a link to an HTML page that is contained on the home device that is associated with the device button, and the device link page is displayed on a browser based home device.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for detecting and locating objects of interest in video sequences is provided. A frame is defined as an image belonging to video sequences. Each frame with the same or different size of original input sequences is searched by the same or different size window efficiently for detecting objects. The characteristics of temporal redundancies in video sequences are used in detecting objects in video sequences.

Abstract: An initially sealed storage apparatus carrying a material is provided. The present invention is directed to a mixing unit comprising a sealed container joined to a second container. When the second container is fully united with the sealed container, a seal in the sealed container is breached and the contents of the first container and the second container can be mixed. The seal is breached by a bushing enclosed within the sealed container or enclosed in a coupler between the sealed container and the second container which is advanced against the seal, and ruptures the seal when the second container is advanced into the coupler of the coupler portion of the sealed container.

Abstract: A dual polarized broadband base station antenna for wireless communication systems is disclosed. The present invention employs a dual polarized boxed arrangement radiation element with high isolation between polarization channels. Plural radiating elements project outwardly from the surface of a ground plane. The antenna elements are paired dipoles.

Abstract: A symbol detector for an OFDM receiver determines the correlation of corresponding samples of at least two received preamble symbol samples, one of the samples delayed a predetermined duration with respect to the other; determines a timing metric based on the correlation results; detects multiple peaks in the timing metric; indicates a symbol detection based on the multiple peaks detected in the timing metric; and gets a refined CFO estimation using averaging the phase information across these multiple peaks.

Abstract: A method of transmission in a wireless communication system having a transmitter and a receiver. In the transmitter: signals are encoded using a space-domain precoder for spatial multiplexing, time-domain variable delay is introduced at each signal communication path for time diversity, and the signal are transmitted to the receiver. In the receiver the signal transmissions from the transmitter are decoded using a space-domain decoder, wherein time diversity and spatial multiplexing are combined, to increase communication robustness and spectral efficiency.

Abstract: A line thinning algorithm (LTA) for a grayscale input image, wherein the LTA is a separable algorithm that performs on each row of input grayscale image sequentially from top to bottom and subsequently on each column from left to right, independently. The LTA is very robust to the noise and is capable of thinning lines even in noisy image areas. The level of thinning is fully adaptive to the transition range and dynamic range locally in each line segment. Furthermore, the LTA for a black line can be easily generalized for a white line counterpart by simply switching the sign of one parameter DELTA from positive to negative without changing other aspects of the LTA.

Abstract: A method and system is provided that selects transmission modes between spatial multiplexing, delay diversity and space-time coding in 802.11n systems. As such, eigen-value computation for mode selection is not required. This provides efficiency, in particular for basic receiver structure where a linear MMSE or ZF MIMO detector is applied. Further, mode selection using a simple metric provides accurate mode selection. In addition by switching between different transmission modes, a link adaptation algorithm according to the present invention provides improved system performance.

Abstract: A method of concatenation for LDPC encoding in an OFDM wireless system selects codewords based on the data packet payload size, wherein the payload size is the number of transmitted information bits in octets. For low transmission rates, shortening and puncturing across all codewords within the packet is applied to minimize OFDM symbol padding. For high transmission rates, only shortening across all codewords within the packet is applied to minimize OFDM symbol padding.

Abstract: A method for adaptive reduction of ringing artifacts in an input image including pixels of image information. The method includes selecting a pixel window including a set of pixels from the input image pixels, detecting areas of ringing artifacts in the pixel window based on the pixel information, processing the pixels in the detected areas to reduce the detected ringing artifacts in those areas, and generating an enhanced output image including the processed pixels with reduced ringing artifacts.

Abstract: An integrated ballot assembly formed from a backing assembly, a ballot book, and connection between the ballot book and the backing assembly. The backing assembly is formed from a planar support card and an integrally formed, co-planar ballot card that is temporarily secured to the planar support card along a perforation line. The ballot book is formed from several voting information sheets that are arranged from top to bottom in a stack of successively lower voting information sheets where each sheet is progressively narrower. The ballot card has progressively leftward moving voting columns, and the ballot book is connected to the planar support card with the right edges of its successively narrower sheets corresponding to and aligned with successive ones of the voting columns. When completed, the ballot card may be removed directly from the integrated ballot assembly along the first perforation line.

Abstract: An image processing system provides image enhancement and anti-clipping units. The anti-clipping unit for image sharpness enhancement, operates such that any shoot artifacts in the enhanced image that go beyond pixel value lower/upper bounds are properly adjusted back within the lower and upper bounds, without causing prominent edge jaggedness artifacts in the final resulting output image.

Abstract: A telecommunication MIMO receiver implements soft bit metric calculation with direct matrix inversion MIMO detection. The receiver has a detector that detects data symbols in a received signal by determining distances between received signal points and constellation points; a scaler that scales the distances using a scaling factor; and a soft bit metric calculator that uses the scaled distances to calculate scaled soft bit metrics. The receiver can also have a decoder that decodes the soft bit metrics to determine data values in the received signals. Preferably, the receiver also has a quantizer that dynamically quantizes the soft bit metrics before decoding by the decoder.

Abstract: A MIMO wireless system includes a transmitter that has a transmitter having a parser that parses a bit stream into multiple spatial data streams and multiple interleavers corresponding to the multiple spatial data streams, where each interleaver interleaves the bits in the corresponding spatial data stream by performing multiple column rotation to increase diversity of the wireless system. The MIMO wireless system also includes a receiver that has deinterleavers that deinterleaves spatial bit streams transmitted by the transmitter.

Abstract: A method of transmission in a wireless communication system including a transmitter, a transceiver and a receiver. The transmitter transmits a first signal to the receiver. The transceiver also receives the first signal and retransmits the first signal to the receiver by modifying the signal characteristics, such that the first signal and the retransmitted signal are received substantially uncorrelated at the receiver.