Abstract: A display device includes a column driver having an initialization sequence in the vertical blanking interval. The signal used to render the column driver TFT conductive is determined in the vertical blanking interval and maintained on a capacitor in the column driver for the duration of the vertical field. The column driver also includes an autozero comparator which is subject to the autozero operation during the vertical blanking interval.

Abstract: In a cathode ray tube, an electron beam is directed towards a faceplate having an electrode biased at screen potential and is magnetically scanned across the faceplate to impinge upon phosphors thereon to produce light depicting an image. A six-pole coil is disposed proximate the deflection yoke and/or on the tube neck to modify the focus of the red, green and blue electron beams to control focus. An electrode between the tube neck and the faceplate is biased at or above screen potential to deflect electrons over a greater total angle than is obtained from the magnetic deflection.

Abstract: A digital AGC arrangement is responsive to the absolute value of a digital signal whose amplitude is to be gain controlled to generate an error signal. The digital value of the error signal is converted to an analog signal by a high-gain digital element such as a pulse width modulator or a comparator controlling a current source. The output thereof is filtered and applied to the gain control input of an amplifier whose gain is to be controlled thereby. This AGC is useful, for example, in a television receiver that includes an RF tuner, IF SAW filter and IF amplifier to receive television signals in both analog format, such as the NTSC, PAL and SECAM formats, and in digital format, such as the ATSC and DVB formats. IF signals from the IF amplifier are sub-sampled to digital signal form and are utilized for AGC, in addition to being processed by respective analog format and digital format processors.

Abstract: In a data transmission system, an encoder provides a bitstream having a sequence of frame segments, wherein each frame segment has a bit size which is limited by the encoder to a maximum bit size. A transmission channel is provided which has a channel rate sufficient to transmit a frame segment of maximum bit size within a frame interval. A burst transmitter receives the bitstream from the encoder and transmits each consecutive frame segment, at regular frame intervals, in a burst at the channel rate via the transmission channel, to provide a bursty bitstream over the transmission channel.

Abstract: A generic spatially scalable shape encoding apparatus and method for deriving shape information for chrominance components from luminance component. The present generic spatially-scalable shape encoding applies a series of subband (e.g., wavelet) filters to obtain N-levels of wavelet decomposition for the texture information of both luminance and chrominance components. The application of the corresponding subsampling filters of said subband filters is applied in a manner such that the shape of the chrominance can be derived from the shape of the luminance at the same spatial layer.

Abstract: De-interlacing of interlaced image fields to obtain non-interlaced image frames includes removing the blank lines of each image field and removing one-half of the pixels of the remaining lines of each image field, thereby to obtain image frames having one-half the number of lines (i.e about one-half the vertical resolution) and one-half the number of pixels in each horizontal line (i.e. about one-half the horizontal resolution). Removing the blank lines may include interpolating pixel values for lines in the positions of the blank lines from the pixel values of adjacent lines, retaining the interpolated lines, and removing the adjacent lines, thereby to substantially reduce vertical jitter that would be caused by the one-half line positional difference between adjacent image fields. The invention has the advantage of greatly simplifying the implementation of such de-interlacing arrangement.

Abstract: Method of storing pixel data in a memory of a predictive video decoder that stores pixel data in words that contain blocks of pixel information. Each word or a sequence of words contains pixel data from a rectangular block of pixels, e.g., a 2×2 pixel block is stored in a 4 byte word or a 2×4 pixel block is stored in two successive 4 byte words. These words are stored in memory pages where a page or successive pages contain a series of words of data representing a row of pixel blocks. Consequently, the words representing groups (blocks) of pixels are stored from left to right in the order that the pixels appear in the frame. A pair of memory banks is used to store the words and each successive row of pixel blocks is stored in a different one of the two memory banks.

Abstract: An apparatus is described for reducing coherent signal interference between at least two bit streams framed with a common clock signal. The apparatus includes an internal clock signal generated from the common clock signal and a Manchester encoder for encoding the internal clock signal with a unique signature. Also included is a logic AND-gate for combining one bit stream of the two bit streams with the encoded clock signal to produce an encoded output signal. When the encoded output signal is combined with another of the two bit streams during transmission, individual bits of the combined bit streams are identifiable at a receiving end. The receiving end decodes the combined bit streams and properly discriminates between ONEs and ZEROs.

Abstract: A main lens of an electron gun of a cathode ray tube is provided. The main lens for receives a plurality of parallel and co-planar electron beams emitted by the electron gun. The lens focuses each electron beam along a respective one of a plurality of focal axes incident to a display surface. A first grid electrode is positioned substantially orthogonally with respect to the plurality of electron beams, the grid electrode includes a plurality of apertures.

Abstract: A conventional variable-length codebook is converted into a modified codebook in which each symbol is represented by the same number of bits, but at least one symbol can be represented by at least two different code words. Such symbols therefore may be said to have redundant bits, which may then be used to encode other symbols, thereby achieving a degree of data compression. By using fixed-length code words, the positions of code words in the resulting encoded data stream are known a priori. As a result, the encoded data can decoded in parallel. The present invention provides both the data compression advantages of variable-length encoding schemes and the ability to perform parallel decoding processing of fixed-length encoding schemes. The present invention can be embodied in either lossless or lossy implementations.

Abstract: A planar polarizer feed network comprising a six port branch coupler having two input ports and four output ports. The output ports are designed to have the same amplitude while their phases are sequentially offset by 90 degrees when fed from a first input port or by minus 90 degrees when fed from a second input port. In one embodiment, each output port is coupled to an aperture coupled antenna array comprising four slots and four patch antenna elements. In this arrangement, an RF signal may be coupled to each of the two input ports to couple properly phased signals to each of the antenna elements to simultaneously form both right-hand and left-hand circularly polarized signal emitted from the planar array of antenna elements.

Abstract: A master oscillator, vertical emission (MOVE) laser includes an oscillator, a coupling region, and vertical-cavity amplifier region formed on a common substrate. The coupling region may include separately defined expansion and grating regions. Single-mode radiation of the oscillator passes through the expansion region, which is a passive region that provides spatial expansion of the propagating single-mode radiation wavefront with little or no gain. The expanded single-mode radiation from the expansion region passes through the grating region, which provides coupling of the relatively broad wavefront from the expansion region into the cavity of the vertical-cavity amplifier. The expansion and grating regions may be configured to reduce or eliminate reflection of single-mode radiation propagating within the vertical-cavity amplifier back toward the oscillator. The cavity of the vertical-cavity amplifier is relatively broad when compared to the cavity of the oscillator.

Abstract: A power supply according to the principles of the inventions comprises two stages. The first stage is a power factor corrector stage. This stage provides the required line regulation, including greater than 95% power factor correction, and provides a range of outputs from approximately 5 volts to 200 volts with good load regulation at low voltages. The second stage is a soft switching power supply having good load regulation from approximately 40 to approximately 175 volts. An intermediate high voltage of the first stage supplies the input to the second stage, thereby achieving extremely good line regulation and low regulation.

Abstract: An extended dynamic range imager. An array of pixels provides an output signal for each pixel related to an amount of light captured for each pixel during an integration period. A row of extended dynamic range (XDR) sample and hold circuits having an XDR sample and hold circuit for each column of the array captures an XDR signal related to a difference between the output signal and an XDR clamp level to which the pixel is reset at a predetermined time before the end of the integration period. A row of linear sample and hold circuits having a linear sample and hold circuit for each column of the array captures a linear signal related to a difference between the output signal and an initial output signal to which the pixel is reset at the beginning of the integration period.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for detecting objects from a sequence of images of a scene containing an object by using two distinct methods for object detection. One is suited for well-lit scenes (e.g., daytime), while the other is suitable for poorly-lit scenes (e.g., nighttime) where the objects have lights mounted on them. Further, the method and apparatus are adaptive to the image statistics of the objects being detected, and can be programmed to filter out “weak” detections that lie below a certain percentile in the observed statistical distribution of image measures. The specific percentile is determined based on whether the scene has been determined to be well- or poorly-lit and whether it contains shadows or not.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for encoding, illustratively, a video information stream to produce an encoded information stream according to a group of frames (GOF) information structure where the GOF structure and, optionally, a bit budget are modified in response to, respectively, information discontinuities and the presence of redundant information in the video information stream (due to, e.g., 3:2 pull-down processing).

Abstract: A method and apparatus for low light imaging in which a plurality of relatively small detectors forming a line is coupled to a respective cell of a CCD register. A charge indicative of detected image information is provided to the respective cells after the cells are substantially discharged via a drain. The register is read by a control element to define therefrom a row of pixel information.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for performing phase detection and timing recovery for a vestigial sideband (VSB) signal by processing a complex valued passband VSB signal using a high order non-linearity to detect the phase of the VSB signal. As such, an all digital solution to timing recovery for a high definition television is provided.

Abstract: A single-transverse-mode laser has a gain medium and a single-transverse-mode fiber disposed within a resonance cavity. The single-transverse-mode fiber has a filter portion and a partial reflection portion. The filter portion of the single-transverse-mode fiber is coupled to the gain medium and disposed within the resonance cavity. The partial reflection portion of the single-transverse-mode fiber defines one end of the resonance cavity. The gain medium has a double-tapered structure.

Abstract: An apparatus and method for reducing memory resource requirements in, e.g., an image processing system by utilizing a packed data pixel representation and, optionally, M-ary pyramid decomposition, for pixel block or pixel group searching and matching operations.