Abstract: A method for forming a germanium-enriched region in a heterojunction bipolar transistor and a heterojunction bipolar transistor comprising a germanium-enriched region. A base having a silicon-germanium portion is formed over a collector. Thermal oxidation of the base causes a germanium-enriched region to form on a surface of the silicon-germanium portion subjected to the thermal oxidation. An emitter is formed overlying the germanium-enriched portion region. The germanium-enriched region imparts advantageous operating properties to the heterojunction bipolar transistor, including improved high-frequency/high-speed operation.

Abstract: Forming a thin film acoustic device by patterning a layer of non-conducting material on a first side of a substrate to expose a portion of the first substrate side; depositing layers of conducting material on the layer of non-conducting material and the exposed portion of the first substrate side; depositing a layer of piezoelectric material on the layers of conducting material; depositing and patterning additional layers of material on the layer of piezoelectric material to form a first device electrode; depositing and patterning a masking layer on a second side of the substrate to expose a portion of the second substrate side; etching away the exposed substrate portion to expose the patterned layer of non-conducting material and a portion of the layers of conducting material; and etching away the exposed portion of the layers of conducting material to form a second device electrode.

Abstract: A scheduler is adapted to schedule packets or other data blocks for transmission from a plurality of transmission elements in timeslots of a frame in a communication system. In scheduling for a given frame, the scheduler initially designates each of the transmission elements as eligible to transmit one or more data blocks in the given frame, and selects from among those of the transmission elements designated as eligible at least one of the transmission elements for scheduling in a next available timeslot of the given frame. The scheduler then adjusts the eligibility status of the selected transmission element(s), and repeats the selecting and adjusting operations for one or more remaining timeslots of the given frame. The scheduler in an illustrative embodiment may be implemented in a network processor integrated circuit or other processing device of the communication system.

Abstract: In one embodiment, a method for demodulating and searching for a preamble signal containing a complex phasor signal is disclosed. The complex phasor is demodulated using a phasor-rotated fast transformer. A received signal is correlated with a spreading code to produce a correlated signal. The correlated signal is coherently accumulated to produce a coherently accumulated signal. A first phasor-rotated signal transformation is performed on a real component of the coherently accumulated signal, and a second phasor-rotated signal transformation is performed on an imaginary component of the coherently accumulated signal. Finally, the signal power of the transformed real and imaginary components of the coherently accumulated signal is determined.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for determining a plurality of filter tap weights or biases (or both) for a noise predictive filter used to generate one or more signal dependent branch metrics. A filter tap weight or filter bias (or both) are adaptively accumulated for each possible data condition. The data conditions may comprise, for example, each possible data pattern for a given data dependency length. The appropriate accumulated filter tap weight or bias to update can be selected based on a data condition associated with the current received data. The filter tap weights associated with a delay 0 tap can be adapted for each filter condition except for a single normalizing condition, whose corresponding delay 0 tap remains fixed.

Abstract: A QFN IC package is provided that has all of the advantages of the typical QFN IC package, but in addition, has a paddle that is configured to facilitate trace routing and/or via placement on the PWB or PCB on which the IC package is mounted. By configuring the paddle as necessary or desired in order to facilitate routing and/or via placement, the overall size of the PWB or PCB can be reduced without sacrificing the thermal or electrical performance advantages that the paddle provides. In addition, the reduction in the overall size of the PWB or PCB results in reduced cost.

Abstract: Various embodiments of the present invention provide systems and methods for detecting storage medium defects. As one example, a media defect detection system is disclosed that includes a data detector circuit that applies a detection algorithm to the data input and provides a hard output and a soft output. A first circuit combines a first derivative of the hard output with a derivative of the data input to yield a first combined signal. A second circuit combines a second derivative of the hard output with a derivative of the first combined signal to yield a second combined signal. A third circuit combines a derivative of the soft output with the second combined signal and a threshold value to yield a defect signal.

Abstract: Petri net models, of systems, communication protocols, and software programs, which include place objects, transition objects, arcs, and initial markings, may be used for testing and verification. To reduce computations, a new unfolding process is performed on the net models. Two or more candidate buffer place interfaces are selected from the input net model. The input net is subdivided with a preliminary cut to form two subnets, wherein the preliminary cut passes through suitable candidate buffer place interfaces, objects of each of the subnets other than the suitable candidate buffer place interfaces are reachable from at least one initial marking, and the subnets do not include a mix of initial and non-initial marking places. Each of the two subnets are unfolded and then joined to form an unfolded net that is behaviorally equivalent to original input net model. The unfolded net is then stored in a storage unit.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus are provided for improved startup of a voltage controlled delay loop that has an injection clock and a return clock. A control signal is determined for a plurality of delay elements in a voltage controlled delay loop by obtaining a histogram count of a number of occurrences of at least one predefined logic value for a plurality of delay settings of the voltage controlled delay loop; determining a histogram count that approximately corresponds to an alignment of at least one edge in the injection and return clocks; and determining the control signal based on the determined histogram count that approximately corresponds to the alignment. The voltage controlled delay loop can be started using the determined control signal. The histogram count can be obtained for a plurality of PVT combinations and the control signal can then be determined for each PVT combination.

Abstract: Described embodiments provide a server for transferring data packets of streaming data sessions between devices. The server includes an accelerator that, for received data packets, i) extracts header fields of the packets, ii) determines, based on the header fields, a destination for the packets, and iii) provides the packets to the destination. For data to be transmitted, the accelerator i) groups the data into packets, ii) generates header fields for the packets, and iii) provides the packets to the network. A memory arbiter manages accesses to memory that buffers data and stores keys corresponding to the data sessions. A storage medium stores media files corresponding to the data sessions. A key manager includes i) a first memory for storing a master key of the server, ii) a second memory for storing one or more keys corresponding to the data sessions, and iii) a processor to encrypt and decrypt data.

Abstract: Apparatus for distributing streaming multimedia to at least one end client over a network includes memory and at least one processor operatively connected to the memory. The processor is operative: (i) to receive the streaming multimedia from at least one multimedia source via at least one of a plurality of channels in the network; (ii) when a channel change request generated by the end client for changing a channel and corresponding multimedia content from the multimedia source is not detected, to deliver the at least one multimedia stream to the end client at a first data rate; and (iii) when the channel change request has been detected, to deliver the at least one multimedia stream to the end client at a second rate for a prescribed period of time after receiving the channel change request and, after the prescribed period of time, to deliver the at least one multimedia stream to the end client at the first data rate, wherein the second data rate is greater than the first data rate.

Abstract: The invention provides a communication protocol and serial interface having an approximately fixed interface clock and capable of accommodating a variety of communication rates. The interface employs a variable-length frame that may be expanded or reduced to obtain a desired communication rate, even though the interface clock rate is held approximately constant. The invention further provides a method for designing an agile barrier interface. In particular, the barrier clock rate is preferably selected to be an approximate common multiple of the various communication rates that the barrier interface must handle. The frame length corresponding to each communication rate may then be obtained by dividing the barrier clock rate by the ?? rate. Finally, the invention provides an agile barrier capable of communicating data across a serial interface at a variety of data rates and at an approximately fixed interface clock rate.

Abstract: In a packet-based (e.g., Ethernet) network, such as the network of central offices and base stations of a wireless telephone system, a node receives one or more incoming packet-based signals from one or more other nodes of the network and recovers a clock signal from each incoming packet-based signal. The node selects one of the recovered clock signals as the node's reference clock signal. When the node is part of a base station, the node uses the selected clock to generate and transmit one or more outgoing packet-based signals to one or more central offices. The node also uses the selected clock to generate the base station's wireless transmissions. In one implementation, the base stations and central offices are connected by Ethernet facilities.

Abstract: An acoustic modeling system and an acoustic modeling method use beam tracing techniques that accelerate computation of significant acoustic reverberation paths in a distributed virtual environment. The acoustic modeling system and method perform a priority-driven beam tracing to construct a beam tree data structure representing “early” reverberation paths between avatar locations by performing a best-first traversal of a cell adjacency graph that represents the virtual environment. To further accelerate reverberation path computations, the acoustic modeling system and method according to one embodiment perform a bi-directional beam tracing algorithm that combines sets of beams traced from pairs of avatar locations to efficiently find viable acoustic reverberation paths.

Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention generate a normalized floating-point sum from at least two floating-point addends. The mantissa of an un-normalized floating-point sum is generated. A pointer is generated which indicates the location of the left-most significant digit (LSD) in the mantissa of the un-normalized floating-point sum. A plurality of possible values for the exponent of the normalized floating-point sum are generated, in parallel with each other and in parallel with the mantissa addition, based on a common exponent value (e.g., the largest of the two addends' exponent values). Based on the LSD pointer, one of the possible values is selected as the exponent of the normalized floating-point sum. The mantissa of the un-normalized floating-point sum is normalized to yield the mantissa of the normalized floating-point sum. By generating the possible exponent values in parallel, embodiments of the present invention can result in significant time savings over prior-art methods.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus are provided for detecting a loss of lock condition in a clock and data recovery system. A loss of lock condition is detected in a clock and data recovery system that generates a recovered clock signal from a received signal by sampling the received signal for a plurality of different phases using one or more latches clocked by the recovered clock; evaluating the samples to monitor a data eye associated with the received signal; and detecting the loss of lock condition if the data eye does not satisfy one or more predefined conditions. Generally, the predefined conditions identify a loss of the data eye (e.g., when the data eye cannot be substantially detected), for example, based on a degree of opening of the data eye. The clock and data recovery system can optionally be restarted if the loss of lock condition is detected.

Abstract: A structured interleaving/de-interleaving scheme enables efficient implementation of encoding/decoding based on two-dimensional product codes (2D PC). An encoder has an integrated architecture that performs structured interleaving and PC coding in an integrated manner in which locations in the interleaved data stream are related to row and column indices for the 2D PC coding based on closed-form expressions. In one embodiment, a corresponding decoder implements two-stage low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoding based on the same relationships between locations in the interleaved data stream and row and column indices for the LDPC decoding.

Abstract: An input audio signal having an input temporal envelope is converted into an output audio signal having an output temporal envelope. The input temporal envelope of the input audio signal is characterized. The input audio signal is processed to generate a processed audio signal, wherein the processing de-correlates the input audio signal. The processed audio signal is adjusted based on the characterized input temporal envelope to generate the output audio signal, wherein the output temporal envelope substantially matches the input temporal envelope.

Abstract: In one embodiment, a mobile station including a chassis having a display, a power reducer, a proximity sensor, and a microprocessor. The power reducer controls power consumption of the display. The proximity sensor is coupled to the chassis and causes the power consumption to be reduced when the display is within a predetermined range of an external object. The microprocessor is coupled to the proximity sensor and to the display and automatically activates the proximity sensor based on the mobile station receiving an incoming wireless telephone call.

Abstract: Proximity regulation systems for use with a portable cell phone and portable cell phones are disclosed. In one embodiment, the portable cell phone includes: (1) an operation mode input or circuit and (2) means for determining a transmit power level of the portable cell phone based on the operation mode input or circuit.