Patents Assigned to STMicroelectronics N.V.
  • Patent number: 7065375
    Abstract: A process for estimating a speed of movement of a mobile terminal operating in a wireless communication system and communicating with a base station via a transmission channel includes estimating fading of the transmission channel, and performing an autocorrelation on the fading for providing a first autocorrelation result. Reference autocorrelation results are calculated for predetermined values of speed of movement of the mobile terminal, with the calculating being based upon a known autocorrelation function performed on the fading. The process further includes comparing the first autocorrelation result to the various reference autocorrelation results, and estimating the speed of movement of the mobile terminal based upon the comparison.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 24, 2002
    Date of Patent: June 20, 2006
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventor: Corinne Bonhomme
  • Patent number: 7065601
    Abstract: An interface is described which has at least one chip side port with a first plurality of pins for conveying fields of a packet and first and second circuit side ports each port having a set of pins with a lower number than the first set of pins in the chip side port. The interface is constructed so that interrupt signals from an off-chip circuit can be conveyed on-chip in a manner such that the interrupt signals are indistinguishable from interrupt signals received from on-chip modules connected to an on-chip communication path. The same principle is applicable to power-down signals.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 6, 2003
    Date of Patent: June 20, 2006
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventors: Stuart Ryan, Andrew Jones
  • Patent number: 7054349
    Abstract: An incident pulse signal of the ultra wideband type conveys digital information that is coded using pulses having a known theoretical shape. A decoding device includes an input for receiving the incident signal, and for delivering a base signal. A comparator receives the base signal and delivers an intermediate signal representative of the sign of the base signal with respect to a reference. A sampling circuit samples the intermediate signal for delivering a digital signal. A digital processing circuit correlates the digital signal with a reference correlation signal corresponding to a theoretical base signal arising from the reception of a theoretical pulse having the known theoretical shape.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 26, 2002
    Date of Patent: May 30, 2006
    Assignees: STMicroelectronics N.V., STMicroelectronics SA
    Inventors: Chiara Cattaneo, Didier Helal, Thierry Arnaud, Fritz Lebowsky, Régis Cattenoz
  • Patent number: 7054392
    Abstract: A process for estimating successive values of digital symbols which can each take M different possible values, on the basis of the successive values of digital samples each of which results from the combination of at most L successive symbols. This process includes a stage by stage progression through a trellis of the Viterbi type with Mk states, with k being less than or equal to L?1. All the stages are respectively provided with aggregate metrics.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 3, 2001
    Date of Patent: May 30, 2006
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventor: David Chappaz
  • Publication number: 20060107104
    Abstract: A code patching device is provided for use with a processor having a read-only memory which stores instruction code and a further memory for storing patch code. A plurality of patch address registers each store an address, in the read-only memory, at which a patch is to be performed. A comparator compares the address of the read-only memory that is being accessed by the processor with the addresses stored in the registers. A control unit selects between code from the read-only memory or patch code from the further memory depending on the comparison. The code patching device can replace, on-the-fly, erroneous lines of code from the read-only memory by corrected ones. During an initialization process the patch code is loaded into the further memory and the registers are loaded with the addresses which require patching.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 4, 2005
    Publication date: May 18, 2006
    Applicant: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventors: Rudolph Alexandre, Vincent Charlier, Tiana Rahaga, Yves Vandersmissen
  • Patent number: 7039020
    Abstract: The hybrid circuit can be used to substantially reduce near echo signals. The circuit includes a balanced 2-wire to 4-wire hybrid for interconnecting a two wire receive path and a two wire transmit path to a two wire transmission line. The two wire receive path connects the balanced hybrid to an A/D converter and the two wire transmit path connects a D/A converter to the balanced hybrid. The two wire receive path contains a filter, dimensioned to remove signals transmitted from the D/A converter. The invention is particularly adapted for use with FDD and OFDD.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 27, 1998
    Date of Patent: May 2, 2006
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventors: Gunnar Bahlenberg, Daniel Bengtsson, Siwert Hakansson, Anders Isaksson, Lars-Ake Isaksson, Mikael Isaksson, Magnus Johansson, Mauritz Lahti, Lis-Marie Ljunggren, Hans Lundberg, Tomas Nordstrom, Lennart Olsson, Sven-Rune Olofsson, Tomas Stefansson, Hans Oman, Goran Okvist, Per Odling, Petra Dentgen, Franck Sjöberg
  • Patent number: 7038183
    Abstract: The invention relates to an image sensor device comprising a substrate, formed in CMOS technology, in particular, with an integrated semiconductor structure (ASIC) and, arranged above that, an optically active thin-film structure comprising in each case at least one layer made of doped and undoped amorphous silicon, spatially adjacent pixels in each case being formed in the horizontal plane, which pixels each have an optoelectronic transducer for converting incident light into an electric current proportional to the incident quantity of light, and also a charge store assigned to the optoelectronic transducer, the charge state of which charge store can be varied in a manner dependent on the light incident on the assigned optoelectronic transducer.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 18, 2001
    Date of Patent: May 2, 2006
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventor: Stephan Benthien
  • Patent number: 7035605
    Abstract: A method for controlling frequency of a local oscillator in a DS-CDMA type receiver includes transforming a known spread spectrum signal into a sampled digital signal formed of symbols with a despreaded frequency spectrum, and determining a residual frequency error fe for each symbol including a first residual frequency error fe1. The method further includes correcting the frequency of the local oscillator with the residual frequency errors, and determining an average of absolute values of a predetermined number of successive residual frequency errors. The average is compared with a threshold, and if the average is greater than or equal to the threshold, the local oscillator frequency is corrected using an error equal to ?sgn(fe1) (1/T?|fe1|), where sgn is the sign function, | | is the absolute value function and T is duration of a symbol before determining the next residual frequency error associated with the next symbol.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 16, 2003
    Date of Patent: April 25, 2006
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventors: Miguel Kirsch, Friedbert Berens
  • Patent number: 7035357
    Abstract: A device includes a receiver including an estimation block for estimating the impulse response of the transmission channel and a transformation block. The transformation block may include a preprocessing block for determining a phase minimum transformed impulse response corresponding to a transformed channel based upon the estimated impulse response of the transmission channel, and a filter for filtering the signal received. This makes it possible to retain equality between the autocorrelation of the signal received and the autocorrelation of the filtered signal. Further, the receiver may include an equalizer for applying an equalization processing operation to the filtered signal while taking account of the transformed impulse response.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 7, 2001
    Date of Patent: April 25, 2006
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventor: Corinne Bonhomme
  • Patent number: 7023907
    Abstract: A VDSL-modem which is divided into an analog part which is placed in an optical node and a digital part which is placed in a local station. The analog part of the VDSL-modem includes an A/D-converter and D/A-converter, a filter, an amplifier, a hybrid/balun, an adaptive noise attenuator, an optical interface, and possibly an echo canceller. The digital part of the modem includes an FFT/IFFT-processor, a synchronizer, an equalizer, an interleaving unit, an error correction unit, a protocol manager, and an optical interface. The VDSL-modem simplifies synchronization of the modem and reduces power consumption in the optical node. A multiplexor function in the optical node in addition is simpler because it need not manage a protocol.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 10, 1998
    Date of Patent: April 4, 2006
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventors: Sven-Rune Olofsson, Joachim Johansson, Mikael Isaksson, Hans Ohman, Daniel Bengtsson, Lennart Olsson, Anders Isaksson, Goran Okvist, Lis-Mari Ljunggren, Hans Lungberg, Tomas Stefansson, Gunnar Bahlenberg, Siwert Hakansson, Magnus Johansson
  • Publication number: 20060064627
    Abstract: The method and device include determining by removing N?N, rows from an original generator matrix (G) defining the LDPC code and having N rows and N?M columns for obtaining a generator sub-matrix (G1) having N?M columns and N1 rows. The method also includes delivering by receiving an input data vector of size N?M and multiplying the input vector with the generator sub-matrix for obtaining the punctured encoded code word.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 21, 2005
    Publication date: March 23, 2006
    Applicant: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventors: Friedbert Berens, Laurent Chalard
  • Publication number: 20060050678
    Abstract: The block de-interleaving system includes an input for receiving a set of time-aligned blocks or interleaved data, physical memory unit, and a de-interleaving block for writing the blocks in the memory in a first predetermined manner and reading the blocks from the memory in a second predetermined manner to de-interleave the data of the blocks. The physical memory unit may include several different physical memories, and the de-interleaving block is adapted to completely write and read a block into and from one physical elementary memory.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 7, 2005
    Publication date: March 9, 2006
    Applicants: STMicroelectronics N.V., STMicroelectronics S.r.l.
    Inventors: Armin Wellig, Julien Zory, Pasquale Imbesi
  • Patent number: 7010027
    Abstract: A digital subscriber line transmission system using QAM modulation on several equally spaced discrete tones, uses, at a high transmission rate, N=2048/p or 4096/p tones spaced by 4.3125p KHz, where p is a power of 2.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 24, 1999
    Date of Patent: March 7, 2006
    Assignees: STMicroelectronics S.A., STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventors: Denis J.G. Mestdagh, Gérard Fargere, Mikael R. Isaksson
  • Patent number: 6990142
    Abstract: A first estimate is made of the impulse response of the channel considered as a whole, then this first estimate is corrected independently of the information transmitted for obtaining a corrected final estimate of the impulse response of the channel. This is done by taking account of the fact that the impulse response of the sender and the impulse response of the receiver are known.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 15, 2001
    Date of Patent: January 24, 2006
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventor: David Chappaz
  • Patent number: 6987971
    Abstract: Estimating the speed of movement of a mobile terminal of a wireless communication system communicating with a base station includes calculating a normalized auto-covariance of the instantaneous power of the signal received by the mobile terminal or by the base station.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 30, 2002
    Date of Patent: January 17, 2006
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventor: Miguel Kirsch
  • Patent number: 6987800
    Abstract: The invention relates to a far-end crosstalk canceling circuit for a digital subscriber line transmission system, the transmission system including a plurality of line termination modems receiving discrete multitone symbols from corresponding network termination modems over a plurality of transmission channels. The invention estimates the modulated data actually transmitted by the network termination modems from the frequency components of the discrete multitone symbols received by the line termination modems and to evaluate the far-end crosstalk as a linear combination of these estimates. Far-end crosstalk cancellation for all the line termination modems is also provided in a centralized manner.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 14, 2000
    Date of Patent: January 17, 2006
    Assignees: STMicroelectronics S.A., STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventors: Tomas Nordström, Daniel Bengtsson, Olivier Isson
  • Publication number: 20060006482
    Abstract: The invention relates to a TFA image sensor with stability-optimized photodiode for converting electromagnetic radiation into an intensity-dependent photocurrent with an intermetal dielectric, on which, in the region of the pixel matrix, a lower barrier layer is situated and a conductive layer is situated on the barrier layer, and vias being provided for the contact connection to the ASIC, the vias in metal contacts on the ASIC. A TFA image sensor having improved electrical properties is provided. This is achieved in that an intrinsic absorption layer is provided between the TCO layer and the barrier layer with a layer thickness of between 300 nm and 600 nm. Before the application of the photodiodes, the topmost, comparatively thick metal layer of the ASIC is removed and replaced by a matrix of thin metal electrodes which form the back electrodes of the photodiodes, the matrix being patterned in the pixel raster.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 14, 2003
    Publication date: January 12, 2006
    Applicant: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventors: Peter Rieve, Marcus Walder, Konstantin Seibel, Jens Prima, Arash Mirhamed
  • Publication number: 20050287695
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method for producing a photodiode contact for a TFA image sensor which includes a photodiode, produced by deposition of a multilayer system and a transparent conductive contact layer on an ASIC circuit that has been coated with an intermediate metal dielectric component and that has vias in a photoactive zone which are arranged on a pixel grid. Said vias extend through the intermediate metal dielectric component and are linked with respective strip conductors of the CMOS-ASIC circuit. A pixel-grid structured barrier layer, and on top thereof a CMOS metallization, are arranged on the intermediate metal dielectric component. The aim of the invention is to improve the characteristic variables of the photodiode by simple technological means.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 23, 2005
    Publication date: December 29, 2005
    Applicant: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventors: Peter Rieve, Konstantin Seibel, Michael Wagner
  • Publication number: 20050285956
    Abstract: A color filter array for an optical image sensor comprising pixels that are arranged in a matrix or a line, each pixel being connected to an electronic circuit for converting the information concerning the luminosity of each pixel into electric signals. A rectangular color filter of a predetermined color is placed over each pixel and several pixels that are directly adjacent form pixel by pixel with color filters of different colors a base cell, a plurality of said base cells together constituting the matricial or linear image sensor. The aim of the invention is to create a color filter array for an optical image sensor, which reliably prevents the distortion of the color signals by unfiltered white light. The object is achieved by making the border regions between adjacent color filters of different color significantly less permeable to light as a result of an overlap or additional non-transparent strips.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 14, 2005
    Publication date: December 29, 2005
    Applicant: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventors: Michael Wagner, Peter Rieve, Konstantin Seibel
  • Publication number: 20050286654
    Abstract: A method for detecting an eventual channel intended to a designated user equipment among n channels received by the designated user equipment during a given duration, each channel received during the duration carrying encoded data masked with an identifier associated to a user equipment. The method includes a selecting phase having a demasking step demasking the received masked encoded data of each channel with the identifier of the designated user equipment, a decoding step decoding the demasked encoded data of each channel to obtain a set of digital decoded data for each channel, a calculating step calculating, from each set of digital decoded data, a global information representative of a confidence in digital data received on the physical channel, and a detecting step detecting the channel from all the global information.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 3, 2005
    Publication date: December 29, 2005
    Applicant: STMicroelectronics N.V.
    Inventors: Stephane Tanrikulu, Ettore Messina, Friedbert Berens