Patents Examined by James F. Trammell
  • Patent number: 6169962
    Abstract: An automated, computer-controlled landfill gas recovery system includes a number of equipment vaults, with each vault being associated with one or more wells in the landfill. The wells are in fluid communication with a piping system located in the associated vault, with the piping system including a main pneumatic control valve that can be adjusted to establish gas flow rate through the well or wells. Also, each vault includes a shielded enclosure that holds sensors and a local vault controller for generating signals representative of flow rate, vacuum, and oxygen/methane/carbon dioxide content of the gas being extracted from the well. These signals are sent to a remote computer. Based on the signals generated by the sensors, the computer communicates with each vault controller to control the pneumatic control valve of each vault to establish a gas flow rate from the associated well as appropriate to accord with one of several user-selected process control regimes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 23, 1996
    Date of Patent: January 2, 2001
    Assignee: Landfill Gas & Environmental Products, Inc.
    Inventors: Ronald L. Brookshire, Donald Brookshire, Travis Brookshire, Seyed Mohammed Reza Kalantar-Nejad, James Joseph Beach
  • Patent number: 5731996
    Abstract: A processing method and apparatus that process magnetometer data derived from an array of magnetometer sensors and outputs the position or location of a magnetic dipole. In the method and apparatus, (a) a set of actual magnetic field measurements of a magnetic dipole is collected using the array of magnetic sensors. Then (b), a location for the magnetic dipole is hypothesized. Then (c), a set of estimated magnetic field measurements is determined that would be formed by a magnetic dipole at the hypothesized location. Then (d), the actual magnetic field measurements are compared with the estimated magnetic field measurements. Steps (b) through (d) are repeated for all hypothesized locations within the detection range of the array of magnetic sensors. The position or location of the dipole is displayed for viewing on a display.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 5, 1996
    Date of Patent: March 24, 1998
    Assignee: Hughes Electronics
    Inventor: Harold C. Gilbert
  • Patent number: 5625573
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for the fast acquisition of GMSK-modulated signal for CDPD (Cellular Digital Packet Data) applications wherein the frequency offset and time of arrival of the data sequence are quickly determined. The computational burden is reduced by roughly estimating the frequency offset using an operation insensitive to timing uncertainty and roughly estimating the time of arrival using an operation insensitive to frequency offset using the roughly estimated frequency offset and time of arrival to construct a small two dimensional array to determine the final frequency offset and time of arrival.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 1, 1995
    Date of Patent: April 29, 1997
    Assignee: Hughes Electronics
    Inventor: In-Kyung Kim
  • Patent number: 5502651
    Abstract: An apparatus and a method are disclosed for measuring the concentration of fibrinogen that contributes to the clotting of blood. The apparatus utilizes a potentiophotometer that provides an output which is directly indicative of the fibrinogen concentration in the blood sample. The present invention takes into account the prothrombin time which is defined as the time between the injection of a reagent into a sample of the blood being measured and the time of the clotting or coagulation. The present invention relies on the knowledge that a specified minimum amount of fibrinogen needs to be present in the blood sample in order to detect the forming of a clot. After the detection of the specified minimum amount, the invention then relies on monitors for the fibrinogen concentration to decrease to a value which is less than the specified minimum amount.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 2, 1994
    Date of Patent: March 26, 1996
    Inventors: R. David Jackson, Wallace E. Carroll