Patents Examined by Joseph Lauture
  • Patent number: 9929740
    Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for a successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with an ultra-low burst error rate. Analog-to-digital conversions may be applied via a plurality of successive conversion cycles, with each conversion cycle corresponding to a particular bit in a corresponding digital output. Meta-stability may be detected during each one of the plurality of successive conversion cycles, and for each one of the plurality of successive conversion cycles, a next one of the plurality of successive conversion cycles may be triggered based on a cycle termination event. After completion of all of the plurality of successive conversion cycles, a meta-stability state of each of the plurality of successive conversion cycles may be assessed, and the digital output may be controlled based on the assessment.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 4, 2017
    Date of Patent: March 27, 2018
    Assignee: MAXLINEAR, INC.
    Inventor: Yongjian Tang
  • Patent number: 9923571
    Abstract: Ramp analog-digital converters used in matrix image sensors to provide a digital value representative of a level of illumination of a pixel are provided. Two voltage samples are applied to a comparator, a counter is used to count pulses at a frequency F from a starting instant of the ramp until a toggling of the comparator. Two other voltage samples, one of which is added to a linear voltage ramp having an identical starting instant and slope to the first ramp, are applied to a second comparator, a half counting frequency F/2 is applied to the counter from the toggling of one of the comparators, and the content of the counter at the moment of toggling of the other comparator is stored. Two measurements of samples of the same signal or of two different signals are averaged without undergoing a digital conversion for each signal and a digital addition.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 4, 2015
    Date of Patent: March 20, 2018
    Assignee: Pyxalis
    Inventors: Laurent Saint Martin, Grégoire Chenebaux
  • Patent number: 9912349
    Abstract: The present disclosure provides a method and apparatus for processing a floating point number matrix, an apparatus and a computer readable storage medium. In embodiments of the present disclosure, the minimum value of the floating point number model matrix and the maximum value of the floating point number model matrix are obtained according to a floating point number model matrix to be compressed, and then, compression processing is performed for the floating point number model matrix to obtain the fixed point number model matrix according to the bit width, the minimum value of the floating point number model matrix and the maximum value of the floating point number model matrix. The compression processing is performed for the floating point number model matrix of the deep learning model by a fixed point method, to obtain the fixed point number model matrix and reduce the storage space and amount of operation of the deep learning model.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 20, 2017
    Date of Patent: March 6, 2018
    Assignee: Beijing Baidu Netcom Science And Technology Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Jian Ouyang, Ni Zhou, Yong Wang, Wei Qi
  • Patent number: 9912345
    Abstract: Methods and systems for frequency generation may comprise a circuit with a first input coupled to receive a first satellite signal at a first satellite downlink frequency, a second input coupled to receive a second satellite signal at a second satellite downlink frequency, and a first analog-to-digital converter (ADC) having an input coupled to receive the first satellite signal. The first ADC may be configured to create a first digital output signal representing the first satellite signal. A second ADC having an input coupled to receive the second satellite signal may be configured to create a second digital output representing the second satellite signal. The circuit may comprise a dielectric resonator oscillator having an output and a clock generator circuit having an input coupled to the oscillator output and configured to output one or more clocks used by the first and second ADCs.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 10, 2017
    Date of Patent: March 6, 2018
    Assignee: Entropic Communications, LLC
    Inventors: Branislav Petrovic, Tommy Yu, Troy Brandon, Ralph Duncan
  • Patent number: 9912341
    Abstract: Representative implementations of devices and techniques provide analog to digital conversion of time-discrete analog inputs. A redundant split-capacitor arrangement using a successive approximation technique can provide a fast and power efficient ADC. For example, a successive approximation capacitor arrangement may include multiple arrays with non-binary bit weights.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 1, 2013
    Date of Patent: March 6, 2018
    Assignee: Infineon Technologies AG
    Inventor: Dieter Draxelmayr
  • Patent number: 9906237
    Abstract: A digital-to-analog converter includes an adder having a plurality of inputs and an output coupled to the output of the converter. The converter further includes a plurality of digital-to-analog (DAC) elements, each DAC element has an output coupled to an input of the adder, and each DAC element has a DAC element input. A plurality of comparators have outputs coupled to a DAC element input. A first input of each comparator is coupled to the input of the converter. A second input of each comparator is selectively coupled to one of a predetermined voltage and a pseudo-random bit sequence (PRBS[n]).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 28, 2017
    Date of Patent: February 27, 2018
    Assignee: TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED
    Inventors: Jagannathan Venkataraman, Eeshan Miglani, Karthikeyan Gunasekaran
  • Patent number: 9905295
    Abstract: A configurable impeder is provided. The configurable impeder comprises of multiple CESs. Each of the CESs is capable of being configured into one of a plurality of impedance states. Further, a programing circuit is provided. The programing circuit provides a plurality of programing signals in dependence of an input signal. Each programing signal configures an impedance state of a respective CES from the plurality of CESs.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 8, 2017
    Date of Patent: February 27, 2018
    Assignee: ARM Ltd.
    Inventors: Azeez Jennudin Bhavnagarwala, Vikas Chandra, Brian Tracy Cline
  • Patent number: 9900025
    Abstract: An efficient adaptive seismic data flow lossless compression and decompression method, which aims at solving the problem that data occupies the storage space and affects the transmission efficiency and is used for efficiently compressing geophysical instrument data, particularly seismic data after 24-bit analog-to-digital conversion. In the method, a data flow is compressed in a lossless mode in real time, and sampling data is adaptively compressed into 1 byte or 2 bytes or 3 bytes from original 24 bits and 3 bytes in a coding manner. Besides the foregoing data ranges, other integers that can be expressed by other 24-bit integer data with symbols are required to be expressed by 4 bytes after being operated through a compression algorithm. The method has the advantages of saving a large amount of storage space and remarkably increasing the data transmission efficiency.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 9, 2015
    Date of Patent: February 20, 2018
    Assignee: INSTITUTE OF GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
    Inventors: Shanhui Xu, Jian Guo, Changchun Yang, Guangding Liu
  • Patent number: 9900023
    Abstract: A device includes a first conversion stage, a second conversion stage, and a first filter circuit. The first conversion stage is configured to perform a Delta-Sigma modulation based on an input signal, in order to generate a first quantized signal and a first residual signal. The second conversion stage is configured to perform a pipelined successive approximation algorithm in response to the first residual signal, in order to generate a second quantized signal. The first filter circuit is configured to perform a decimation process based on the first quantized signal and the second quantized signal to generate a digital output signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 16, 2017
    Date of Patent: February 20, 2018
    Assignee: TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING CO., LTD.
    Inventor: Martin Kinyua
  • Patent number: 9893432
    Abstract: An electromagnetic device includes: a first layer having a first material with a first dielectric constant, the first layer having a plurality of channels or holes filled with a second material with a second dielectric constant that is different from the first dielectric constant; and, a second layer having a plurality of antennas disposed on the first layer. Adjacent ones of the plurality of channels of the first layer have an average spacing therebetween of less than one quarter of an operating wavelength of at least one of the plurality of antennas.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 16, 2017
    Date of Patent: February 13, 2018
    Assignee: BOARD OF REGENTS, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SYSTEM
    Inventors: Raymond C. Rumpf, Cesar R. Garcia
  • Patent number: 9887703
    Abstract: A digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for converting an M bit digital value to an analog signal includes a capacitive DAC and a resistive DAC. The capacitive DAC is configured to convert N most significant bits of the digital value to an analog signal. The resistive DAC is configured to covert M-N least significant bits (LSBs) of the digital value to an analog signal. The resistive DAC includes a coarse DAC and a fine DAC. The coarse DAC is configured to convert a most significant R bits of the M-N least significant bits to an analog signal. An output of the coarse DAC is switchably coupled to a first capacitor of the capacitive DAC. The fine DAC is configured to convert M-N-R least significant bits of the M-N least significant bits to an analog signal. An output of the fine DAC is switchably coupled to a second capacitor of the capacitive DAC.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 19, 2017
    Date of Patent: February 6, 2018
    Assignee: TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED
    Inventors: Jun Zhang, Xuan Wang
  • Patent number: 9876268
    Abstract: An IHS chassis houses a wireless communications device with an antenna. A IHS chassis wall includes aesthetic fiber layers that are free of a carbon fiber material and that provide both an inner and outer surface of the chassis wall. A plurality of composite fiber layers are located between the aesthetic fiber layers, with each composite fiber layer including a first fiber layer section with a carbon fiber material, and one or more second fiber layer sections that are free of a carbon fiber material and include a non-carbon fiber material that extends between the carbon fiber material in the first fiber layer section. The one or more second fiber layer sections align to provide one or more wireless transmission windows adjacent the antenna. The carbon fiber material and the non-carbon fiber material may have the same tow size to prevent the appearance of seams.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 10, 2017
    Date of Patent: January 23, 2018
    Assignee: Dell Products L.P.
    Inventors: Deeder M. Aurongzeb, Simon Sim, Carlo Tian
  • Patent number: 9871301
    Abstract: Integrated antenna structures described herein may include planar inverted-F antennas (PIFAs) integrated with artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) metamaterials. The integrated metamaterial operatively coupled with the PIFA may function as an artificial magnetic reflector, sending all the energy radiated upwards, and thereby changing the original omnidirectional radiation pattern of the PIFA to a directional radiation pattern. The integrated antenna structures that include PIFAs and metamaterials may maintain a smaller form factor as compared to similar directional antennas, while exhibiting a suitable performance in terms of radiation efficiency, radiation pattern and impedance bandwidth.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 21, 2014
    Date of Patent: January 16, 2018
    Assignee: Energous Corporation
    Inventor: Harry Contopanagos
  • Patent number: 9871529
    Abstract: Systems and circuits for feedback control of an asynchronous successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) are described. An example system includes the asynchronous SAR ADC. A timing detector circuit is coupled to the asynchronous SAR ADC to receive one or more internal signals from the asynchronous SAR ADC. The timing detector circuit outputs a timing detector signal representing an internal timing of the SAR ADC. The timing detector signal is generated based on the one or more internal signals. A regulator circuit is coupled to the timing detector circuit to receive the timing detector signal. The regulator circuit is also coupled to the asynchronous SAR ADC to output a feedback signal to the asynchronous SAR ADC. The feedback signal is generated based on the timing detector signal to control the internal timing of the SAR ADC to match a target timing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 6, 2017
    Date of Patent: January 16, 2018
    Assignee: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Euhan Chong, Semyon Lebedev, Marc-Andre LaCroix
  • Patent number: 9866234
    Abstract: Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide digital-to-analog converters (DACs). One example DAC generally includes a first transistor configured to selectively couple a power source to a load. In a first mode of operation of the DAC, the first transistor is closed and couples the load to the power source. In a second mode of operation of the DAC, the first transistor is open and decouples the load from the power source. The DAC further includes a current limiting circuit selectively coupled between the first transistor and a reference voltage. In the first mode, the current limiting circuit is decoupled from the reference voltage. In the second mode, the current limiting circuit is coupled to the reference voltage.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 8, 2017
    Date of Patent: January 9, 2018
    Assignee: QUALCOMM Incorporated
    Inventor: Yi-Hung Tseng
  • Patent number: 9859914
    Abstract: A delta-sigma modulator includes a receiving circuit, a loop filter module, a quantizer, a delta-sigma truncator, a digital filter module, and an output circuit. The receiving circuit is arranged for receiving a feedback signal and an input signal to generate a summation signal. The loop filter module is arranged for filtering the summation signal to generate a filtered summation signal. The quantizer is arranged for generating a first digital signal according to the filtered summation signal. The delta-sigma truncator is arranged for truncating the first digital signal to generate a second digital signal. The digital filter module is arranged for filtering the first digital signal and the second digital signal to generate a filtered first digital signal and a filtered second digital signal, respectively. The output circuit is arranged for generating an output signal according to the filtered first digital signal and the filtered second digital signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 11, 2017
    Date of Patent: January 2, 2018
    Assignee: MEDIATEK INC.
    Inventors: Chan-Hsiang Weng, Tien-Yu Lo
  • Patent number: 9859910
    Abstract: An analog to digital converter includes a first DAC unit configured to vary a level of a reference voltage output through a first node according to a first code, a second DAC unit coupled in parallel to the first DAC unit on the basis of the first node and configured to vary the level of the reference voltage according to a second code, a comparator configured to generate a comparison result signal by comparing an input voltage and the reference voltage, and at least one register array configured to store the first code and the second code with initial values and store the first code and the second code by varying values of the first code and the second code according to the comparison result signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 26, 2017
    Date of Patent: January 2, 2018
    Assignee: SK hynix Inc.
    Inventors: Dong Hyun Kim, Soon Ku Kang, Kwan Su Shon, Yo Han Jeong, Eun Ji Choi
  • Patent number: 9853657
    Abstract: The disclosure provides a delta sigma modulator that includes a first input port and a second input port. These ports receive a differential input signal. A DAC is coupled to the first input port and the second input port, and receives a differential feedback signal and a plurality of selection signals. A loop filter generates a differential filtered signal in response to a differential error signal. The differential error signal is proportional to a difference in the differential input signal and the differential feedback signal. A quantizer generates a quantized output signal in response to the differential filtered signal. A modified DWA block coupled between the quantizer and the DAC, generates the plurality of selection signals in response to a chop clock, a regular clock, the quantized output signal and a plurality of selection index signals. A selection index signal is dependent on previously generated plurality of selection signals.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 17, 2017
    Date of Patent: December 26, 2017
    Assignee: TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED
    Inventors: Eeshan Miglani, Karthikeyan Gunasekaran, Santhosh Kumar Gowdhaman, Shagun Dusad
  • Patent number: 9853656
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for conversion of a time interval to a digital word, the time interval being mapped to a difference of a length of a reference time and a length of a signal time. Reference time is generated from an instant when the beginning of the time interval is detected, and the signal time is generated from an instant when the end of the time interval is detected by the use the control module. The generation of the reference time and the signal time is terminated at the same instant. In the apparatus, bottom plates of capacitors of the set of capacitors are connected to a ground of the circuit, and top plates of these capacitors are connected, respectively, to moving contacts of change-over switches. First, second, and third stationary contacts are connected to the signal rail, the ground of the circuit, and to the reference rail.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 18, 2015
    Date of Patent: December 26, 2017
    Assignee: AKADEMIA GORNICZO-HUTNICZA IM. STANISLAWA STASZICA
    Inventors: Dariusz Koscielnik, Marek Miskowicz
  • Patent number: 9853655
    Abstract: In some examples, a method includes controlling a first set of switches to deliver a first voltage signal through a first set of capacitors to a common node. The method also includes controlling a second set of switches to deliver a second voltage signal through a second set of capacitors to the common node, wherein the first set of capacitors is electrically connected to the second set of capacitors by the common node. The method further includes measuring a time duration to discharge the common node. The second voltage signal includes an opposing polarity to the first voltage signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 1, 2017
    Date of Patent: December 26, 2017
    Assignee: Infineon Technologies AG
    Inventors: Martin Pernull, Peter Bogner, Sven Derksen, Jaafar Mejri