Patents by Inventor Charles Tremlett Nicholls

Charles Tremlett Nicholls has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 6326854
    Abstract: There is a manufacturing limit on how small ceramic coaxial resonators can be produced, which leads to a limit on the frequency of resonance for these resonators. One technique to double the effective frequency of a ceramic coaxial resonator is to couple each end of a resonator to a Colpitts oscillator, the oscillators being balanced and out-of-phase by 180°. During operation, the resonator is effectively divided in half with a virtual ground forming in the center. This allows a single resonator to operate as two resonators of half the original size. Hence, the oscillation frequency for each of these balanced oscillators is doubled when compared to the frequency of similar oscillators that have separate ceramic coaxial resonators of similar size.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 30, 1999
    Date of Patent: December 4, 2001
    Assignee: Nortel Networks Limited
    Inventors: Charles Tremlett Nicholls, Johan M. Grundlingh
  • Patent number: 6297704
    Abstract: There is a manufacturing limit on how small ceramic coaxial resonators can be produced, which leads to a limit on the frequency of resonance for these resonators. One technique to quadruple the effective frequency of a ceramic coaxial resonator is to couple four resonators into a ring configuration, each of the resonators having an electrical length of 90°. Further, each of the resonators has an amplifier coupled in parallel, these amplifiers having phase shifts approximately equal to 90° and further being controlled by a tuning voltage VTUNE. In operation, four oscillation signals are generated at the same frequency but out-of-phase by a factor of 90°. When combined, the resulting signal is an oscillation signal at four times the frequency of the original oscillation signals. At the same time, one of the oscillation signals used in the combination can be sampled and be used for feedback purposes within a PLL-FS.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 23, 1999
    Date of Patent: October 2, 2001
    Assignee: Nortel Networks Corporation
    Inventors: Charles Tremlett Nicholls, Johan M. Grundlingh