Abstract: A telephone having a user interface, comprising user input means; output means; and control means responsive to a first actuation of the user input means to cause subsequent items to be indicated for selection by the output means, and responsive to another actuation of the user input means to select the currently-indicated item. The telephone could be a reduced user interface portable telephone.

Abstract: The present invention is an electronic awareness system for evaluating, monitoring, and controlling, in real-time, an outside environment having entities and occurrences with characteristics. The electronic monitoring system includes input sensors for receiving real-time data produced by the entities, a computer workstation for storing the input data in a database, a computer program having a graphical user interface for interfacing a user with the workstation and the computer program. The graphical user interface comprises a map frame chart function, a worksheet function, a utility function, and a priority navigator function for monitoring and evaluating the input data graphically, tabularly, statistically, and comparatively with a predetermined relative priority scale, respectively, for producing output data. The electronic awareness system also includes output reactors for receiving the output data for controlling certain entities and occurrences of the outside environment.

Abstract: A drive circuit for a voltage controlled power switching device includes a transformer, a full-wave rectifier bridge coupled to the transformer, first and second capacitors connected in series between nodes of the full-wave rectifier bridge and first and second controlled switches coupled between a control electrode of the power switching device and the first and second capacitors, respectively, wherein each controlled switch has a control electrode coupled to a secondary winding of the trans-former. Current is provided by the first capacitor to the control electrode of the power switching device through the first controlled switch at the beginning of a negative pulse appearing at the secondary winding of the transformer and charging current is provided to the first capacitor from the secondary winding of the transformer through the full-wave rectifier bridge after the beginning of the negative secondary pulse.

Abstract: A composite video signal is formed in which high luminance frequencies are modulated so that they occupy frequencies above the chrominance band. A sub-band coder is used to split the luminance frequency band into high and low frequencies at the coder, and an inverse sub-band coder combines the high-frequency luminance and the chrominance components. The two resultant signals are applied to a phase-segregated Weston Clean PAL coder to provide a composite video signal, which is compatible with a conventional PAL signal.

Abstract: A temporally-subsampled video signal from a bandwidth reduction encoder is processed prior to transmission in order to reduce the judder effects that would otherwise be present when the encoded signal was viewed directly on a receiver not equipped with a bandwidth reduction decoder. A fraction 1/N of the samples are transmitted in the first field of each group of N fields, where N is the temporal subsampling ratio. Each of the other N-1 fields is formed by projecting the first field along the estimated motion trajectory to the appropriate time instant and adding to this projection the difference between another group of the N/1 samples and an estimate of these samples derived from those transmitted in the first field. At the decoder, the projected fields and the estimate of the samples can be derived from the samples in the first transmitted field of the group for each subsequent field.

Abstract: A correlation surface is derived by phase correlating two pictures selectively displaced in the X and Y directions. The illustrative surface shows a large peak at zero displacement, corresponding to a stationary background, and a fairly large peak corresponding to a moving object, the X, Y position of the peak indicating the magnitude (pixels per field period) and direction of the motion vector. A set of motion vectors is thus determined and testing is then carried out, on a pixel by pixel basis or pixel block by pixel block basis, to determine which of the motion vectors gives the best match in deriving the second picture from the first. The motion vector thus assigned may be used in temporal interpolation of the pictures.

Abstract: At the transmitter a coder includes a motion vector generator providing vectors (MV) describing the movement of individual blocks of pixels. The video signal is 4:1 compressed in bandwidth by pre-filters and a sub-sampling unit to produce a signal (SSH) from which a high-definition image can be re-constructed in the coder and in the decoder. The sampling lattice is shifted in accordance with the motion vectors (MV) which are digitally transmitted along with the compressed bandwidth analogue signal, to enable the samples to be correctly located in the reconstructed image. Poorly correlated moving areas are handled by pure spatial filtering (pre-filter and sub-sampling unit) with reconstruction by spatial interpolation. The two reconstructed signals (RVH and RVL) at the coder are compared in a mode selector with the input video and a switch is set to transmit whichever of the compressed signals (SSH, SSL) gives the best match.