Abstract: A method for operating an ultrasonic measuring device for measuring a property of a medium includes: an arrangement of at least two pair of ultrasonic transducers for emitting and receiving ultrasonic signals across a signal path through a fluid; a holding apparatus having a wall in contact with the medium and a flat wall section for holding the ultrasonic transducers; an electronic circuit configured to operate the ultrasonic transducers and to provide measured values of the property, wherein the ultrasonic transducers form Lamb oscillations in the respectively associated wall, wherein at least two pair of the at least two pair of ultrasonic transducers each excite and capture different modes of Lamb oscillations, wherein the different modes are excited in groups, wherein a time delay between temporally adjacent emissions of ultrasonic signals is shorter than a shortest propagation time of the ultrasonic signals between associated ultrasonic transducers.

Abstract: A method for operating an ultrasonic measuring device, which includes: an arrangement of ultrasonic transducers for emitting and receiving ultrasonic signals along at least two signal paths through a fluid, wherein the arrangement is held by a holding apparatus having at least one wall, wherein sections of the signal paths run through at least one of the at least one wall, wherein signal path sections of at least two signal paths in the fluid are of different length; and an electronic measuring/operating circuit configured to perform the method of, in a first method step, comparing intensities of ultrasonic signals along signal paths having signal path sections of different length in the fluid and, in a second method step, determining a damping property of the fluid and an acoustic coupling property between the wall and the fluid therefrom.

Abstract: A device for determining properties of a medium, comprising a carrier which can be brought in contact with the medium; at least one transmitter arranged on the carrier for exciting acoustic waves in the carrier; at least one receiver arranged on the carrier for receiving acoustic waves which originate from waves excited in the carrier by means of the transmitter; and first and second material regions arranged on the carrier, wherein the second material region absorbs sound waves with the frequency of the acoustic waves excited in the carrier more strongly than the first material region. The carrier has a first surface with which it is to be brought in con-tact with the medium and a second surface which faces away from the first surface, wherein the transmitter as well as the first and the second material region are arranged on the second surface.

Abstract: A method and system for power savings within a pipelined design by performing intelligent stage gating. The present invention recognizes that not every operand applied to the input of a pipeline requires a recomputation in the different pipeline stages. Circuitry is used to generate a signal, C, indicating that this condition holds. C is then used to gate the register bank at the input of the first pipeline stage thereby potentially saving power in the register bank. Moreover, C can also be stored in a register, the output of which: a) gates the register bank of the second stage; and b) connects to another register to store signal C to be used in the third stage. Power savings is provided by not clocking the register circuit of the stage, and in some instances, power is saved within the stage's associated combinational logic. In one embodiment, a register (to store C) is added in each stage of a pipeline to use C as a gating signal in the subsequent stage.

Abstract: A computer-implemented process for determining a signal function for use in controlling the application of signal operands to a circuit-implemented function for the purpose of power reduction. The present invention receives a netlist represented as a graph data structure having nodes interconnected with signal lines. A node can have one output (single fan-out) or can have more than one output (multiple fan-outs). Termination points of the graph are identified as inputs to registers or primary outputs. From the termination points, and using a breadth-first traversal process, the present invention traverses each node of the netlist. A parent node is not processed in the breadth-first traversal until all of its child nodes have been processed. During traversal, an activation signal function is constructed for each input of a node. If the node has multiple outputs then a disjunctive Boolean expression is used, otherwise a conjunctive Boolean expression is used to determine the activation signal function.