Abstract: A smart meter/billing system that eases the transition to commodity-like marketplace operations for electric power, and supports near real-time load balancing between competing suppliers of electric power. Existing watt-hour meters become multi-parameter terminals or smart meters that measure consumption per unit of time correlatible to calendar-time, measure near real-time demand, measure reliability, store information and transmitting it to a smart meter reader when properly interrogated. The smart reader periodically sends its accumulated information to a billing computer. An optional ancillary system uses the same smart meters to support automatic load balancing between competing suppliers that share common distribution facilities. Supplier designated demand increments from possibly millions of consumers, are summed according to the supplier-of-record, over near real-time intervals.

Abstract: Real-time, multi-purpose advisories that inform users of roadways on upcoming situations, require frequent gathering and interpreting of information gleaned from road systems, and then feedingback information by means of repeated, spoken descriptives pertinent to each driver's location and heading. A system that provides all this, plus supports interactive communications between specific vehicles and a control center for purposes of describing roadway incidents, for the dispatch of emergency services; to request aid if stranded; to request destination directions; to receive destination-specific alternate-route advisories; etc., is described by the invention. Communication system simplification, essential to system practicality, is realized by time compressed, digitized spoken messages that flow thru single frequency, unidirectional repeaters, each message representing about 30 seconds of spoken descriptive advisory compressed into less than one second.

Abstract: Electronic toll collection will eventually become standardized on the nation's toll roads making possible non-stop toll payments to many different toll Authorities from a single in-vehicle-device. Such a development should go hand-in-hand with electronic inter Authority settlements from prepaid accounts held by any one Authority, paying any other Authority for a vehicle's use of its facilities. This invention describes a method, and a system, that conducts automated, inter Authority settlements from prepaid accounts in a manner suited to a large number of participating, autonomous Authorities also including the ability to detect and pinpoint fraud affecting each Authority's cash flow anywhere in the greater system.

Abstract: This invention describes a method for presenting, in near real-time, information that guides consumers of variably priced electricity in the cost efficient management of its consumption. The method employs a single row of red and green lights whose illumination pattern simultaneously indicates price differences from a mean price of the electricity, the size of a surcharge during high demand time, the size of a bonus stake per KWH available to those consumers with little or no increase in demand during such times, and individual bonus-surcharge eligibility during high demand times. The use of electricity can be quickly prioritized by typical consumers through the number of red and green of lights lit, steady and blinking lights, and by a variable duty cycle imposed on blinking lights. When taken together the overall economics of consumption can be communicated in a manner that facilitates complicated trade-offs in the cost efficient use of electricity.

Abstract: This invention describes a combination of methods and apparatus that creates electronic money for personal transactions which integrates the functions of cash, checks and credit cards with constant surveilance against fraud. This money can also serve as an international medium-of-exchange, and support automated sales tax collections and payment. This money's support system is comprised of personal terminals, vendor terminals, an electronic banking sub-system, and homebase terminals. Such a system, if widely used, would increase commercial and personal productivity, provide better security against fraud and counterfeiting, facilitate the automation of operations that involve currency, and sharply diminish the flood of paper that threatens to inundate the present system.

Abstract: The electric utility industry is inexorably being forced into a less regulated, more competitive, and more conservation oriented mode of operation. It is therefore inevitable that electric energy will have to increasingly resemble a commodity that is bought and sold on free and competitive markets. This invention describes a system and method to emulate and automate such treatment of electric energy with minimal disruption to the public service oriented utility concept. The system for achieving this is comprised of; sensors that monitor 1) out-of-doors temperatures, 2) mean power supplied by each generator in a utility system during each hour and 3) energy consumed by each customer per hour recorded in calendar-time; computers that are programed with software developed from algorithms that are described in the invention; and a subsystem that feeds back pricing information to consumers.

Abstract: A system to improve traffic flow on all types of interconnected roadways, which reduces fuel consumption, emissions and trip times, is based on adaptive control of traffic signal timing. The parameters used to exercise this control are generated by sensing presence, duration, time, and velocity of vehicles passing a narrow road segment upstream from the signallized intersection and with intersections in proximity to each other, also downstream from that intersection. The information generated by each sensor is processed into three running aggregate quantities; aggregate momentum data, aggregate experienced congestion data and aggregate stopped vehicles data. A fourth quantity, triggered by tentative platoon identification, is based on velocity and density of a small sample of vehicles and speeds response time to an approaching platoon by pre-empting signal timing briefly.

Abstract: The management of complex ongoing systems and processes such as nuclear power plants, although increasingly computerized, requires better methods of real time coupling in of the unique capability of the human brain, namely judgment. This invention describes how quantities of complex, interdependent data can be organized and presented to humans for efficient absorption by the judgment centers of the brain. Deviations of all measured parameters that describe the ongoing status of a system or process are simultaneously plotted in pre-assigned wedge-like sectors arranged into a circle, with angular displacement in each sector representing elapsed time and radial displacement from the outer periphery of the circle, indicating deviations from a normalized mean acceptable level of each parameter. Three prioritized concentric zones indicate maximum acceptable deviations, unacceptable deviations and critical deviations. Acceptable deviations are compressed to de-emphasize their impact.

Abstract: Communications systems employing frequency modulation have noise threshold levels that practically limit the minimum received signal level. This limit is particularly significant to satellite earth stations. A method that automatically and advantageously trades improved threshold levels for increased distortion by reducing the noise bandwidth of the receiver as the carrier to noise ratio approaches the threshold level is described. This method senses when noise peaks approach, equal or exceed the FM carrier level, converts the rate at which these noise peak events occur into a control voltage whose average magnitude controls the bandwidth of a filter inversely to the noise peak event rate. When this method is applied to FM receivers with threshold extending FM feedback loops, the control voltage also increases the loop feedback factor thereby reducing distortion and better optimizing the distortion-threshold trade-off.

Abstract: A method and apparatus is described that processes, samples and sorts, for subsequent analysis, very large numbers of randomly arriving pulsed and continuous wave radio and radar signals, while providing essentially 100% probability of intercepting all signals present at any moment. Such characteristics as angle of arrival, signal strength and frequency can be determined from the processed received signal samples. The method uses a rapidly swept frequency window, of specified width and shape, which separates into varying time positions, RF samples of each received signal, said time positions varying as a function of signal frequency. These time varying samples are then processed and separated into three video pulse outputs for frequency, signal strength and angle of arrival determining computations, respectively.

Abstract: A doppler radar and infra red sensor focused by common means onto a region, will, with appropriate cross correlation, provide improved velocity and presence sensing in a complex uncontrolled environment. The illustrative overhead, roadside traffic sensor employs a common microwave/infra red parabolic reflector and illuminating feed. The sensor can be conveniently mounted onto utility poles without cutting up the road or hanging overhead arbors. The velocity and presence data it provides can be used to determine vehicular headway, density, volume, vehicle size, aggregate momentum, aggregate congestion, platoon arrival, queue length, etc. This novel sensor reduces spurious indications, permits oblique angle viewing of vehicles, reduces doppler transmitter power levels so as to be well below normally accepted environmentally safe levels, and discriminates against vehicles moving in the wrong direction.

Abstract: The efficient and secure operation of facilities such as roads, pipelines, etc., will increasingly require reliable and low cost means for distribution and collection of operational data along the facility. A method using simplex, party-line transmission of electromagnetic signals for distributing and collecting data packet messages is described which, in the case of random failures, automatically seeks out alternate routes. The system incorporates double and single end-of-message codes that cue the insertion of new messages, primary and secondary routes that are pre-determined by relative path losses and no-message timing signals, transmitted for phase locking and received signal level referencing purposes. The alternate routes are established by adjustable, enhanced antenna, or lens, side lobes. Alternate routing is triggered by an automatic gain control circuit. A preferred binary modulation, message format and station design are described.

Abstract: Toll collection facilities for tunnels, bridges and turnpikes slow traffic, waste time and fuel, and increase air pollution. Eliminating the need for a toll payment stop would avoid this waste and reduce toll facility operating costs. A single, universally applicable system and apparatus is described that can eliminate most toll stops and simplify funds transfers. The system starts with a lump sum paid in advance to a permanently assigned collection agency's representative. This sum is inserted, electronically, into the memory of a microwave transponder-data-processor, normally kept in the vehicle. As the vehicle passes suitably equipped toll collection facilities, a toll transponder receives billing information from the vehicle transponder, calculates the toll, transmits it back to the vehicle transponder where the toll is electronically subtracted from a stored balance. If the resulting balance is not negative, a pass signal is flashed.

Abstract: Novel solid fuel combustion and heat transfer geometry/process and illustrative embodiments, which include log burning space heaters, a boiler and a hot air heat exchanger are described. The illustrative boiler embodiment depicts a standard module that when joined with other similar modules makes the construction of any size boiler possible. The combuster is designed to burn nearly any solid fuel, depending on price and availability, and also incorporates an auxilliary fuel oil combuster to either aid in the combustion of certain solid fuels or to convert over entirely to fuel oil. This novel geometry/process consists of solid fuel dispersed over two nearly intersecting surfaces with a third adjustable surface introduced to provide control of the combustion rate by a mutual radiant feedback. The fuel retaining surfaces are so constructed and positioned to enhance radiant heat interchange which maintains highest combustion temperatures along fuel surfaces that are directed toward the heat absorbing medium.

Abstract: A vehicle identification system, using microwave, in which every vehicle to be identified has an identification panel attached to its side, containing a very low level power drain tunnel diode transponder and a digital coder plus a small battery and a resonant frequency array. Interrogating transmitter-receivers are placed at designated ground stations. For verification purposes there is a resonant reflective array printed on the identification panel to reflect back a doppler offset signal emitted by the interrogating transmitter, thereby registering that a vehicle with an identification panel has passed, even if the transponder has failed. Unlike optical scanners used for freight car identifications, this system cannot be disrupted by dirt, ice and snow. Vehicles do not have to slow down to be interrogated, and the emitted field strength from this plate is so low that F.C.C. licensing is not required. The code stored in the panel is readily programmable, if desired.