Patents by Inventor Ralf Boehnke

Ralf Boehnke 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: 8447002
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a receiving apparatus (1) for receiving signals in a wireless communication system, in which the signals comprise a dedicated channel estimation sequence, comprising a channel estimation means (6) adapted to perform a channel estimation on a dedicated channel estimation sequence comprised in a received signal, a noise reduction means (8) adapted to reduce noise in the channel estimation result obtained from the channel estimation means by setting complex samples of the channel estimation result which are below a noise threshold to zero, and a frequency domain equalizing means (12) adapted to perform an equalization on the received signal in the frequency domain on the basis of the noise reduced channel estimation result from the noise reduction means (8). The present invention further relates to corresponding method. The present invention enables an improvement of the equalization performance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 17, 2009
    Date of Patent: May 21, 2013
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Richard Stirling-Gallacher, Ralf Boehnke, Zhaocheng Wang
  • Patent number: 8401125
    Abstract: A receiving apparatus and a receiving method for receiving signals in a wireless communication system are presented, the signals including a dedicated channel estimation sequence. The apparatus includes an analog to digital converter that converts received signals into digital samples with a sampling rate identical to a symbol rate of the received signals, a channel estimation unit that performs a channel estimation based on the dedicated channel estimation sequence comprised in a digital samples of the received signals, an evaluation unit that evaluates the channel estimation result from the channel estimation unit, and a control unit that controls a phase of the sampling rate of the analog to digital converter based on an evaluation of the channel estimation result. The present invention further relates to a corresponding receiving method.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 4, 2009
    Date of Patent: March 19, 2013
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Zhaocheng Wang, Richard Stirling-Gallacher, Ralf Boehnke
  • Publication number: 20130016003
    Abstract: A beam forming device that enables the use for wideband digital beam forming and provide a high accuracy a beam forming device comprises a transmitter arrangement and a receiver arrangement, wherein the total number of transmit antennas and receive antennas is at least three. A beam forming unit performs beam forming to obtain beam formed output signals from said receive signals by use of corrected beam forming weights. A correction unit corrects preliminary beam forming weights in amplitude and/or phase by use of frequency-dependent final calibration coefficients representing the different amplitude and/or phase responses of the different channels between said at least one transmit antenna and said at least one receive antenna at two or more separate frequencies covered by the radiation transmitted towards the scene.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 11, 2012
    Publication date: January 17, 2013
    Inventors: Richard STIRLING-GALLACHER, Miquel TESTAR, Furkan DAYI, Ralf BOEHNKE, Marcel BLECH, Qi WANG
  • Publication number: 20130010882
    Abstract: A transmitting apparatus transmits signals in a digital telecommunication system and a synchronising method is used for synchronizing such signals at a receiving apparatus. The transmitting apparatus prepares for transmission of a reference symbol having at least two repetition patterns, whereby one of the at least two repetition patterns is phase-shifted in relation to the other repetition pattern, and a synchronizing mechanism in the digital telecommunication system uses the reference symbol once received for synchronization. The synchronizing mechanism uses a cross-correlation mechanism to cross-correlate at least one of the two repetition patterns within a correlation window having a predetermined length.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 14, 2012
    Publication date: January 10, 2013
    Applicant: SONY DEUTSCHLAND GMBH
    Inventors: Ralf BÖHNKE, Thomas DÖLLE, Tino PUCH
  • Publication number: 20130002488
    Abstract: A beam forming device and method as well as to a beam steering device and method are described. The imaging beam forming device comprises a wideband transmit unit comprising at least one transmit antenna, a receiver unit comprising at least two receive antennas and at least one receive element that receive radiation from said scene and that generate receive signals from said received radiation, and a beam forming unit that performs beam forming to form a receive beam and obtain beam formed output signals from said receive signals by use of beam forming weights. For different samples or groups of subsequent samples of a receive signal, a sample representing said receive signal at a different frequency, a frequency-dependent weight is used for beam forming, which frequency-dependent weights are adapted to result in a predetermined shape of said receive beam.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 12, 2012
    Publication date: January 3, 2013
    Applicant: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Qi WANG, Richard Stirling-Gallacher, Ralf Boehnke
  • Publication number: 20120299773
    Abstract: The present disclosure relates to a beam forming device, comprising a transmit unit comprising at least two transmit elements that transmit radiation towards a scene, a receiver unit comprising at least two receive elements that receive radiation from said scene and that generate receive signals from said received radiation, and a beam forming unit that performs beam forming to obtain beam formed output signals from said receive signals by use of beam forming weights, wherein said beam forming weights are adapted to a distance between the scene and one or more transmit elements and/or receive elements, said distance being indicated by a distance indicator, and wherein said beam forming weights are changed if said distance changes.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 1, 2012
    Publication date: November 29, 2012
    Applicant: Sony Coropration
    Inventors: Richard STIRLING-GALLACHER, Qi Wang, Ralf Boehnke
  • Publication number: 20120288033
    Abstract: A receiving apparatus, a receiving method, and an imaging apparatus and method, adapted to receive high frequency image signals. The apparatus includes two or more receiver channels, each receiver channel including an antenna pattern including plural antenna elements to receive high frequency image signals, a receiving mechanism to process the high frequency image signals received by the antenna elements into baseband signals, an analog-to-digital conversion mechanism to convert the baseband signals from the receiving mechanism into digital signals, a phase shifting mechanism to phase shift the digital signals, and a combining mechanism to combine the phase shifted digital signals from the receiver channels into combined signals.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 2, 2010
    Publication date: November 15, 2012
    Applicant: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Richard Stirling-Gallacher, Ralf Boehnke, Qi Wang, Stefan Koch, Marc Guthoerl
  • Patent number: 8175109
    Abstract: The present invention relates to an energy efficient mechanism for establishing and maintaining a communication between nodes (A . . . F) in a wireless communication system. In particular, it relates to a distributed low power medium access control (MAC) mechanism for sharing the communication means in a wireless communication system. According to the present invention a destination node (A) listens to a communication channel periodically. For requesting services from the destination node (A), a wake-up signal (WU) is transmitted from a source node (B) to the destination node (A) via the communication channel, wherein the wake-up signal (WU) is formed by a preamble (WP) and an information for controlling the communication between nodes (A . . . F). The WU signal duration and content is adapted depending on the system operation context to reduce either idle times, power consumption, latency or network blocking (collision avoidance).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 14, 2005
    Date of Patent: May 8, 2012
    Assignee: Sony Deutschland GmbH
    Inventors: Juan Nogueira-Nine, Ralf Böhnke
  • Publication number: 20110278459
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a system and a corresponding method for monitoring the presence of a person in a monitored area. To reliably monitor the presence of the person, the system comprises: a passive radiometer that detects radiation emitted from a predetermined monitored area in a predetermined frequency range between 1 GHz and 100 THz and that generates a radiation signal from the detected radiation, a radiation signal processor that processes said radiation signal and that generates, based on said processed radiation signal, a monitoring signal indicating the presence or absence of a person in said monitored area, and an application controller that controls an application based on said monitoring signal.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 18, 2011
    Publication date: November 17, 2011
    Applicant: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Fritz Hohl, Ralf Boehnke
  • Patent number: 8027282
    Abstract: A heterogeneous wireless network topology suited for low-power, short-range and ubiquitous ad-hoc communication. The network topology integrates different wireless transmission technologies, in particular to a wireless sensor network including different node types and communication technologies. The network is highly heterogeneous and can be operated according to the master-slave principle. The nodes can have different wireless communication means tailored to their individual role in the network and other constraints, thus allowing different communication patterns.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 17, 2004
    Date of Patent: September 27, 2011
    Assignee: Sony Deutschland GmbH
    Inventors: Ralf Boehnke, Juan Nogueira-Nine, Volker Wullich, Oliver Kraemer, Ingo Ruhm, Zhaocheng Wang, Jochen Rebmann
  • Patent number: 7995685
    Abstract: In a backscatter interrogator reception method, a continuous carrier signal with a frequency fc is sent from an interrogator to a tag device over a wireless link, the tag device transmits data to the interrogator using a modulated backscatter signal, and the received modulated backscatter signal is demodulated by the interrogator to retrieve the data transmitted from the tag device. According to the present invention, the interrogator estimates the phase and the amplitude of an inband interferer signal contained in the received modulated backscatter signal, generates a cancellation signal having the opposite phase and the same amplitude as the estimation of the inband interferer signal, and combines said cancellation signal with the received backscatter signal in order to reduce the influence of the inband interferer signal. In addition, a two-stage interferer cancellation scheme is proposed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 23, 2005
    Date of Patent: August 9, 2011
    Assignee: Sony Deutschland GmbH
    Inventors: Zhaocheng Wang, Ralf Böhnke, Jochen Rebmann
  • Publication number: 20100266082
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a receiving apparatus 1 for receiving signals in a communication system, in which the signals are transmitted on the basis of frames, each frame comprising a data part comprising data blocks, wherein the data blocks are respectively separated by a guard sequence, said receiving apparatus 1 comprising correlation means 14 adapted to perform a correlation on the guard sequences of a received signal, clock drift estimation means 15 adapted to perform a clock drift estimation in the frequency domain on the basis of the correlation results from the correlation means 14, and clock drift compensation means 16 adapted to compensate the clock drift of the received signal on the basis of the clock drift estimation. The present invention further relates to a corresponding receiving method.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 24, 2010
    Publication date: October 21, 2010
    Applicant: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Zhaocheng WANG, Qi Wang, Richard Stirling-Gallacher, Ralf Boehnke
  • Publication number: 20100226462
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a receiving apparatus for receiving signals in a wireless communication system, in which the signals comprise a dedicated channel estimation sequence, comprising an analog to digital converter adapted to convert received signals into digital samples with a sampling rate identical to a symbol rate of the received signals, a channel estimation means adapted to perform a channel estimation on the basis of the dedicated channel estimation sequence comprised in a digital samples of the received signals, an evaluation means adapted to evaluate the channel estimation result from the channel estimation means, and a control means adapted to control a phase of the sampling rate of the analog to digital converter on the basis of an evaluation of the channel estimation result. The present invention further relates to a corresponding receiving method.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 4, 2009
    Publication date: September 9, 2010
    Applicant: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Zhaocheng WANG, Richard Stirling-Gallacher, Ralf Boehnke
  • Publication number: 20100195710
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a receiving apparatus (1) for receiving signals in a wireless communication system, in which the signals comprise a dedicated channel estimation sequence, comprising a channel estimation means (6) adapted to perform a channel estimation on a dedicated channel estimation sequence comprised in a received signal, a noise reduction means (8) adapted to reduce noise in the channel estimation result obtained from the channel estimation means by setting complex samples of the channel estimation result which are below a noise threshold to zero, and a frequency domain equalizing means (12) adapted to perform an equalization on the received signal in the frequency domain on the basis of the noise reduced channel estimation result from the noise reduction means (8). The present invention further relates to corresponding method. The present invention enables an improvement of the equalisation performance.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 17, 2009
    Publication date: August 5, 2010
    Applicant: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Richard STIRLING-GALLACHER, Ralf Boehnke, Zhaocheng Wang
  • Patent number: RE41486
    Abstract: The present invention proposes a method for generating synchronization bursts for OFDM transmission systems. The symbols of a predefined symbol sequence are mapped according to a predefined mapping scheme on subcarriers of the OFDM systems by a mapping unit (2), wherein the symbols of the predefined symbol sequence represent subcarriers of the OFDM system with nonzero amplitudes. A synchronization burst is generated by a inverse fast Fourier transforming unit (3) transforming the subcarriers of the OFDM system mapped to said predefined symbol sequence. The mapping (2) of the symbols of the predefined symbol sequence is set such that the resulting time domain signal of the synchronization burst represents a periodic nature. According to the invention the predefined symbol sequence is set such that the envelope fluctuation of the time domain signal of the synchronization burst is minimized. Therefore advantageous symbol sequences reducing said the envelope fluctuation of the time domain signal are proposed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 27, 2008
    Date of Patent: August 10, 2010
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Ralf Böhnke, Thomas Dölle, Tino Puch
  • Patent number: RE41606
    Abstract: The present invention proposes a method for generating synchronization bursts for OFDM transmission systems. The symbols of a predefined symbol sequence are mapped according to a predefined mapping scheme on subcarriers of the OFDM systems by a mapping unit (2), wherein the symbols of the predefined symbol sequence represent sub-carriers of the OFDM system with nonzero amplitudes. A synchronization burst is generated by a inverse fast Fourier transforming unit (3) transforming the subcarriers of the OFDM system mapped to said predefined symbol sequence. The mapping (2) of the symbols of the predefined symbol sequence is set such that the resulting time domain signal of the synchronization burst represents a periodic nature. According to the invention the predefined symbol sequence is set such that the envelope fluctuation of the time domain signal of the synchronization burst is minimized. Therefore advantageous symbol sequences reducing said the envelope fluctuation of the time domain signal are proposed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 27, 2008
    Date of Patent: August 31, 2010
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Ralf Böhnke, Thomas Dölle, Tino Puch
  • Patent number: RE41641
    Abstract: The present invention proposes a method for generating synchronization bursts for OFDM transmission systems. The symbols of a predefined symbol sequence are mapped according to a predefined mapping scheme on subcarriers of the OFDM systems by a mapping unit (2), wherein the symbols of the predefined symbol sequence represent subcarriers of the OFDM system with nonzero amplitudes. A synchronization burst is generated by a inverse fast Fourier transforming unit (3) transforming the subcarriers of the OFDM system mapped to said predefined symbol sequence. The mapping (2) of the symbols of the predefined symbol sequence is set such that the resulting time domain signal of the synchronization burst represents a periodic nature. According to the invention the predefined symbol sequence is set such that the envelope fluctuation of the time domain signal of the synchronization burst is minimized. Therefore advantageous symbol sequences reducing said the envelope fluctuation of the time domain signal are proposed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 27, 2008
    Date of Patent: September 7, 2010
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Ralf Böhnke, Thomas Dölle, Tino Puch
  • Patent number: RE43305
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a transmission apparatus for transmitting OFDM-signals comprising modulation means 4 for modulating said signals onto a plurality of subcarriers using a OFDM-modulation method, transformation means 5 for transforming said modulated signals into the time domain, and transmission means for transmitting said signals, whereby in said modulation means every M-th subcarrier is modulated, wherein M is an integer and M?2. The present invention also relates to a corresponding transmission method for transmitting OFDM-signals.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 3, 2006
    Date of Patent: April 10, 2012
    Assignee: SONY DEUTSCHLAND GmbH
    Inventor: Ralf Boehnke
  • Patent number: RE43703
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a transmission apparatus for transmitting OFDM-signals comprising modulation means 4 for modulating said signals onto a plurality of subcarriers using a OFDM-modulation method, transformation means 5 for transforming said modulated signals into the time domain, and transmission means for transmitting said signals, whereby in said modulation means every M-th subcarrier is modulated, wherein M is an integer and M?2. The present invention also relates to a corresponding transmission method for transmitting OFDM-signals.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 19, 2009
    Date of Patent: October 2, 2012
    Assignee: Sony Deutschland GmbH
    Inventor: Ralf Böhnke
  • Patent number: RE43829
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a transmission apparatus for transmitting OFDM-signals comprising modulation means 4 for modulating said signals onto a plurality of subcarriers using a OFDM-modulation method, transformation means 5 for transforming said modulated signals into the time domain, and transmission means for transmitting said signals, whereby in said modulation means every M-th subcarrier is modulated, wherein M is an integer and M?2. The present invention also relates to a corresponding transmission method for transmitting OFDM-signals.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 19, 2009
    Date of Patent: November 27, 2012
    Assignee: Sony Deutchland GmbH
    Inventor: Ralf Böhnke