Abstract: A shielded electronic circuit assembly is disclosed. An enclosure formed of a composite material comprising a structural material and a conductive material closes along a perimeter to surround an electronic circuit assembly. The conductive material can be embedded in or laminated or coated on the surface of the structural material to provide a composite material with sufficient conductivity to provide shielding from electromagnetic interference. The enclosure can further contain a conductive elastomeric bead, interlocked joint, or compression fit along the perimeter to assure that good conductive contact is achieved and maintained along the perimeter when the enclosure is closed. The enclosure is conductively coupled to ground.

Abstract: A device interconnects across links, a plurality of terminals having respective modes of operation. The device includes a plurality of ports for connection to respective links, and logic coupled to the plurality of ports to exercise an auto-negotiation protocol with terminals coupled to the respective links to resolve modes of operation. The logic includes a shared unit for executing the auto-negotiation protocol, and an arbiter unit for arbitrating among the plurality of ports for use of the shared unit. The arbiter connects ports in the plurality of ports to the shared unit in a round robin sequence. Memory stores a set of status signals for respective ports. The arbiter logic polls the memory to read the set of status signals in sequence, and in response enables use of the shared auto-negotiation unit by the ports. The modes of operation resolved by the shared auto-negotiation unit include LAN technology supported by terminals on the corresponding links, such as IEEE 802.3 Local Area Network technologies.

Abstract: Binary data is transmitted to a network physical layer from a media access controller as a series of multibit nibbles and is encoded into a multi-level data stream and split among a number of transmission channels, thereby reducing the signal frequency necessary to carry the data on each one of the transmission channels. The multi-level signal is then translated at a receiver back into a binary data stream. In a specific embodiment, the symbol transmission frequency on each of the transmission channels is at the same frequency as the nibble transfer rate between the media access controller and the physical layer.

Abstract: An apparatus and method for transmitting an 8-bit binary format data word as a 6-trit ternary code word includes an encoder, a decoder, and a code assignment that produce, for each 8-bit data word value, an unique 6-trit ternary code word that is particularly optimized for transmission over twisted-pair cable. The logic circuitry of the invention is optimized to accomplish the translation using a small number of combinatorial logic gates. The present invention thus has advantages in size, speed and performance over other possible means for encoding an 8 bit data word to a 6 trit code word.