Patents by Inventor Stephen A. Hanssen

Stephen A. Hanssen 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: 8307235
    Abstract: A system may include a plurality of subsystems, e.g. instrumentation units housed in separate chassis, each chassis including multiple instrumentation devices, e.g. data acquisition cards. Each subsystem may generate a local reference clock, which may be phase aligned and locked with respect to one or more similar reference clocks of other subsystems, via a high-level precision time protocol (PTP). Each instrumentation device within a given subsystem may generate its own sample clock based on the local reference clock, and may generate its own trigger clock based on its own sample clock. All trigger clocks may be synchronized with respect to each other through a future time event issued using the PTP, and each instrumentation device may then use its trigger clock to synchronize any received trigger pulses, which may also be issued through future time events using the PTP.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 5, 2010
    Date of Patent: November 6, 2012
    Assignee: National Instruments Corporation
    Inventors: Kunal H. Patel, Adam C. Ullrich, Kalyanramu Vemishetty, Stephen A. Hanssen
  • Publication number: 20110276820
    Abstract: A system may include a plurality of subsystems, e.g. instrumentation units housed in separate chassis, each chassis including multiple instrumentation devices, e.g. data acquisition cards. Each subsystem may generate a local reference clock, which may be phase aligned and locked with respect to one or more similar reference clocks of other subsystems, via a high-level precision time protocol (PTP). Each instrumentation device within a given subsystem may generate its own sample clock based on the local reference clock, and may generate its own trigger clock based on its own sample clock. All trigger clocks may be synchronized with respect to each other through a future time event issued using the PTP, and each instrumentation device may then use its trigger clock to synchronize any received trigger pulses, which may also be issued through future time events using the PTP.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 5, 2010
    Publication date: November 10, 2011
    Inventors: Kunal H. Patel, Adam C. Ullrich, Kalyanramu Vemishetty, Stephen A. Hanssen