Patents by Inventor Thushara Hewavithana

Thushara Hewavithana 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: 9130787
    Abstract: According to various embodiments, devices and methods disclosed herein include performing, using a processor, a linear operation on a first plurality of channel frequency responses and a plurality of corresponding predictor coefficients to estimate a new channel frequency response. Each of the plurality of corresponding predictor coefficients may be updated based on an error value and a second plurality of channel frequency responses to obtain an updated predictor coefficient. The error value may be computed based on an estimated current channel frequency response and a predicted current channel frequency response. The new channel frequency response may be used to equalize a received modulated signal including a single-carrier modulated signal, e.g., a signal modulated using a vestigial sideband modulation scheme, or a quadrature amplitude modulation scheme.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 18, 2011
    Date of Patent: September 8, 2015
    Assignee: INTEL CORPORATION
    Inventors: Thushara Hewavithana, Bernard Arambepola, Sahan S. Gamage, Parveen K. Shukla
  • Patent number: 9106497
    Abstract: In an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (“OFDM”) system, the problem of an interferer reducing the signal-to-noise ratio of a signal can be mitigated by generating an interferer-correction signal and subtracting it from the signal to be processed. The amplitude, frequency and phase of the interferences are determined first. The frequency is estimated by averaging the squared-magnitude of multiple FFTs of the incoming signal and then locating the spectral peaks. The phase and amplitude may be estimated from this FFT outputs or through a process of correlation in the time domain. The interferer-correction signal is generated from the estimated amplitude, frequency, and phase. The correction to be subtracted from the main signal in order to reduce the effect of the interference may be generated in the time or frequency domain. The subtraction of the correction may also be implemented in the time or frequency domains.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 28, 2012
    Date of Patent: August 11, 2015
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Thushara Hewavithana
  • Publication number: 20150172088
    Abstract: One embodiment provides an apparatus. The apparatus includes an optimization module configured to determine a guard interval remainder based, at least in part on a comparison of an allowable microreflection interference level and an actual microreflection interference level; and a windowing module configured to window an OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexed) symbol utilizing the guard interval remainder. The apparatus may further include a channel estimator module configured to determine a predicted channel frequency response based, at least in part, on a probing symbol; and a pre-equalizer module configured to pre-equalize the OFDM symbol based, at least in part, on the predicted channel frequency response.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 18, 2013
    Publication date: June 18, 2015
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Parveen K. Shukla, Thushara Hewavithana
  • Patent number: 9054933
    Abstract: A system according to one embodiment includes a demodulator configured to receive an orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) modulated signal comprising a current symbol and a sequence of previous symbols, each of the symbols comprising one or more pilot sub-carriers and one or more data sub-carriers; a phase angle computation circuit coupled to the demodulator, the phase angle computation circuit configured to compute a first mean, the first mean computed from the phase angle of one or more of the pilot sub-carriers of a predetermined number of the previous symbols; a predictive filter circuit coupled to the phase angle computation circuit, the predictive filter circuit configured to compute a second mean, the second mean estimating the phase angle of one or more sub-carriers of the current symbol, the estimation based on the first mean; and a phase noise cancelling circuit coupled to the predictive filter circuit, the phase noise cancelling circuit configured to correct the phase of one or more sub
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 20, 2011
    Date of Patent: June 9, 2015
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Thushara Hewavithana, Parveen K. Shukla, Sahan S. Gamage
  • Publication number: 20150139351
    Abstract: The disclosure generally relates to a method and apparatus for frequency interleaving. Specifically, an embodiment of the disclosure relates to a communication system having one or more antennas, a radio, a memory circuit, and a processor circuit. The antennas can be used to communicate signals or to comply with different transmission protocols. The radio can be configured to send and receive radio signals. The memory can communicate with the processor circuit and contain instructions for the processor circuit to write data carriers along a plurality of rows and columns of a 2-D store in bit-reversed order and read the columns of 2-D store.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 15, 2013
    Publication date: May 21, 2015
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Parveen K. Shukla, Thushara Hewavithana, Sahan S. Gamage
  • Patent number: 8982724
    Abstract: A system and method are provided for implementing a peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction scheme for Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) modulation. A unique PAPR reduction scheme for OFDMA modulation for systems operated according to a DOCSIS standard achieves results similar to those attributable to tone reservation schemes in a manner that does not negatively affect an amount of available data capacity, particularly in implementations with limited numbers of subcarriers. The disclosed systems and methods are particularly adaptable to next generation cable gateways and/or next generation cable modems. These next generation cable gateways and/or cable modems may find particular utility in advanced hybrid fiber/coaxial cable systems. The adaptable cable gateways/modems may include a cable gateway system-on-chip (SOC) configuration. The disclosed schemes may be applicable to OFDM modulation. For OFDM, however, the known tone reservation algorithms also may be employed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 17, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 17, 2015
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Parveen Shukla, Thushara Hewavithana, Sahan Gamage
  • Patent number: 8938015
    Abstract: A system according to one embodiment includes a demodulator configured to receive an OFDM modulated signal over a channel, the signal including a sequence of symbols, each of the symbols including one or more pilot carriers and one or more data carriers; a time filtering and interpolation circuit coupled to the demodulator, the time filtering and interpolation circuit configured to estimate the frequency response of the channel based on time filtering and interpolation of the pilot carriers; a phase slope correction circuit configured to apply each of a plurality of phase slope corrections to the frequency response and to the data carriers; a frequency filtering and interpolation circuit configured to calculate frequency response estimates of the channel at data carrier frequencies based on frequency filtering and interpolation of the phase slope corrected frequency response; an equalization circuit configured to equalize the phase slope corrected data carriers based on the calculated frequency response estim
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2012
    Date of Patent: January 20, 2015
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Thushara Hewavithana
  • Patent number: 8938041
    Abstract: An apparatus may include a processor circuit, and a dynamic filter adjustment component for execution on the processor. The dynamic filter adjustment component may identify in a wideband communications signal a set of one or more interferer frequencies for one or more respective interferer channels of a set of communications channels to be filtered, select a kernel filter comprising a low pass filter having a channel width corresponding to a channel of the one or more interferer channels, and generate a co-channel interference (CCI) filter to stop the one or more interferer channels by inverting the kernel filter. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 18, 2012
    Date of Patent: January 20, 2015
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Thushara Hewavithana
  • Patent number: 8929471
    Abstract: Methods and systems to mitigate impulse interference in an OFDM QAM signal. A per-symbol noise measure, or quality measure (QM) is computed for a symbol k as a MSE of distances between carriers in the symbol and points of corresponding QAM constellations. MSE(k) is averaged over multiple symbols to compute a background signal QM, AVG_MSE(k). If MSE(k) exceeds AVG_MSE(k) by a moderate amount, symbol k may be moderately affected by impulse interference, and per-carrier SNR estimates are downgraded for all data carriers in symbol k, prior to LLR computation. SNR downgrading may be linear or step-wise based on an extent to which MSE(k) exceeds AVG_MSE(k). If MSE(k) exceeds AVG_MSE(k) by a significant amount, symbol k may be significantly affected by impulse interference, and LLRs may be set to indicate that all data carriers are erased in symbol k.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 26, 2012
    Date of Patent: January 6, 2015
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Thushara Hewavithana, Bernard Arambepola, Sahan Gamage
  • Patent number: 8908810
    Abstract: A system and method are provided for implementing a soft Reed-Solomon (RS) decoding scheme, technique or algorithm to improve physical layer performance in cable modems and cable gateways. The algorithm is implemented in a forward error correction (FEC) module connected to a QAM demodulator. The RS decoding scheme is implemented without significantly complicating hardware or processing overhead. The soft Reed-Solomon (RS) decoding scheme extracts candidate RS symbols and their Log Likelihood Ratios (LLRs) from QAM symbols. The set of highest probable candidate blocks are then chosen and these are decoded using a variant of the Chase algorithm until a valid codeword is detected at the decoder output.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 27, 2012
    Date of Patent: December 9, 2014
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Murat Badem, Parveen K. Shukla, Sahan Gamage, Thushara Hewavithana, Naor Goldman
  • Patent number: 8897412
    Abstract: An approach is provided to mitigate phase noise by correcting common phase error and inter-carrier-interference in a received signal. The approach involves determining a received signal includes phase noise comprising at least a common phase error component and an inter-carrier-interference component. The approach also involves causing the common phase error to be corrected based on one or more pilot carriers. The approach further involves causing an estimate of a main signal component to be subtracted from the one or more pilot carriers. The approach additionally involves determining a sequence of estimated coefficients of a multiplicative phase noise sequence. The approach also involves causing the inter-carrier-inference to be corrected by processing the multiplicative phase noise sequence using the sequence of estimated coefficients. The approach further involves causing an equalized data signal to be output based on the corrected common phase error and the corrected inter-carrier-interference.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 14, 2012
    Date of Patent: November 25, 2014
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Thushara Hewavithana, Bernard Arambepola
  • Patent number: 8885775
    Abstract: Apparatuses, systems, and methods are directed to maintaining optimal carrier tracking performance in view of operating conditions that prevail. Such configurations employ a phase lock loop that configured to generate an estimated phase error value, a variance module configured to calculate a phase noise variance based on the estimated phase error value, and a loop control bandwidth module that calculates a loop bandwidth value based on a detected lower phase noise variance, generates modified loop filter values in accordance with the calculated loop bandwidth value, and updates the phase lock loop with the modified loop filter values. During subsequent iterations, the modified loop filter values are incrementally adjusted along a particular direction until the phase noise variance increases at which point the modified loop filter values are incrementally adjusted in an opposite direction to converge on an optimal loop bandwidth value.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 28, 2012
    Date of Patent: November 11, 2014
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Thushara Hewavithana, Bernard Arambepola
  • Patent number: 8879676
    Abstract: According to various embodiments, apparatus and methods disclosed herein may be implemented in a digital communication (wired or wireless) receiver, and relate to minimizing noise in an estimated channel frequency response at the receiver for the purposes of channel equalization. The disclosed apparatus and methods may include determining a channel impulse response based on an estimated channel frequency response. The estimated channel frequency response, the channel impulse response, or both may include noise. An impulse response mask may be determined based on the channel impulse response, and further applied to the channel impulse response to obtain a noise-reduced channel impulse response, which may be Fourier transformed to obtain a noise-reduced channel frequency response.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 1, 2011
    Date of Patent: November 4, 2014
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Thushara Hewavithana, Bernard Arambepola, Parveen K. Shukla, Sahan S. Gamage
  • Patent number: 8842750
    Abstract: According to various embodiments, a method is disclosed that includes receiving an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulated signal at a modulator; filtering the received modulated signal using a plurality of sets of filter coefficients with a linear predictor algorithm; and estimating a channel frequency response based on the filtering.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 21, 2010
    Date of Patent: September 23, 2014
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Parveen K. Shukla, Bernard Arambepola, Thushara Hewavithana, Sahan S. Gamage
  • Publication number: 20140247803
    Abstract: Block-based interleaving to process a block of sub-carriers as a two-dimensional array defined by a frequency dimension and a time dimension. For each symbol of the array a cell is selected at each frequency index of the array in a diagonal wrap-around fashion. The array may be traversed with a modulo-based index computed as a function of an incrementing frequency index, a symbol index, and a modulus defined by a depth of the array. Cells may be selected as indicated by the frequency and time indices, and/or as indicated by a bit-reversed representation of the frequency index and/or the time index. A block interleaver may be configured to time interleave without impacting frequency, or interleave in time and frequency. Frequency interleaving may performed with the bit-reversed representation of the frequency index.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 4, 2014
    Publication date: September 4, 2014
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Thushara Hewavithana
  • Publication number: 20140247782
    Abstract: Mixed mode constellation mapping to map a data block to a block of sub-carriers based on a configurable set of one or more constellation mapping schemes, and corresponding mixed mode least likelihood ratio (LLR) de-mapping based on the configurable set of one or more modulation schemes. The set may be configurable to include multiple modulation schemes to provide to a SEvSNR measure that is a non-weighted or weighted average of SEvSNR measures of the multiple modulation schemes. Mixed mode constellation mapping may be useful be configurable to control spectral efficiency versus SNR (SEvSNR) over a range of SNR with relatively fine SNR granularity, and may be configurable to control SEvSNR over a range of SNR at a fixed FEC code rate, which may include a highest available or highest permitted code rate.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 4, 2014
    Publication date: September 4, 2014
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Noam Tal, Sahan S. Gamage, Thushara Hewavithana, Shaul Shulman
  • Patent number: 8817195
    Abstract: An embodiment of the present invention provides a method for digital television demodulation, comprising using adjacent-channel power dependent automatic gain control (AGC) for the digital television demodulation, wherein an AGC technique takes into account a total power as well as power of adjacent channels to control gain of a gain control amplifier.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 7, 2013
    Date of Patent: August 26, 2014
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Parveen K. Shukla, Bernard Arambepola, Thushara Hewavithana, Sahan Gamage
  • Publication number: 20140219324
    Abstract: A system according to one embodiment includes a demodulator configured to receive an OFDM modulated signal over a channel, the signal including a sequence of symbols, each of the symbols including one or more pilot carriers and one or more data carriers; a time filtering and interpolation circuit coupled to the demodulator, the time filtering and interpolation circuit configured to estimate the frequency response of the channel based on time filtering and interpolation of the pilot carriers; a phase slope correction circuit configured to apply each of a plurality of phase slope corrections to the frequency response and to the data carriers; a frequency filtering and interpolation circuit configured to calculate frequency response estimates of the channel at data carrier frequencies based on frequency filtering and interpolation of the phase slope corrected frequency response; an equalization circuit configured to equalize the phase slope corrected data carriers based on the calculated frequency response estim
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 15, 2012
    Publication date: August 7, 2014
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Thushara Hewavithana
  • Publication number: 20140211889
    Abstract: A system according to one embodiment includes a demodulator configured to receive an orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) modulated signal comprising a current symbol and a sequence of previous symbols, each of the symbols comprising one or more pilot sub-carriers and one or more data sub-carriers; a phase angle computation circuit coupled to the demodulator, the phase angle computation circuit configured to compute a first mean, the first mean computed from the phase angle of one or more of the pilot sub-carriers of a predetermined number of the previous symbols; a predictive filter circuit coupled to the phase angle computation circuit, the predictive filter circuit configured to compute a second mean, the second mean estimating the phase angle of one or more sub-carriers of the current symbol, the estimation based on the first mean; and a phase noise cancelling circuit coupled to the predictive filter circuit, the phase noise cancelling circuit configured to correct the phase of one or more sub
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 20, 2011
    Publication date: July 31, 2014
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Thushara Hewavithana, Parveen K. Shukla, Sahan S. Gamage
  • Publication number: 20140185657
    Abstract: A system and method are provided for implementing a soft Reed-Solomon (RS) decoding scheme, technique or algorithm to improve physical layer performance in cable modems and cable gateways. At 1024-QAM, a receiver is provided in which a signal to noise ratio is reduced by at least about 1 dB relaxing design considerations and specifications for other components in the system including for the tuner. A soft-RS-symbol generation scheme is provided to enable soft-input RC decoding in a forward error correction (FEC) module connected to a QAM demodulator. The RS decoding scheme is implemented without significantly complicating hardware or processing overhead. A typical receiver hardware requirement in an FEC module to implement the disclosed scheme may be comparatively modest, e.g., on an order of approximately 50K gates.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 27, 2012
    Publication date: July 3, 2014
    Inventors: Bernard Arambepola, Murat Badem, Parveen K. Shukla, Sahan Gamage, Thushara Hewavithana, Naor Goldman