Sensor-compatible overlay
Granted: February 28, 2023
Patent Number:
11594066
A fingerprint sensor-compatible overlay material which uses anisotropic conductive material to enable accurate imaging of a fingerprint through an overlay is disclosed. The anisotropic conductive material has increased conductivity in a direction orthogonal to the fingerprint sensor, increasing the capacitive coupling of the fingerprint to the sensor surface, allowing the fingerprint sensor to accurately image the fingerprint through the overlay. Methods for forming a fingerprint…
Notice of absence support for coexistence
Granted: February 21, 2023
Patent Number:
11589398
A method includes receiving an absence schedule and storing the absence schedule in a memory. The absence schedule indicates a plurality of absence periods during which a group owner device in a wireless network will be unavailable for receiving transmissions in a frequency band. The method further includes controlling a primary radio transceiver of a wireless device based on the absence schedule, receiving a first request from a secondary radio transceiver of the wireless device to…
Combined positive and negative voltage electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection clamp with cascoded circuitry
Granted: February 14, 2023
Patent Number:
11581729
A system and method for combining positive and negative voltage electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection into a clamp that uses cascoded circuitry, including detecting, by an electrostatic discharge protection system, a voltage pulse on an input pin of an integrated circuit (IC) controller, the IC controller coupled between a power supply node and a ground supply node; determining, by the ESD protection circuit, an ESD event on the input pin based on the voltage detected on the input…
Devices, systems and methods for accessing random access resource units of a wireless channel
Granted: January 31, 2023
Patent Number:
11570814
A method can include wireless device operations, including receiving a trigger communication that identifies available random access resource units (RA RUs), the RA RUs being portions of transmission channel for a wireless system. In response to a back-off value and a number of available RA RUs, selecting or not selecting one RA RU as a transmission RA RU. In response to not selecting a transmission RA RU, monitoring for wireless responses following the trigger communication to determine…
Machine learning-based position determination
Granted: January 24, 2023
Patent Number:
11561654
An example method of determining the position value reflecting an action applied to the capacitive sensor device comprises: receive a set of capacitance values of a plurality of capacitive cells of a capacitive sensor device; determining a local maximum of the set of capacitance values; identifying a set of neural network parameters corresponding to the local maximum of the set of capacitance values; and processing the set of capacitance values by a neural network using the identified…
Inductive sensing methods, devices and systems
Granted: January 24, 2023
Patent Number:
11561249
A method can include in a first phase of a sensing operation, controlling at least a first switch to energize a sensor inductance; in a second phase of the sensing operation that follows the first phase, controlling at least a second switch to couple the sensor inductance to a first modulator capacitance to induce a first fly-back current from the sensor inductance, the first fly-back current generating a first modulator voltage at the first modulator capacitance, and in response to the…
Machine learning-based position determination
Granted: January 24, 2023
Patent Number:
11561654
An example method of determining the position value reflecting an action applied to the capacitive sensor device comprises: receive a set of capacitance values of a plurality of capacitive cells of a capacitive sensor device; determining a local maximum of the set of capacitance values; identifying a set of neural network parameters corresponding to the local maximum of the set of capacitance values; and processing the set of capacitance values by a neural network using the identified…
Inductive sensing methods, devices and systems
Granted: January 24, 2023
Patent Number:
11561249
A method can include in a first phase of a sensing operation, controlling at least a first switch to energize a sensor inductance; in a second phase of the sensing operation that follows the first phase, controlling at least a second switch to couple the sensor inductance to a first modulator capacitance to induce a first fly-back current from the sensor inductance, the first fly-back current generating a first modulator voltage at the first modulator capacitance, and in response to the…
High-distance directional proximity sensor
Granted: January 17, 2023
Patent Number:
11556184
Apparatuses and methods of high-distance directional proximity sensors are described. One apparatus includes at least three electrodes in a sensor layer, an electrode in a shield layer, and an insulator located between the layers. A processing device is configured to scan the at least three electrodes over a period of time to obtain a digital signal for each of the at least three electrodes while driving a shield signal on the electrode of the shield layer. The processing device detects…
Always on low power capacitive matrix autonomous scan
Granted: January 17, 2023
Patent Number:
11556205
Disclosed are sensing systems and methods that eliminate CPU intervention or interrupts when performing sensor scans of a touch interface, supports low power sensing operation without requiring periodic wake up of the CPU, and is scalable to multi-channel or multi-chip sensor configuration to support large touch screens or a high number of sensors. A sensor scanning module may operate in a chained-scan using direct memory access (CS-DMA) mode or an autonomous scan-multiple scan (AS-MS)…
High performance inductive sensing all digital phase locked loop
Granted: January 10, 2023
Patent Number:
11552635
One inductive sensor is configured to maintain a fixed frequency in a resonant circuit. One apparatus includes an inductance-to-digital converter (LDC). The LDC includes a digital filter to measure an inductance change of a sensor and convert the inductance change to a digital value. The LDC further includes a digital control loop to maintain a fixed frequency in the sensor. The sensor forms an oscillator in the digital control loop. An output of the digital control loop is…
Capacitive field sensor with sigma-delta modulator
Granted: January 10, 2023
Patent Number:
11549975
A capacitive sensor includes a switching capacitor circuit, a comparator, and a charge dissipation circuit. The switching capacitor circuit reciprocally couples a sensing capacitor in series with a modulation capacitor during a first switching phase and discharges the sensing capacitor during a second switching phase. The comparator is coupled to compare a voltage potential on the modulation capacitor to a reference and to generate a modulation signal in response. The charge dissipation…
System, method, and apparatus for passive shielding of a capacitive sensing button
Granted: January 3, 2023
Patent Number:
11543908
Apparatuses and methods of shielding for capacitance-to-digital code conversion are described. One apparatus includes a capacitance-to-digital converter (CDC) for measuring a self-capacitance of a sensor electrode. The capacitance-to-digital code converter can in a first phase, apply a supply voltage to the sensor electrode. The sensor electrode and a shield electrode, the form a mutual capacitance with the sensor electrode. The CDC, in a second phase, couples the shield electrode to a…
Dynamic switching of power levels in device having different wireless communication circuits
Granted: December 20, 2022
Patent Number:
11533687
A method can include an integrated circuit device, determining if first communication circuits are operating in a first mode that wirelessly receives data at a first rate or a second mode that wirelessly receives data at a second rate that is lower than the first rate. If the first communication circuits are operating in the second mode, transmitting signals with the second communication circuits at a first power level, and if operating in the first mode, transmitting signals with the…
Ultra-low power adaptively reconfigurable system
Granted: December 20, 2022
Patent Number:
11533055
Implementations disclosed describe a programmable analog subsystem (PASS) having a plurality of reconfigurable analog circuits. The PASS may be coupled to an input/output device to receive an input signal and to an interface to communicate data with a central processing unit. In a first PASS configuration, with the plurality of reconfigurable analog circuits having a first configuration setting, the PASS may process the input signal through the plurality of reconfigurable analog circuits…
Low-emissions touch controller
Granted: December 20, 2022
Patent Number:
11531435
Technology directed to low-emissions touch controller in in-cell touch display systems is described. One in-cell touch controller includes a signal generator circuit that is configured to generate a sense signal according to a sensing function, the sense signal including a windowed sinusoidal waveform. The controller generates a transition signal to transition the in-cell touch display between a display function and the sensing function. The controller drives the sense signal and the…
Nano-power capacitance-to-digital converter
Granted: December 20, 2022
Patent Number:
11531424
An asynchronous capacitance-to-digital converter (CDC) is described that allows for very low-power operation when during inactive periods (when no conductive object is in contact or proximity to the sensing electrodes). Asynchronous operation of the CDC provides for capacitance-to-digital conversion without the use of system resources and more power intensive circuit elements.
Leveraging spectral diversity for machine learning-based estimation of radio frequency signal parameters
Granted: December 20, 2022
Patent Number:
11531080
An example method for estimating the angle-of-arrival (AoA) and other parameters of radio frequency (RF) signals that are received by an antenna array comprises: receiving a plurality of radio frequency (RF) signal power measurements by a plurality of antenna elements at a plurality of RF channels; computing, by applying a machine learning model to the plurality of RF signal power measurements, an estimated RF signal parameter value; and outputting the RF signal parameter value.
Mode-transition architecture for buck-boost converter
Granted: December 13, 2022
Patent Number:
11527957
A mode-transition architecture for USB Type-C controllers is described herein. In an example embodiment, an integrated circuit (IC) controller includes controller includes a controller coupled to a slope compensation circuit, the controller to cause the slope compensation circuit to apply a first slope compensation to the input current in a first mode in which the buck-boost converter is operating in a discontinuous conduction mode (DCM). The controller detects a transition of the…
Methods to remove dribble introduced and regenerate sync bits lost due to squelch delays in USB high speed packet repeating
Granted: December 13, 2022
Patent Number:
11528095
Disclosed are techniques for removing dribble bits following the end-of-packet (EOP) of a High-Speed data packet inserted by the transmission envelope detector of a repeater/hub that interconnects electronic devices compliant with Universal Serial Bus (USB) Specification Revision 2.0 or higher. A physical layer logic (PHY) of a first port of the repeater/hub receives a High-Speed data packet to store a recovered bit stream into an elastic buffer. The recovered bit stream may include…
