University of Virginia

Everactive, Inc.

Psikick, Inc.

University of Washington

University of Michigan

University of Viriginia Patent Foundation

Shoplogix (u.s.) Inc.

Benton H Calhoun

David D Wentzloff

Aatmesh Shrivastava

Nathan E Roberts

Farah B Yahya

Christopher J Lukas

Brian Otis

Shadi Hawawini

Kyle Craig

Jim Boley

Randy W Mann

Anjana Dissanayake

Steven M Bowers

Seunghyun Oh

Nirmalendu Patra

Yousef Shakhsheer

Jesse Moody

Yanqing Zhang

Alicia Klinefelter

Joseph F Ryan

James Boley

Tom O'Brien

Sean P Mahnken

Devices, systems, and techniques relating to steam trap monitoring are described. These include battery-less steam trap monitors that run on power harvested from their environments, systems for acquiring steam trap monitor data for the traps in a facility or across multiple facilities, and techniques for processing steam trap monitor data to reliably determine the status of individual steam traps and potentially other system parameters.

Steam trap monitoring devices, systems, and related techniques

Low power radio frequency (RF) receivers and related circuits are described.

Low power receiver and related circuits

Circuits and techniques are described that relate to an 'energy operating system' for tracking available energy and energy consumption in a system or device to support a wide range of power management and related functionalities.

Energy operating systems and related techniques

An integrated circuit, such as included as a portion of a sensor node, can include a regulator circuit having an input coupleable to an energy harvesting transducer. The integrated circuit can include a wireless receiver circuit coupled to the regulator circuit and configured to wirelessly receive at least enough operating energy to establish operation of the sensor node without requiring the energy harvesting transducer. The integrated circuit can include a digital processor circuit coupled to the regulator circuit and a power management processor circuit. The digital processor circuit or one or more other circuits can include a subthreshold operational mode established by the power management processor circuit based on the selected energy consumption level. For example, establishing the subthreshold operational mode can include adjusting or selecting a supply voltage so as to establish subthreshold operation of a field effect transistor (FET) in the digital processor circuit or other circuits.

Energy harvesting and control for sensor node

A system-on-a-chip (SoC) comprises a power supply circuit coupled to an energy harvesting transducer and configured to operate using energy from the energy harvesting transducer; a microcontroller coupled to a system bus of the SoC; an interface configured to communicate with the microcontroller via the system bus of the SoC, the interface configured to generate data upon occurrence of an event; and a computation accelerator configured to establish, based on an energy consumption level of the SoC, a data path between the interface and the computation accelerator that at least partially bypasses the system bus such that the data is transmitted to the computation accelerator via the data path.

System on a chip with customized data flow architecture

Embodiments include methods and apparatus for wireless network communication between a device that operates a radio in compliance with a wireless communication standard and another device that may not be capable of complying with the wireless communication standard. In an embodiment a sender of a wireless standard compliant message modulates backchannel data on a wireless standard compliant message. The wireless standard compliant message may be addressed to an IP address of a compliant device. However the compliant message may have no meaning for the addressee. A noncompliant device within wireless range of the compliant message receives the message and demodulates the backchannel information. The noncompliant device this does not require a wireless standard radio to be on in order to receive messages and can operate at very low power.

Methods and apparatus for networking using a proxy device and backchannel communication

A method for testing system-on-a-chip (SoC) for faults at subthreshold or substantially at threshold operating voltages includes the steps of testing the SoC for fault at a favorable operating voltage, the testing including measuring a metric characterizing the fault at the favorable operating voltage to obtain a first metric value; and retesting the SoC for the fault at a first operating voltage upon the first metric value at the favorable operating voltage being correlated, according to a metric correlation establishing a correlation relationship between the favorable operating voltage and the first operating voltage, to a second metric value at the first operating voltage within a predictive interval of the metric correlation.

Methods for reducing chip testing time using trans-threshold correlations

In some embodiments, an apparatus includes a wireless receiver circuit that can receive a wireless signal from a wireless communication device that is (1) separate from the wireless receiver circuit and (2) can encode a first information according to a protocol. The wireless receiver circuit can detect a predefined sequence of changes of a characteristic within the wireless signal to decode, from the wireless signal, a second information mutually exclusive from the first information without decoding the first information. In such embodiments, the wireless receiver circuit can send the second information.

Methods and apparatus for wireless communication via a predefined sequence of a change of a characteristic of a wireless signal

In some embodiments, an apparatus includes an integrated circuit such as a system on chip that operates in part from harvested power and that uses information about power harvesting conditions to alter a power-on sequence or boot sequence based on that information. In some embodiments, a method uses information about power harvesting and energy harvesting conditions to alter a power-on sequence or boot sequence.

Systems, methods, and apparatus for controlling the power-on or boot sequence of an integrated circuit based on power harvesting conditions

Growing community of inventors

Charlottesville, VA, United States of America

Benton H Calhoun