University of Michigan

Everactive, Inc.

Psikick, Inc.

University of Virginia Patent Foundation

Shoplogix (u.s.) Inc.

David D Wentzloff

Benton H Calhoun

Nathan E Roberts

Hun-Seok Kim

Shadi Hawawini

Kuo-Ken Huang

Kyle Craig

Jim Boley

Seunghyun Oh

David Theodore Blaauw

David S Abdallah

Muhammad Faisal

Yao Shi

Farah B Yahya

Michael Kines

Christopher Shaw

Nicholas Andrew Clark Collins

Richard Kevin Sawyer, Jr

Jonathan Kirk Brown

Alicia Klinefelter

Yanqing Zhang

Nirmalendu Patra

Xing Chen

Yousef Shakhsheer

Hun Seok Kim

Christopher J Lukas

Osama Khan

Jonathan K Brown

Li-Xuan Chuo

Elnaz Ansari

Ryan R Rogel

Hyeongseok Kim

Jaeho Im

Abdullah Mohammed G Alghaihab

Avish Kosari

Sean P Mahnken

Tom O'Brien

Trevor Odelberg

Tom O'BRIEN

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

A low-power standard-compliant NB-IoT wake-up receiver (WRX) is presented. The WRX is designed as a companion radio to a full NB-IoT receiver, only operating during discontinuous RX modes (DRX and eDRX), which allows the full high-power radio to turn off while the wake-up receiver efficiently receives NB-IoTWake-Up Signals (WUS). The fabricated receiver achieves 2.1 mW power at −109 dBm sensitivity with 180 kHz bandwidth over the 750-960 MHz bands. The WRX is fabricated in 28 nm CMOS and consumes 5× less power than the best previously published traditional NB-IoT receivers. This disclosure is the first designed dedicated wake-up receiver for the NB-IoT protocol and demonstrates the benefits of utilizing a WRX to reduce power consumption of NB-IoT radios.

NB-IoT wake-up receiver

A wake-up radio system in a wireless sensor network, the wake-up radio comprising: an analog front end configured to communicate with matching network; an analog to digital converter coupled to the analog front end; and a digital baseband coupled to the analog to digital converter, wherein the digital baseband outputs a fast wake-up signal and a secure wake-up signal, and wherein the wake-up radio listens to all channels simultaneously.

Method and system for low power and secure wake-up radio

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 transceiver includes a receive circuit configured to receive an incoming signal and recover a reference signal at a reference frequency from the incoming signal. The incoming signal is a wireless packet. A first oscillator generates a signal at a set of predetermined frequencies. A first phase lock loop (PLL) interfaced with the first oscillator. The first PLL is configured to adjust a first oscillator frequency of the first oscillator based on an incoming frequency of the incoming signal using the reference frequency. A transmit circuit includes a second oscillator configured to generate a carrier signal at a predetermined frequency and a modulator configured to modulate data over the carrier signal at the predetermined frequency. The transmit circuit includes a second PLL interfaced with the second oscillator that sets the second oscillator to generate the carrier signal at the predetermined frequency using the reference signal. The transmit circuit transmits the modulated carrier signal.

Systems and methods for a crystal-less bluetooth low energy transceiver

A millimeter-scale Bluetooth low energy wireless transmitter is presented with a dual purpose loop antenna. The oscillator employs a high quality factor resonator formed by a printed 3.5&#xd7;3.5 mminductive loop antenna (simulated Q&#x2dc;110) and an on-chip digitally-switched capacitor array (simulated Q&#x2dc;283). The oscillator replaces the traditional voltage controlled oscillator plus power amplifier, achieving lower power consumption while maintaining phase noise of &#x2212;118.5 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset that results in low FSK modulation error (2.1%) and low frequency drift during BLE packet transmission.

Millimeter-scale bluetooth low energy transmitter with dual purpose loop antenna

A quadrature fully integrated tri-band GPS receiver implemented in 65 nm CMOS. The analog front-end (AFE) is specifically designed for a miniaturized low-power GPS logger that leverages heavy duty-cycling. The main contribution of the RF front-end is comprised of two main signal paths which support the single-band only mode and the tri-band mode (L1, L2, L5). In the tri-band mode, the AFE is able to fold three GPS signals into a single low intermediate frequency channel in part due to the orthogonality of the pseudo-ransom codes. In active mode, the radio draws 12.1 mW in the single-band (L1) mode with a LNA and an active mixer, and 8.2 mW in the tri-band mode with a passive front-end, from a 1.2 V supply, and with a startup time of 20 us.

Quadrature fully-integrated tri-band GPS receiver

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

A Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) transmitter is presented for used in ultra-low-power radios in short range IoT applications. The power consumption of state-of-the-art BLE transmitter has been limited by the relatively power-hungry local oscillator due to the use of LC oscillators for superior phase noise performance. This disclosure addresses this issue by analyzing the phase noise limit of a BLE TX and proposes a ring oscillator-based solution for power and cost savings. The proposed transmitter features: 1) a wideband all-digital phase locked loop (ADPLL) featuring an f/4 RO, with an embedded 5-bit TDC; 2) a 4&#xd7; frequency edge combiner to generate the 2.4 GHz signal; and 3) a switch-capacitor digital PA optimized for high efficiency at low transmit power levels. These not only help reduce the power consumption and improve phase noise performance, but also enhance the transmitter efficiency for short range applications.

Ring oscillator based all-digital Bluetooth low energy transmitter

An ultra-low power back-channel receiver is presented that demodulates binary a FSK back-channel signal embedded in 5.8 GHz IEEE 802.11a Wi-Fi OFDM packets. The architecture of the back-channel receiver employs a two-step down-conversion where the first mixing stage downconverts using the third harmonic of the local oscillator for power efficiency. The LP-65 nm CMOS receiver consumes 335 &#x3bc;W with a sensitivity of &#x2212;72 dBm at a BER of 10and data-rate of 31.25 kb/s. The radio uses a balun and a 250 kHz reference crystal as external components. The receiver uses a 1V supply voltage for analog blocks, and 0.85V for digital blocks including the local oscillator and the frequency-locked loop circuits.

Low-power receiver for FSK back-channel embedded in 5.8GHz Wi-Fi OFDM packets

Growing community of inventors

Ann Arbor, MI, United States of America

David D Wentzloff