Atheros Communications, Inc.

Qualcomm Incorporated

Atmosic Technologies Inc.

Hewlett-packard Company

Qualcomm Atheros Inc.

The Connectivity Patent Trust

David Kuochieh Su

David J Weber

Manolis Terrovitis

William John McFarland

Masoud Zargari

Ning Zhang

Chik Patrick Yue

Zhanfeng Jia

Paul J Husted

Kai Shi

Srenik Suresh Mehta

MeeLan Lee

Siu-Weng Simon Wong

Patrick Yue

Masound Zargari

Sandip HomChaudhuri

Kenneth Marvin Gainey

Teresa H Meng

Shahram Abdollahi-Alibeik

John S Thomson

Arie Shor

Ian David O'Donnell

Subramania Sharma Thandaveswaran

Justin Ann-Ping Hwang

Bita Nezamfar

Masoud Zaragari

Soraya Kasnavi

Shuo-Wei Chen

Jason Chih-way Hou

Teresa Huai-Ying Meng

Chin-Hung Chen

Amirpouya Kavousian

Brian James Kaczynski

Justin A Hwang

Lars E Thon

Hirad Samavati

Keith K Onodera

Xuetao Chen

Sandip Homchaudhuri

Keith Onedera

Hung-Min Jen

Wilson Fok

Steven Thomas Stoiber

Alireza Kheirkhahi

Meelan Lee

William J Mcfarland

This disclosure provides a method and apparatus for saving and restoring state information of a wireless device with varying amounts of available power, such as wireless devices that may harvest power from radio-frequency signals. The wireless device may save and restore varying amounts of state information based at least in part on the amount of power available. In some embodiments, some of the stored state information may be lost as the available power decreases.

Method and apparatus for saving and restoring state information

This disclosure provides a method and apparatus for a staged wake-up of a wireless device. The wireless device may include a wireless wake-up receiver and a communication transceiver. The wireless device may begin operations in a low-power mode. The wireless wake-up receiver may identify radio-frequency (RF) activity and transition operation of the wireless device from the low-power mode to an active power mode when RF activity is identified. In some implementations, RF activity is identified when an energy pattern of a received RF signal is matched to an energy pattern associated with a known communication protocol.

Staged wireless device wake-up

This disclosure provides an active envelope detector to generate an output voltage based on an input radio-frequency (RF) signal. The active envelope detector includes a plurality of transistors configured to operate in a sub-threshold mode and generate an output voltage based on the input RF signal. A delta-modulation analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and a sigma-delta modulation ADC are provided. Both ADCs include an implementation of the active envelope detector to receive input RF signals.

Active analog front-end

Method and apparatus for wirelessly transmitting and receiving power between devices are provided. A first device may convert power into RF energy and transmit the RF energy to a second device. In some implementations, the first device may steer the RF energy using beamforming techniques to the second device. The second device may receive and convert the RF energy into power for the second device. In some implementations, the second device may be powered solely or in part by power transmitted by the first device. In some implementations, the first device may include two or more RF energy harvesters and a power combiner. The power combiner may combine power from the two or more RF energy harvesters to power the second device and/or charge a battery.

Method and apparatus for wireless transmission and reception of power

Method and apparatus for controlling the power consumption of a wireless device are provided. A wireless device may include a configurable radio frequency (RF) front-end that may be configured to use fewer hardware stages and/or processing steps to reduce power consumption based at least in part on a signal quality, detected interference, or system information associated with a received RF signal. In some implementations, the configurable RF front-end may be configured to consume less power while receiving strong RF signals and configured to consume more power while receiving weak RF signals.

Method and apparatus for controlling power dissipation in a wireless receiver

A personal identification device may conserve power by delegating one or more operations to another device. For example, the one or more operations may be associated with the authentication of the personal identification device. In one example, the personal identification device may determine an amount of power greater than a power threshold will be consumed by the personal identification device to perform the one or more operations. The personal identification device may determine it can communicate with a mobile device that is capable of performing the one or more operations, and may then delegate the one or more operations to the mobile device to conserve power. In one example, the personal identification device may receive the results of the one or more operations from the mobile device, and may provide data associated with the results to a personal identification device detector for authentication of the personal identification device.

Wireless networking-enabled personal identification system

Method and apparatus for generating and receiving a paging signal are provided. The paging signal may be received by a wireless device in a low-power state. The paging signal may include a target identification (ID) that may be associated with the wireless device. If the target ID is associated with the wireless device, the wireless device may leave the low-power state, enter an active power state and communicate with other wireless devices. The wireless device may include power harvesting circuitry to convert RF energy from the paging signal into power to operate a portion of the wireless device.

Wireless paging mode for low-power operation

Methods, systems, and devices are described for power conservation in a wireless communications system. In embodiments, power conservation may be achieved by adaptively controlling power modes of a wireless communication device, using a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) value as a factor for guidance. According to one aspect, the device may be in a reception mode. While in a first power mode, the device may receive control information for incoming data that is being transmitted via a transmission frame. The control information may be located in a first portion of the frame with the data following in a second portion of the frame. The control information may include or otherwise indicate an MCS value corresponding to the MCS applied to the incoming data. Based on the MCS value, the device may be adaptively switched to a second power mode for receiving the incoming data.

Adaptive control of RF low power modes in a multi-rate wireless system using MCS value

Methods, systems, and devices are described for power conservation in a wireless communications system. In embodiments, power conservation may be achieved by adaptively controlling power modes of a wireless communication device, and implementing lower power modes with various modes of the device. According to one aspect, the mode of the device may be a beacon monitoring mode or a delivery traffic indication message (DTIM) mode. In such a mode, the device may receive a portion of a beacon in a first power mode. The device may transition to a second, different (e.g., higher) power mode using information contained in the received portion of the beacon as guidance.

Adaptive control of RF low power modes in a multi-rate wireless system using device mode

A system and method are disclosed that may allow a STA to request one or more non-associated APs to initiate channel sounding operations with the STA. In response to the request, a number of the non-associated APs may send one or more NDPs to the STA. The STA may use the received NDPs to determine a goodput value for each of the number of non-associated APs. The STA may then use the determined goodput values to select one of the number of non-associated APs with which to associate. Thereafter, the STA may initiate an association operation with the selected AP.

Method and apparatus for initiating channel sounding with unassociated access points

A beacon message is wirelessly transmitted from a first device. The first device receives a first response to the beacon message, wherein the first response includes identification values associated with a personal identification device. A second device associated with the personal identification device is communicated with. The personal identification device is authenticated based, at least in part, on the identification values and the communication with the second device.

A wake-up radio is configured to scan for transmissions while the radio receiver is in sleep mode. The wake-up radio detects incoming RF transmissions intended for the radio receiver by analyzing data frame characteristics in an incoming RF transmission. The data frame characteristics may contain a signature code that is unique to the radio receiver. The signature code may be based on the time duration of a sequence of orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) symbols received in a clear to send to self (CTS2S) transmission or a time duration of short interframe spaces (SIFS) used to transmit the data frames.

Signature-coded wake-up transmission

A frequency source, such as for a wireless communications device, configured to have a duty cycle adjustment. A selected harmonic spur resulting from operation of the frequency source at one duty cycle may be avoided or minimized by operating the frequency source at a second duty cycle. Determination of the appropriate duty cycle may be based on measuring the amplitude of the harmonic spur as it appears in the output of a receive chain of the wireless device. Alternatively, the duty cycle may be set to desired value to avoid or minimize a given harmonic.

Systems and methods for minimizing spurs through duty cycle adjustment

A digital fractional PLL introduces an accumulated phase offset before the digital VCO to achieve the fractional part of the division ratio. To provide this phase offset, the digital accumulator can integrate a fractional component &#x394;n. By forcing &#x394;n to zero, the PLL becomes an integer-N PLL. A de-skew timing configuration can be used to remove any time mismatch between integer and fractional counters of the PLL. A digital PLL can merge the function of frequency generation (DVCO) and that of fractional frequency counting into the same circuit block by reusing various phases of the frequency output to generate a fractional frequency count. A digital integer PLL can include a comparator, wherein the feedback loop of this PLL forces the phase difference between the reference clock and feedback signals to approach zero. By changing the duty cycle of feedback signal, the frequency tracking behavior of the loop can be varied.

Fractional and integer PLL architectures

The present invention aims at eliminating the effects of frequency offsets between two transceivers by adjusting frequencies used during transmission. In this invention, methods for correcting the carrier frequency and the sampling frequency during transmission are provided, including both digital and analog implementations of such methods. The receiver determines the relative frequency offset between the transmitter and the receiver, and uses this information to correct this offset when the receiver transmits its data to the original transmitter in the return path, so that the signal received by the original transmitter is in sampling and carrier frequency lock with the original transmitter's local frequency reference.

Method and apparatus for eliminating the effects of frequency offsets in a digital communication system

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Saratoga, CA, United States of America

David Kuochieh Su