Bell Telephone Laboratories

At&t Bell Laboratories

At&t Information Systems Inc.

American Telephone and Telegraph, Co.

Lucent Technologies Inc.

Douglas C Smith

Chao Kai Liu

Dennis Bryan James

Bryan Scott Moffitt

Min-Chung Jon

Dale E Lynn

Joseph Charles Veshinfsky

Bruce W McNeill

Mark S Paradiso

Edward P Black

Dennis James Morgan

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection for an electrical device is provided through an arrangement which detects an ESD event occurring in the device and reconfigures a processor in the device after the ESD event so that the event is essentially transparent to a user of the device. A detector circuit incorporated into the device detects the occurrence of the ESD event and, in response thereto, generates a trigger signal which is coupled to the processor. Upon receipt of this trigger signal, the processor retrieves status information that is stored in non-volatile memory and was previously contained in a program being executed just prior to the ESD event, reconfigures itself using the status information, and resumes operation with this status information. A data latch connects to the processor and buffers data from this processor to circuitry controlled by the processor. During the occurrence of the ESD event, the trigger signal is coupled to the data latch for holding the data in an output buffer in the latch. This data, generated by the processor just prior to the occurrence of the ESD event, maintains the circuitry normally controlled by the processor in its appropriate operating state while the processor is being reconfigured.

Electrostatic discharge protection for an electrical device

Electrostatic discharge during thermal shock testing on an electronic device (12) by alternate immersion in hot and cold baths (14, 16) of a fully-fluorinated liquid (20) can be reduced by carrying the device within a first, electrically conductive, open-weave basket (32) enclosed within, and coupled to a second basket (30) of similar construction, but a looser weave. The first basket acts as a Faraday shield about the electronic device when both baskets are alternately immersed in the hot and cold baths.

Method and apparatus for reducing ESD during thermal shock testing

In an arrangement wherein an inquiry and a choice of respones thereto are displayed on a CRT screen, a selection is made by holding a touch-screen device against the area of the screen corresponding to the desired response. Such a touch-screen device is designed to have an inductive coil in its tip. When an electron beam which scans the CRT screen sweeps across the tip of the touch-screen device, an electrical signal is induced on the coil. The touch-position or the selection is determined based on a knowledge of the position of the electron beam on the screen at the time of the electrical signal induction.

Touch-screen arrangement

A touch-screen scheme is employed in an arrangement wherein an inquiry and a choice of responses thereto are displayed on a CRT screen. In accordance with this scheme, a first touch-screen device is held against a predetermined spot on the screen. A selection is made by holding a second touch-screen device against the area of the screen corresponding to the desired response. When the electron beam which scans the CRT screen sweeps across the first and second touch-screen devices at different times, the two device generate two signal outputs. The touch-position or the selection is determined based on the time difference between the two signal outputs.

Scheme for determining position of surface contact of cathode ray tube

It has been found that the ground lead of a measurement instrument probe has an inductance which, when coupled with the capacitance of the rest of the probe, forms a resonant circuit. The net result is a peak in the frequency response of the probe which interferes with accurate amplitude measurements of test signals having a frequency above some threshold. Pursuant to the present invention, a resistor is added to the measurement instrument probe whose value substantially flattens the frequency response of the probe and permits accurate amplitude measurements over a substantially greater frequency range. This resistor, either having a fixed or adjustable value, can be added to the measurement instrument probe or can be included in an adjunct which fits over a probe end.

Apparatus and method for expanding the frequency range over which

A probe for providing noise measurements of an electrical circuit includes at least one loop of wire connected to a plurality of conductors. The loop interconnects one or more signal-carrying ones of the conductors to one or more of the conductors carrying ground and has a portion which is substantially straight or is deformable to follow the path of a conductor in the electrical circuit. Preferably, the loop is formed so that this straight portion terminates in a right angle bend at each end. This loop serves as an inductive pickup which avoids the need for contact of the probe to the circuit under test and, thereby, provides more accurate noise measurements.

Noise measurement probe

The severity of the problems of transmitting high speed data over a regular twisted wire pair are legendary. These problems arise from a variety of conditions, including the capacitance of the wire (which increases with length) and the propensity of unshielded wire to pickup high induced voltages. An arrangement is disclosed that is suitable for short, as well as long, wire distances and which also effectively eliminates the interference problem caused by induced voltages, including those causes by electrostatic discharge. This arrangement passes two twisted wire pairs through a series of ferrite cores. The twisted wire pairs coming out of the ferrite cores are terminated such that one of the pairs is connected to ground while the signal carrying twisted pair is connected to a small signal balun coil, pulse shaping circuit and low pass filter.

Communication line transient protection

This is an improved resistive line battery feed circuit where the improvement consists in establishing a balanced stable power point using an opamp and capacitive input and feeding the AC output to both lines of the tip and ring circuit via opamps and a hybrid for injecting current. In this manner longitudinal balance is maintained. Current is added to the line circuit by a modulated DC current source.

Resistive line feed circuit

Resistive battery feed circuits are normally not used because of lack of power supply noise rejection and attendant crosstalk coupling. In this circuit the opamp and surrounding circuitry insure that power supply and ground noise do not couple into the tip and ring circuits as a metallic signal and improve crosstalk attenuation. In addition, the opamp is used to split the 48 volt supply.

Resistive line circuit

High density time division busses suffer from many problems, one of which is that impedance discontinuities cause signal reflections to occur along the bus. These reflections, in turn, affect the settling time and noise margins of the bus and thus reduce the time 'window' in which valid signals may be received. There is disclosed a transmission bus structure which allows for bidirectional, multi-port operation by using current drivers instead of the traditional voltage drivers for placing data signals on the bus. The transmission bus is designed in a manner which allows transmission and reception from a single clock on the same clock edge thereby substantially increasing the time allowed for transmission response and also simplifying the clock distribution requirements.

Distributed time division multiplexing bus

The disclosed T-type line compensation circuit reduces the gain and return loss variations when customer equipment is connected to a central office or PBX over telephone lines of various lengths. A linear resistor of a first series leg is thermally coupled, as a heat source, to a positive temperature coefficient (PTC) resistor of a second series leg. The shunt leg consists of a series connection of a bilateral zener diode, linear resistor, and varistor. The resistance value of both the second series leg and the shunt leg of the line circuit vary automatically with the direct current in the line to minimize gain variation due to telephone line length variation. The thermal feedback to the PTC resistor varies automatically with the direct current in the line to minimize return loss variations seen by the customer equipment.

Automatic gain and return loss compensating line circuit

In order to reduce the signal loss in a telephone line switching and conferencing system there is interposed between each line and the switching matrix a monobus port circuit arranged to convert a transmitted telephone signal into an equivalent current source. An opto-coupled hybrid replaces the port circuit transformer and serves to provide the desired voltage to current conversion. The currents from several monobus circuits are added in a bus resistor before distribution back to the individual monobus circuits as a voltage where the original signal is subtracted from the bus signal. The resultant signal is transmitted to the telephone receiver via the opto-coupled hybrid. When the switching matrix crosspoint resistance is negligible, the component of the bus voltage measured at the current source output which results from current generated from each port circuit is equal and opposite in magnitude to the voltage generated in the port circuit. In any given line these voltages cancel each other, thereby eliminating the feedback signal.

Monobus interface circuit using opto-coupled hybrids

A plurality of idle paths through a multistage switching network which are capable of establishing a connection between a particular line and a particular trunk are identified. Repeated selection of paths identified as idle, but actually out-of-service, is avoided by selecting successively different ones of the identified idle paths in a pseudorandom manner to complete the connection between the line and the trunk. The pseudorandom path selection is accomplished in response to predetermined portions of a pseudorandom pattern of binary bits.

Path-finding scheme for a multistage switching network

A monobus conference arrangement is disclosed for use in a key telephone system. A conference circuit is serially inserted on each line and is arranged with an impedance element common to all of the stations using the line. In addition, a monobus circuit replaces the conventional hybrid in each station set. To avoid the problem of having more than one such impedance element connected in a multiline conference, the system is arranged so that current flows in a first direction through the conference circuit associated with the first-connected line and in a reverse direction through subsequently connected line conference circuits. Under control of the reverse current flow, the common impedance elements associated with the reverse current line conference circuits are removed from the connection.

Key telephone monobus conference arrangement

In order to reduce the signal loss in a telephone line switching and conferencing system there is interposed between each line and the switching matrix a monobus port circuit arranged to convert a transmitted telephone signal into an equivalent current source. The currents from several monobus circuits are added in a bus resistor before distribution back to the individual monobus circuit as a voltage where the original signal is subtracted from the bus signal. The resultant signal is transmitted to the telephone receiver. When the switching matrix crosspoint resistance is negligible, the component of the bus voltage measured at the current source output which results from current generated from each line is equal and opposite in magnitude to the voltage generated in the line. In any given line these voltages cancel each other, thereby eliminating the feedback signal.

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Rumson, NJ, United States of America

Douglas C Smith