General Electric Company

James R Whitten

Walter J Butler

William D Barber

Charles M Puckette

Gerald J Carlson

Norman C Gittinger

Arthur C Chen

Walter H Berninger

A transducer for sensing the magnitude of a parameter, such as mechanical displacement/motion, pressure, temperature, electrical voltage, current and the like, uses a multimode optical waveguide fiber. At least one portion of the fiber is subjected to bending in an amount changing with a change in the sensed parameter magnitude. The resulting microbending losses in the fiber vary the attenuation of light energy between an optical source and an optical detector, response to variations in the sensed parameter magnitude. The variations of the detector output may be monotonically continuous, or may be processed to assume one of a pair of levels for 'on-off' switching purposes.

Fiber optics transducers for sensing parameter magnitude

A speech scrambler for rendering unintelligible a communications signal for transmission over nonsecure communications channels includes a time delay modulator and a coding signal generator in a scrambling portion of the system and a similar time delay modulator and a coding generator for generating an inverse signal in the unscrambling portion of the system.

Speech scrambler

A time delay modulator is disclosed in which the instantaneous time base of a carrier signal is varied in accordance with a modulating signal. In one embodiment, modulation is achieved through the use of charge transfer delay lines and variable frequency clocks in which a carrier wave signal is applied to the input of the delay line and the carrier wave signal is propagated through the delay line at a rate determined by the output frequency of an oscillator which deviates from a nominal frequency by an amount proportionate to the magnitude of the modulating signal. In another embodiment, an analog-to-digital converter, a shift register and a digital-to-analog converter in serial configuration are each controlled by a voltage controlled oscillator. The carrier wave signal is connected to the input of the analog-to-digital converter and samples are taken in accordance with a clock input. Parallel digital output signals are applied to an N x M bit shift register, the output of which is applied to the digital-to-analog converter having a serial output. A modulating signal is applied to the voltage controlled oscillator which provides an output deviating from a nominal frequency by an amount proportional to the magnitude of the modulating signal.

Time delay modulator

A tomographic x-ray imaging system comprises a large plurality of parallel data acquisition channels which integrate and digitize signals from an array of x-ray detectors. Calibration pulses are injected into each data acquisition channel to permit measurement of drift in electronic gain and dc offset parameters. Separate x-ray detectors continuously monitor the intensity of the x-ray source. The measured values for channel gains, dc offsets, and source intensity are fed to a digital computer where they are automatically combined with x-ray transmission data to compensate for system drift and extend the period between calibration measurements.

X-ray data acquisition system and method for calibration

A ghost canceller for the cancellation of a ghost signal from a complex electrical signal including a desired signal component as well as the ghost is provided wherein an electronically variable delay line of the charge transfer type is incorporated in a negative feedback loop. Bucket-brigade and charge-coupled devices may be employed with associated variable frequency clock oscillators to provide remotely variable delay times in an easily implemented structure.

Growing community of inventors

Scotia, NY, United States of America

James R Whitten