Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Simulab Corporation

Jay Alan Borseth

Thaddeus C Pritchett

Terje Kristian Backman

Sean C McDowell

David Alan Goll

Christopher C Toly

Colin Lee Acton

Douglas J Beighle

Aaron M Erbeck

Tyler L Hartley

A medical trainer simulator includes a plurality of simulated vessels filled with a conductive fluid representing, for example, veins or arteries. While performing a procedure using the medical trainer, a person inserts a medical instrument, e.g., a needle or scalpel, into a selected vessel, causing the medical instrument to contact the conductive fluid. A circuit board detects when a circuit is thus created by detecting an electrical current flowing through the medical instrument and the conductive fluid it has contacted. A software program executing on a computer excludes any phantom circuit occurring when the medical instrument contacts conductive fluid from a previous procedure that is not within one of the vessels. A phantom circuit is detected if the resistance of the resulting circuit exceeds a predetermined threshold. The computer visually and/or audibly indicates whether the correct vessel was pierced or excized by the medical instrument.

Detecting insertion of needle into simulated vessel using a conductive fluid

A modularized broadcast receiver driver architecture includes one or more control nodes, under control of a network module, that perform a series of one or more functions to receive a broadcast signal and extract content information from the signal. None of the multiple control nodes requires knowledge of the network type via which the signal is being received. Rather, a network module is aware of the network type and configures the control nodes to carry out their respective functions.

Modularization of broadcast receiver driver components

A worldwide television tuning system is configurable to the television standards and channel frequencies of multiple different countries based on a country's ITU long-distance country code. The tuning system maintains a country code table listing a plurality of countries according to their ITU codes. The tuning system also maintains multiple channel-to-frequency mapping tables that correlate channel numbers to corresponding frequencies for associated countries in the country table. The country table indexes the channel-to-frequency mapping tables. During configuration, a user or application selects a particular country by passing in the ITU code. The tuning system uses the ITU code to locate an entry for that country in the country code table. The table entry contains an index to an associated channel-to-frequency mapping table for the selected country. The tuning system loads and saves the channel-to-frequency mapping table for subsequent use. The channel-to-frequency table also identifies the appropriate television standard for the selected country. During tuning, the user or application enters a particular channel number. The tuning system uses the channel number to lookup a corresponding television frequency in the channel-to-frequency table. The tuning system then tunes to the television frequency. The tuning system stores a set of tuning frequencies for corresponding channels within a particular locale. If the tuning system is transported to another locale and then back to the original locale, the tuning frequencies may be retrieved from memory to restore operation within the original locale, rather than having to reconfigure the system.

Worldwide television tuning system with country code based tuning

An extensible framework for tuning to programming sources includes tune request objects and tuning space objects that are used to maintain and pass information regarding how to tune to a particular program. The extensible framework can be easily modified by creating, deleting, or modifying tune request objects and tuning space objects without requiring changes on the part of applications interacting with the framework.

Extensible framework for tuning to programming sources

A worldwide television tuning system is configurable to the television standards and channel frequencies of multiple different countries based on a country's ITU long-distance country code. The television tuning system is architected in parallel hardware and software components. The hardware components include tuner circuitry to tune to various television frequencies carrying television video signals and video decoder circuitry coupled to receive a television video signal from the tuner circuitry and to convert the television video signal to digital video data. The software components include a tuner module coupled to adjust the tuner circuitry to a particular television frequency and a video decoder module to decode the digital video data according to a particular video standard. A driver interface layer interfaces the software layer and the hardware circuitry. When a new channel is requested, the tuner module generates and sends a beginning tuning packet to inform the video decoder module of an impending change to the new channel. In addition to the video decoder module, this tuning packet also propagates to all downstream modules (e.g., audio decoder module, VBI decoders, etc.). The tuner module then controls the tuner circuitry to tune to a new television frequency that corresponds to the new channel. Afterward, the tuner module generates and sends an ending tuning packet to inform the video decoder module that the channel change is complete. The tuning packet includes a designation of country within which the tuning system is configured to receive television signals, a channel to be tuned, the particular video standard, and flags indicating whether the tuning packet represents a beginning of a tuning operation or an ending of the tuning operation.

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Seattle, WA, United States of America

Jay Alan Borseth