Apple Inc.

Joonhoi Hur

Rastislav Vazny

Andreas Menkhoff

Bernhard Sogl

Jochen Schrattenecker

Harald Pretl

Ronald William Dimpflmaier

Nedim Muharemovic

Oliver Georg Dorn

Björn Lenhart

Bin Xiao

Andre Hanke

Andreas Boehme

Andreas Langer

Christian Mayer

Christof Pfannenmüller

Dominic Koehler

Lucas Calderin

An electronic device may include a voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) sensor disposed along a radio-frequency transmission line between a signal generator and an antenna. The VSWR sensor may gather VSWR measurements from radio-frequency signals transmitted by the signal generator over the transmission line. Control circuitry may identify a variation in the VSWR measurements over time and may compare the variation to a threshold value to determine whether an external object in the vicinity of the antenna is animate or inanimate. The control circuitry may reduce the maximum transmit power level of the antenna when the external object is animate and may maintain or increase the maximum transmit power level when the external object is inanimate. This may serve to maximize the wireless performance of the electronic device while also ensuring that the device complies with regulatory limits on radio-frequency energy exposure.

Electronic devices with non-static object detection

An electronic device may include wireless circuitry having a set of two or more antennas coupled to voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) sensors. The VSWR sensors may gather VSWR measurements from radio-frequency signals transmitted using the set of antennas. The antennas may be disposed on one or more substrates and/or may be formed from conductive portions of a housing. Control circuitry may process the VSWR measurements to identify the ranges between each of the antennas in the set of antennas and an external object. The control circuitry may process the ranges to identify an angular location of the external object with respect to the device. The control circuitry may adjust subsequent communications based, adjust the direction of a signal beam produced by a phased antenna array, identify a user input, or perform any other desired operations based on the angular location.

Electronic devices with angular location detection capabilities

An electronic device may include wireless circuitry with a transmit antenna that transmits signals and a receive antenna that receives reflected signals. The wireless circuitry may detect a range between the device and an external object based on the transmitted signals and the reflected signals. When the range exceeds a first threshold, the wireless circuitry may use the transmitted signals and received signals to record background noise. When the range is less than a second threshold value, the wireless circuitry may detect the range based on the reflected signals and the recorded background noise. This may allow the range to be accurately measured within an ultra-short range domain even when the device is placed in different device cases, placed on different surfaces, etc.

Background noise recorder

This disclosure provides techniques for impedance matching. A radio frequency (RF) device includes a power detector to determine a transmitter leakage and a post-processing unit to determine a receiver leakage, and determines if isolation is acceptable based on the leakages. The RF device may include a device for measuring antenna impedance. Otherwise, the RF device may select multiple tuner settings (e.g., capacitor values) for test signals to be transmitted and received at a target frequency, determine multiple sets of leakage values, determine multiple reflection coefficients based on the multiple sets of leakage values, and determine an estimated antenna impedance at the target frequency based on the reflection coefficients. The RF device then determines impedance tuner settings based on the measured or estimated antenna impedance. Alternatively, the RF device determines impedance tuner settings using an inverse machine-learning model based on a determined matching impedance.

Machine-learning based tuning algorithm for duplexer systems

A differential double balanced duplexer (dDBD) includes a transmitter and a first balun are coupled to a first impedance tuner that produces a first impedance that blocks received signals at a first frequency range from travelling across the first balun and into the transmitter, and a second impedance that passes transmitted signals at a second frequency range to travel across the first balun to the antenna. The dDBD also includes a receiver and a second balun coupled to a second impedance tuner that produces a first impedance that allows the received signals at the first frequency range to travel across the second balun and into the receiver, and a second impedance that blocks the transmitted signals at the second frequency range from travelling across the second balun and into the receiver. As such, the dDBD allows for increased isolation and decreased insertion loss.

Differential double balanced duplexer

Embodiments disclosed herein relate to improving an available bandwidth for a transceiver of an electronic device and to reducing a footprint of an associated integrated circuit of the electronic device. To do so, an isolation circuit is disposed between a transmit circuit and a receive circuit. The isolation circuit has first and second signal paths. A first portion of the signal propagates along the first signal path and a second portion of the signal propagates along the second signal path. A non-reciprocal phase shifter is disposed on the first signal path to shift a phase of the first portion to match a phase of the second portion and improve isolation between the transmit circuit and the receive circuit. The phase-shifted first portion may be combined with the second portion to reduce or substantially eliminate an insertion loss caused by the isolation circuit.

Full-duplex electrical balanced duplexer

Embodiments presented herein relate to isolating a receiver circuit of an electronic device from a transmission signal and from a noise signal at a frequency range of a received signal. To do so, an isolation circuit is disposed between the receiver circuit and a transmission circuit. The isolation circuit may include multiple variable impedance devices and one or more antennas. The impedances of the variable impedance devices and the one or more antennas may be balanced such that the receiver circuit is effectively removed from the transceiver circuitry and isolated from the transmission signal. The impedance of the variable impedance devices and the one or more antennas may also be configured to isolate the receiver circuit from a noise signal generated at the transmission circuit having a frequency in the range of the receive signal.

Single ladder duplexer with impedance gradient

A duplexer may be used to isolate a transmitter and a receiver that share a common antenna. By using impedance gradients to provide impedances that cause balance-unbalance transformers (balun) of the duplexer to cut-off access to the common antenna rather than duplicate the antenna impedance, the duplexer is balanced. Such cut-offs may have a lower insertion loss than a duplexer that merely duplicates the antenna impedance to separate the differential signals of the receiver and transmitter from the common mode signal.

Duplexer with impedance inverters

An electronic device may include wireless circuitry. The wireless circuitry may include a quadratic phase generator for outputting a perfectly interpolated constant amplitude zero autocorrelation (CAZAC) sequence for a transmit path. The quadratic phase generator may include a numerically controlled oscillator, a switch controlled based on a value output from the numerically controlled oscillator, a first integrator stage, and a second integrator stage connected in series with the first integrator stage. The numerically controlled oscillator may receive as inputs a chirp count and a word length. The switch may be configured to switchably feed one of two input values that are a function of the chirp count and the word length to the first integrator stage. The quadratic phase generator may output full-bandwidth chirps or reduced-bandwidth chirps. Bandwidth reduction can be achieved by scaling the two input values of the switches.

Electronic devices having quadratic phase generation circuitry

An electronic device may include a processor and wireless circuitry with transmit and receive antennas. Radar circuitry may use the transmit and receive antennas to perform spatial ranging on external objects farther than a threshold distance (e.g., 1-2 cm) from the transmit antenna. The wireless circuitry may include a voltage standing wave ration (VSWR) sensor coupled to the transmit antenna to detect the presence of objects within the threshold distance from the transmit antenna. This may serve to cover a blind spot for the radar circuitry near to the transmit antenna. The VSWR sensor may gather background VSWR measurements when other wireless performance metric data for the wireless circuitry is within a predetermined range of satisfactory values. The background VSWR measurements may be subtracted from real time VSWR measurements to perform accurate and robust ultra-short range object detection near to the transmit antenna.

Electronic devices with background-cancelled ultra short range object detection

An electronic device may include radar circuitry. Control circuitry may calibrate the radar circuitry using a multi-tone calibration signal. A first mixer may upconvert the calibration signal for transmission by a transmit antenna. A de-chirp mixer may mix the calibration signal output by the first mixer with the calibration signal as received by a receive antenna or loopback path to produce a baseband multi-tone calibration signal. The baseband signal will be offset from DC by the frequency gap. This may prevent DC noise or other system effects from interfering with the calibration signal. The control circuitry may sweep the first mixer over the radio frequencies of operation of the radar circuitry to estimate the power droop and phase shift of the radar circuitry based on baseband calibration signal. Distortion circuitry may distort transmit signals used in spatial ranging operations to invert the estimated power droop and phase shift.

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Joonhoi Hur