Cypress Semiconductor Corporation

Mediatek Corporation

Mediatek Singapore Pte. Ltd.

Kiran Uln

Victor Simileysky

Thomas Edward Pare, Jr

Igor Kolych

Kamesh Medapalli

Saishankar Nandagopalan

Pouria Zand

Ayush Sood

Rajendra Kumar Gundu Rao

Prasanna Kumar Sethuraman

Paul Strauch

Aidan Smyth

Zhuohui Zhang

Ravishankar H Mahadevappa

Gary Allen Anwyl

Igor Kravets

Yan Li

James Wihardja

Claudio Rey

Jianhan Liu

Hui Luo

Peter Loc

Tianyu Wu

Oleksandr Karpin

Michael Kandler

Jie Lai

Shuling Feng

Walter James Wihardja

Kalyan Dharanipragada

Oleg Kapshii

Kuo-Hao Chen

Chun-Hao Liao

John Wong

Yung-Szu Tu

Chih Liang Chang

Nozhan Hosseini

Kambiz Shoarinejad

Tessa Ronan

Cheng-Hsuan Wu

Techniques are disclosed to determine AoA of signals using co-located single-antenna radios such as BLE and Wi-Fi radios usually found in a wireless device. The co-located radios may have separate voltage controlled oscillators (VCO) that are not phase synchronized. The disclosed techniques use an internal path connecting the two radios through a RF switch under the control of a switch controller to allow the radios to synchronize or to compensate for their oscillator phase offset. The radios may use the RF switches of the internal path and RF switches between the radios and their antennas to sequence through an incident phase measurement stage to measure the phase difference of an incident signal received concurrently by the antennas and a radio synchronization stage to measure their oscillator phase offset to estimate the AoA of an incident signal. During the radio synchronization stage, the two radios are coupled through the internal path.

Co-located multi-radio or device AoA

Implementations disclosed describe devices for improving wireless localization and ranging operations. In an example embodiment, a circuit includes a receive chain configured to receive a first signal of a first frequency in a first frequency band. The circuit includes a transmit chain configured to transmit a second signal of a second frequency in a second frequency band. The circuit includes an active reflection circuit coupled between the receive and transmit chains. The active reflection circuit includes a frequency conversion scheme. The frequency conversion scheme is configured to receive an input signal from the RX chain at the first frequency, convert the input signal to an output signal at the second frequency, and provide the output signal to the TX chain.

Interference-resistant wireless localization and ranging

Implementations disclosed describe techniques and systems for efficient estimation of spatial characteristics of an outside environment of a wireless device. The disclosed techniques include generating multiple covariance matrices (CMs) representative of obtained sensing values. Different CMs may be associated with different frequency increments used in sensing signals to probe the outside environment. The disclosed techniques may further include determining eigenvectors for the CMs, and identifying, based on the determined eigenvectors, one or more spatial characteristics of the object in the outside environment.

Optimization of environmental sensing in wireless networks

Implementations disclosed describe techniques and systems for efficient determination and tracking of trajectories of objects in an environment of a wireless device. The disclosed techniques include, among other things, obtaining multiple sets of sensing values that characterize one or more radio signals received, during a respective sensing event, from an object in an environment of the wireless device. The sensing signals may be carried by waves with randomly selected frequencies representing a portion of all frequencies that are used as working sensing frequencies. Multiple techniques of efficient frequency interpolation and temporal interpolation are disclosed that reconstruct the sensing values to the full range of working frequencies. The reconstructed sensing values may then be used to track objects in the environment.

Tracking of objects using reconstruction of data carried by wireless sensing signals from limited sensing frequencies

Techniques are disclosed to leverage co-located radios such as BLE and Wi-Fi radios to increase the security of BLE ranging and localization. In one aspect, a transmitting BLE device may use a co-located Wi-Fi radio to transmit signals to interfere with an intruding device's interception of BLE RTT packets. The obfuscating Wi-Fi transmission may overlap a BLE RTT packet in the time domain with or without overlapping in the frequency domain. In one aspect, the co-located Wi-Fi radio may transmit pre-determined signature Wi-Fi signals concurrently with the BLE RTT packets to a receiver with co-located BLE and Wi-Fi radios. The receiver may detect a change in the pre-determined relationship between the two types of communication to reveal an intrusion attempt. In one aspect, a co-located Wi-Fi radio may capture parts of BLE RTT packets concurrently with a BLE radio transmitting or receiving BLE RTT packets to detect an intrusion attempt.

Additional security ranging for BLE using co-located Wi-Fi devices

Implementations disclosed describe techniques and systems for efficient determination and tracking of trajectories of objects in an environment of a wireless device. The disclosed techniques include, among other things, determining multiple sets of sensing values that characterize one or more radio signals received, during a respective sensing event, from an object in an environment of the wireless device. Multiple likelihood vectors may be obtained using the sensing values and characterizing a likelihood that the object is at a certain distance from the wireless device. A likelihood tensor may be generated, based on the likelihood vectors, that characterizes a likelihood that the object is moving along one of a set of trajectories. The likelihood tensor may be used to determine an estimate of the trajectory of the object.

Determination and tracking of trajectories of moving objects in wireless applications

A device includes a transmitter coupled to an antenna, a receiver coupled to the at least one antenna, and a processing device to: cause the transmitter to radiate a radio frequency (RF) signal; receive, via the receiver, a reflective RF signal based on the radiated RF signal; detect, within a data array of the reflective RF signal, a maximum peak among a plurality of signal peaks, the maximum peak being indicative of a first distance to a first object relative to the at least one antenna; and cancel, using cascading peak cancellation on the spectrum, the maximum peak while detecting a first next-highest peak of the plurality of signal peaks compared to the maximum peak, the first next-highest peak being indicative of a second distance to a second object.

Radio frequency sensing and localization of objects

A method can include, by operation of a configuring device: storing user network information in the configuring device; receiving wireless communications from a target device; authenticating the target device; indicating a pointing direction for the configuring device; executing a wireless positioning operation with the target device to generate positioning data. In response to the configuring device being determined to be pointing at the target device, automatically configuring the target device for the user network with the stored user network information. Corresponding methods for a configuring device, as well as devices and systems are also disclosed.

Methods, devices and systems for automatically adding devices to network using wireless positioning techniques

Techniques described here introduce signature frequency modulation to unmodulated pulse signals as frequency chirps to enhance the security of multi-carrier phase-based ranging signals. The characteristics of the chirps may be mutually known by an initiator and a desired reflector of the ranging applications. The characteristics of the chirps may vary between the multi-carrier signals to thwart any attempt by an eavesdropper to predict the chirps. In one aspect, the characteristics of the chirps may be calculated for each timeslot of a ranging cycle by two authorized devices using a ciphering algorithm such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) based on a shared security key. Each call of the AES may generate one or more pseudo-random numbers based on the shared security key and a time-varying initialization vector that increments every timeslot. Fields of the pseudo-random number may be extracted to determine the characteristics of the chirps associated with the timeslot.

Security enhancement for multi-user ranging systems using signature orthogonal chirps

A multi-protocol network and methods for operating the same are provided. The method begins with establishing a wireless-connection between a first transceiver in a first device and a second-transceiver in a second device using a wireless-protocol. First, wired-protocol packets and non-packet data are received and converted in the first device to second-packets compatible with the wireless-protocol by inserting synchronization-bits non-packet data in a preamble. This is initiated by sensing arrival of the preamble without waiting for a start of data. The second-packets are transmitted from the first transceiver to the second, and converted to third-packets compatible with the wired-protocol by removing the synchronization-bits. Latency is improved by initiating/starting a packet to the wired controller before a data portion of the packet is received. The number of synchronization bits is selected so the second-packets are aligned and synchronized with wireless-protocol packets.

Multi-protocol communication network

A system and method for improving the accuracy of a secure phase-based ranging procedure and a Direction Finding procedure. The method includes receiving radio frequency signals from a second communication device. The method includes operating in a first mode including generating first location data based on the radio frequency signals and, transferring the first location data to a second processor in compliance with a Bluetooth Host Control Interface. The method includes comparing one or more conditions to one or more threshold values and responsive to the comparing transitioning from operating in the first mode to operating in a second mode. The method includes, while operating the second mode, generating second location data based on the radio frequency signals and, transferring the second location data to the second processor at a higher data transfer rate than the transferring of the first location data to the second processor.

Higher accuracy secure phase-based ranging and direction finding

A system and method reconfiguring an antenna for reducing and/or eliminating the effects of multipath on a phase-based measurement system. The method includes steering an antenna unit into a first direction to cause the antenna unit to generate a first constant tone (CT) signal based on a plurality of multipath signals. The method includes performing a phase measurement on the first CT signal to generate a first phase measurement value. The method includes steering the antenna unit into a second direction to cause the antenna unit to generate a second CT signal based on the plurality of multipath signals. The method includes performing a phase measurement on the second CT signal to generate a second phase measurement value. The method includes determining a change in multipath interference at the antenna unit among the plurality of multipath signals. The method includes re-steering the antenna unit into the first direction.

Multipath robust antenna design for phase-based distance measurement

A method can include determining a plurality of sample sets, each sample set being different from one another and including a plurality of frequencies separated by a uniform frequency range; wirelessly transmitting information identifying the sample sets for at least one remote device; for each sample set, transmitting a tone on each frequency of the sample set, receiving a tone on each frequency of the sample set from another device, and determining phase difference values for the received tones with respect to corresponding transmitted tones. From the phase shift values, a distance to the other device can be estimated. Corresponding devices and systems are also disclosed.

Methods, devices and systems for estimating distance with transmitted frequency sets

An example method of estimating the angular resolution of antenna array comprises: receiving a plurality of values of magnitude and phase of a radio frequency (RF) signal for each antenna element of a plurality of antenna elements comprised by an antenna array; performing, by a machine learning model, a feature extraction operation to transform the plurality of values of magnitude and phase into a plurality of data points in a reduced-dimension space; clustering, by the machine learning model, the plurality of data points into a plurality of clusters; and computing, based on the clustered data points, an angular resolution value for the antenna array.

Machine learning-based antenna array validation, prototyping and optimization

Systems, methods, and devices detect radio frequency identification devices. Methods include transmitting a signal from a transmitter of a wireless device compatible with a wireless communications protocol, receiving, using a receiver of the wireless device, an encoded signal from a radio frequency identification (RFID) device, and determining a plurality of data values based, at least in part, on the received encoded signal. Methods further include generating an estimated distance value based, at least in part, on the received encoded signal, the estimated distance value representing an estimate of a distance between the wireless device and the RFID device.

Growing community of inventors

Pleasanton, CA, United States of America

Kiran Uln