Lucent Technologies Inc.

Michael Gunnar Johnson

Howard Zehua Chen

King Lien Tai

George J Shevchuk

George Knoedl

Janusz B Sosnowski

A clamp for clamping an electronic component to a circuit board. The clamp has a frame capable of deflection, a spacer structure, and fasteners. The spacer structure has a first and second spacer. One, or both, of the spacers have an opening through at least a portion the spacer in the location where the spacer is positioned over the component. The opening places most of the force of the clamp on the walls of the package of the component. The walls can withstand more force than the lid of the package of the component because the walls are more rigid. This allows the clamp to exert a larger force on the component without cracking the thin lid of the package. The frame has a top section whose central portion is capable of deflection. The deflection of the frame allows the frame to absorb some of the force applied to by the clamp on the component to balance the force so that it is large enough to produce a sufficient electrical connection between the component and the circuit board, but not large enough to crack the component.

Spring clamp adapted for coupling with a circuit board

An enclosure having two walls an attenuation distance apart from each other perpendicular to the plate of the enclosure. At least one of the walls is orbitally riveted or soldered to the plate of the enclosure. Having two walls an attenuation distance from each other is particularly advantageous for RF components. The two walls can be placed to surround the RF component to reduce the RF energy generated by the component that escapes in to the atmosphere, or the two walls can be placed to separate the RF component from other component in the same enclosure to reduce the interference of the RF component with the other components. Alternatively, the enclosure can have a single wall orbitally riveted to the plate of the enclosure with an RF gasket attached to the entire length of the wall to reduce the amount of RF energy that is able to pass around the wall.

Enclosure for an RF assembly

An assembly that has an insert that fits onto a back plate. The back plate receives a circuit board that covers at least a portion of the insert. A components attaches to the circuit board and to the insert. The insert is made out of a material having a thermal expansion coefficient that is close to the thermal expansion coefficient of the bottom surface of the component, which allows the component to be securely soldered to the insert and therefore to the assembly. Preferably the insert is also made out of a good conductor to provide a good electrical conduction path between the component and the ground plane of the circuit board that contact the insert. The insert either fits into a recessed area in the back plate or attaches to the top of the back plate. In an alternative embodiment, the assembly has a circuit board with a contact opening and a back plate with a raised area that fits into the contact opening. The contact opening exposes a portion of ground plane on the circuit board. The raised area contacts this portion of the ground and thereby makes a large and low impedance connection with the ground. Preferably the raised area is created by the insert. Using inserts to create the raised areas allows the back plate to have raised areas, yet to be machined without raised areas, thus preventing the warping of the back plate created when the back plate is machined with raised area.

Assembly having a back plate with inserts

An assembly including a back plate and a circuit board coupled to the back plate with mechanical fasteners is provided. The fastener has an end and a head with a top surface. The top surface of the head is between the top and bottom surfaces of the circuit board, inclusively, such that the head is either below or flush with the top surface of the circuit board. This allows solder to be deposited onto the circuit board with an automated surface mounted assembly system and components to be attached to the circuit board after the circuit board is attached to back plate. The circuit board has an opening that receives the head of the fastener. A portion of this opening has a diameter as large as the diameter of the widest portion of the head and another portion of this opening, located closer to the back plate has a smaller diameter.

Recessed mechanical fasteners for circuit boards

A construction and a method for measuring the clamping force exerted by a fastener securing together two bodies. The construction includes a piece of material the same as that of a first of the bodies and a stack of at least two pieces of the same material as the second body. The overall height of the stack is equal to the thickness of the second body. A fastener secures all the pieces together. By measuring the force required to move a piece of the stack relative to the other pieces of the stack, an indication of the force exerted by the fastener is provided.

Measurement of mechanical fastener clamping force

An optical communications system for transmission of optical signals using relaxation oscillation subcarrier, on-off keying modulation of the optical signals. Relaxation oscillation subcarrier on-off keying improves the signal-to-noise ratio of a receiver receiving the modulated optical signals and the data rate of the optical signal. A modulation device generates relaxation oscillations by pulsing a driving current for a transmitter between a first level below a threshold current and a second level above the threshold current. The optical communication system can further include a fiber optic link between the transmitter and the receiver. The optical communications system can further incorporate multiple frequency shift keying. The modulation device and modulation scheme can be used in all digital optical communications systems using a pulsed laser diode.

Method and apparatus for using on-off-keying using laser relaxation

A mold assembly includes first and second housings having generally curved surfaces inside the mold cavity. The first housing has apertures extending therethrough. The second housing may have apertures, axially aligned with the apertures of the first housing, extending partially or completely therethrough. At least one guided, flexible, elongated rod member is configured for reception in the apertures of the first and second housings, the rod members being movable in a direction non-parallel to a direction of movement of the mold assembly with respect to the rod members. The mold-assembly is particularly useful for forming a molded body having a plurality of apertures, aligned in arbitrary non-parallel directions relative to one another, extending therethrough.

Mold assembly for forming apertures in a molded body

Only one or only a few channels are sent at a time from circuitry located in a curbside box, via a link such as either a coaxial or a fiber cable, into a customer's home TV set or personal computer. However, many more than a few channels are delivered to the curbside box, via a link such as a fiber or a coaxial cable, from a central office or a central bank of paid video-movies to be selected by the customers. Thus whereas the link from the central office or central bank is relatively broad-band (e.g. 500 MHz to 1,000 MHz), the cable from the curbside to the home (or any other kind of building) can be relatively narrow-band (e.g., 5 MHz to 50 MHz). The curbside box serves a multitude of homes--a separate (narrow-band) cable running to each home from the (same) curbside switch. Each channel can be a free radio or free TV channel, a stored or an on-line newspaper pay channel, or a pay TV channel, or a pay-per-view channel (i.e., the customer must give advance notice per view, and may begin viewing in the middle of a selected program, or may come in at the beginning of a selected program with a short delay, depending on the sender's arrangement). Requests from each TV set in each home (e.g., initiated by means of a hand-held remote control infra-red sending device) can be sent to the curbside box from the home along a link such as a wire or along the same curbside-to-home cable itself. In addition, billing of customers can be accomplished by means of another link connecting a junction in the wire or in the curbside-to-home cable to one or more remote billing centers.

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Sparta, NJ, United States of America

Michael Gunnar Johnson