International Business Machines Corporation

Robert B Madden

Karen P Madden

Edward C Lowry

Quoc T Lac

A method of transmitting data from a host computer to a portable information device is disclosed. Optical pulses are displayed by illuminating an area of pixels, or optical zone, on a display monitor. Time series of optical pulses are displayed, including a bit stream that provides clocking information displayed within an optical zone concurrently with a data bit stream encoded using a standard encoding scheme (such as a serial or parallel transmission scheme or a combination thereof), and then detecting and downloading the bit stream data by using a suitably configured sensing device connected to a portable information device. If the display monitor is a color display monitor, brightness of each primary color may be used as an independent transmission channel. In addition, multiple optical zones may be used to transmit data, which allows the present invention to be used with monochrome display monitors. The use of a plurality of optical zones has the additional advantage of increasing the effective bandwidth of the data transmission. This method is portable and suitable for use on both CRT and LCD display devices.

Method of information transfer using optical zones

A two-step procedure for pattern assignment. The initial assignment is based on a heuristic criteria that like lines should be separated from one another to the greatest degree possible, but with a constraint that two 'like' conductors should not be located in adjacent locations in the pattern if at all possible. The initial assignment pattern is then optimized by an iterative procedure to reduce Delta-I noise to a minimum. Assignments in a small sub-matrix (for example a 3x3-matrix) of the entire pattern are iteratively changed and the Delta-I noise for each iterative is determined to establish a pattern for the sub-matrix with the minimum Delta-I noise. Adjacent sub-matrices are examined in the same manner with this important criteria. Each sub-matrix after the first, overlaps at least one row or column of a previous optimized sub-matrix, and the pin assignments in the overlap portion remain frozen when optimizing the adjacent sub-matrix.

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Poughquag, NY, United States of America

Robert B Madden