Microchip Technology Inc.

Steve Vernier

James B Nolan

Thomas Youbok Lee

Alan Lamphier

Randy L Yach

Vivien Neil Delport

Ruan Lourens

Glen Allen Sullivan

A remote keyless entry (RKE) transponder has a programmable selective wake-up filter for determining whether the RKE transponder should wake-up to process a received signal. The wake-up filter correlates the timing of an input signal's carrier amplitude on and off time periods to a predefined programmable time period profile for a desired signal which has a certain carrier on time (time period on) and a certain carrier off time (time period off) arranged into a coded 'header.' When a received signal matches the predefined time period profile, then the RKE transponder will wake-up to process the incoming signal data. The predefined time period profile may be programmable and may be stored in a header configuration register. Each RKE transponder has unique predefined time period on and time period off profiles.

Programmable selective wake-up for radio frequency transponder

A multi-channel remote keyless entry (RKE) transponder having dynamically re-configurable input channel selection, channel disable, settable sensitivity for each channel, wake-up filter timing parameters, automatic gain control hold, internal tuning capacitor selection for each channel's antenna, minimum modulation depth requirement for input signal and bi-directional talk-back. Programmable minimum modulation depth requirement reduces false wake-up of the RKE transponder. An antenna for each channel of the RKE transponder may be tuned with internal tuning capacitors for improved range and receiver sensitivity. The internal tuning capacitor parameters may be stored in a configuration register. Gain of the channel may be fixed while the antenna is tuned. The antennas may be de-queued for talk-back to a base station for low frequency bi-directional communications. An external control device may dynamically read from and write to the configuration registers via a serial communications interface.

Dynamic configuration of a radio frequency transponder

A remote keyless entry (RKE) transponder has a noise alarm timer having a time interval used for determining whether a received signal meets a predefined condition within a time interval. If the received signal meets the predefined condition within the time interval, the noise alarm timer is disabled and the RKE transponder circuits are enabled so that normal operation in processing the desired signal commences. If the received signal does not meet the predefined condition within the time interval the noise alarm timer issues an alert signal, whereby appropriate action may be taken such as adjusting the channel input sensitivity, disabling a channel, or placing the RKE transponder into a sleep mode in order to reduce the power consumption caused by undesired input signals. A smart wake-up filter determines whether or not the input signal meets the predefined condition within the time interval.

Noise alarm timer function for three-axis low frequency transponder

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Phoenix, AZ, United States of America

Steve Vernier