Sony Corporation

Sony Electronics Inc

Takayasu Muto

Masayuki Takada

Satoru Seko

Kenjiro Watanabe

Toru Takeda

Osamu Morita

Nobuhiro Hayashi

Takehisa Ishida

Takamichi Yamakoshi

Tetsuya Aoki

Hideaki Ishioka

Kazushige Kawazoe

Sumihiro Okawa

Shuji Uehara

Sadaharu Sato

Yoshihisa Takahashi

Tamotsu Yamagami

Toru Tanaka

Yoshiyuki Kunito

Hidekazu Seto

Susumu Hoshimi

Junkichi Sugita

Tomoki Kawabata

Mamoru Osato

Jason Sanmiya

Masami Kashiwagi

Michael Ian Willer

Donald Robert Caldwell

Reiji Kato

When transmitting position/time information calculated by means of a GPS function to a server apparatus, authentication is carried out with the server apparatus. The position/time information may be certified as legitimate measured by a portable apparatus with a GPS reception function employed by a user. When transmitting information related to the position and the time acquired from a portable phone terminal having the GPS function and a network function by means of the GPS function to the server apparatus, authentication is carried out between the portable phone terminal and the server apparatus. The position/time information is transmitted to the server apparatus, only if the server apparatus is authenticated as a legitimate counterpart for connection.

Information terminal apparatus, information processing apparatus and information communication system

When transmitting position/time information calculated by means of a GPS function to a server apparatus, authentication is carried out with the server apparatus. The position/time information may be certified as legitimate measured by a portable apparatus with a GPS reception function employed by a user. When transmitting information related to the position and the time acquired from a portable phone terminal having the GPS function and a network function by means of the GPS function to the server apparatus, authentication is carried out between the portable phone terminal and the server apparatus. The position/time information is transmitted to the server apparatus, only if the server apparatus is authenticated as a legitimate counterpart for connection. A secret key holding section is provided for holding different secret keys for different apparatuses. The position/time information measured based on an electromagnetic wave received from a positioning satellite is digitally signed by means of the secret key. The identification information and the position/time information having the digital signature are then transmitted to a counterpart.

A communication device, able to establish synchronization of frequency and able to continuously track a carrier even if an oscillation frequency of an oscillator changes. The device changes the oscillation frequency of a reference frequency oscillator according to established protocols when the base station of the other party in communication changes by generating a frequency change signal for reporting that the base station has changed and the frequency is changed and outputting it to a control unit of a GPS baseband unit.

Communication device

A communication device can reliably find a frequency and establish frequency synchronization, despite relying on a variable reference frequency, and may do so, e.g., by searching only during one or more periods of frequency stability. Once gained, such synchronization may be held continuously. An acquisition unit receives from a control unit information about a frequency change of a reference signal. The acquisition unit may nonetheless continue to search for, e.g., a satellite at the frequency that had been in use before the frequency change of the reference signal. An acquisition unit in such a device may search over extended periods, e.g., by using two or more frequency-stable periods. The acquisition unit may, e.g., transmit information about a change in the reference frequency to a tracking unit to maintain synchronization with the satellite.

A combined GPS/Bluetooth module for a vehicle may be mounted on, e.g., the rear view mirror housing to receive position information from GPS and other information (such as tire pressure and other vehicle diagnostic information) over a Bluetooth link. In turn, the module can transmit over Bluetooth both the GPS data and the diagnostic information to the vehicle onboard computer or to a PDA, wireless telephone, or other display-bearing device in the vehicle for display thereof.

Shared oscillator for vehicle mirror display

A communication device able to realize a positioning computation at the high speed and able to reduce electric power consumption, wherein a host CPU obtains the error value of the reference frequency of a crystal oscillator from a GPS receiver, stores that in a storage unit, transmits this value to the GPS receiver as the next positioning computation to correct the reference frequency, and makes to search a GPS satellite, therefore the electric power need not to be supplied to the GPS receiver and the crystal oscillator, and the position- finding result can be obtained at the high speed and with reducing the electric power consumption.

To provide a serial interface circuit capable of converting a large volume of data into packets based on a predetermined standard for transmission and reception and capable of performing smooth transmission and reception processing, which comprises a transaction layer circuit serving as a data processing circuit to which a storage device is connected, which reads data of the storage device, adds a self-designating transaction label, and transmits the data as a transmission asynchronous packet to a serial interface bus BS and, when transferring data of another node to the storage device, generates a request packet to which it had added a self-designating label and transmits the same to the serial interface bus BS, receives a response packet for this request packet from the another node, takes out a data portion from the response packet, and transfers this to the storage device.

Serial interface circuit and signal processing method of the same

A signal processing circuit which enables an error bit to be set simply without causing an increase in the size of the circuit even if the packet size is changed and which enables realization of stable operation without the system stopping even if the value of the time stamp is impossible. A pre-reception processing circuit decides if a received packet is normally continuous or discontinuous from data in the DBC region of the CIP header. When deciding it is discontinuous, it sets an error bit ERM allocated to one bit of the upper significant 7 bits of the source packet header to &ldquo;1&rdquo;, and writes this in an FIFO. A post-reception processing circuit, when reading from the FIFO, outputs the data stored in the FIFO to the application side when the error bit ERM is &ldquo;0&rdquo; and resets the error bit and outputs a dummy error packet when the error bit EMR is &ldquo;1&rdquo;.

Signal processing circuit

A serial interface circuit capable of converting a large volume of data into packets based on a predetermined standard for transmission and reception and capable of performing smooth transmission and reception processing, configured so that, in a reception operation, a request packet generation circuit generates a request packet and calculates the maximum length of data of the response packet with respect to the request packet transmitted and a transaction controller compares the maximum length of data maxpl with the remaining memory amount of the response use FIFO and, when the remaining memory amount is larger than the maximum length of data, transmits the request packet. When the remaining memory amount is smaller than the maximum length of data maxpl, the output of the request packet to the link core, that is, the transmission of the request packet to the other node, is temporarily suspended until the remaining memory amount becomes larger than the maximum length of data maxpl.

Serial interface circuit

A signal processing circuit capable of deciding and storing the starting packet and realizing normal data storage when packet loss occurs at the time of reception of divided packets of a serial interface and a method of the same. Processing for storage of a normal packet to an FIFO is carried out by deciding the starting packet and deciding there is packet loss when packet loss occurs and a packet does not arrive in the middle by using the value of a data block continuity counter, the value of the fraction number, and the value of the data base size set in the first quadlet of a CIP header of the divided packet transmitted in for example a divided manner through an IEEE 1394 serial bus via a link core.

Signal processing circuit and method of signal processing

Even if an external disturbance resulting from a defect on a magneto-optical disk disturbs a loop for generating a reference clock and consequently a phase error is increased, it is possible to prevent data from being recorded on a magneto-optical disk by using an abnormal reference clock. A disk apparatus according to the present invention includes a rotating and driving means for rotating and driving a disk, data recording/reproducing means having a head which can be moved in the radial direction of the disk for recording and reproducing data on and from the disk, reference clock information generating means for generating a reference clock information utilized when data is recorded on and reproduced from the disk, clock control means for generating a phase error information indicative of a phase error between a phase information obtained based on rotation of the disk and the reference clock information and for controlling the reference clock generating means based on the phase error information, threshold value discriminating means for discriminating whether the phase error exceeds a predetermined threshold value, and data recording/reproduction control means for controlling the data recording/reproducing means based on an output result of the threshold value discriminating means.

Data recording and reproducing apparatus and method with phase error

A magnetic disk drive device that includes a disk-shaped medium with a magnetic film formed on a surface for recording or reproducing information, and a magnetic head for recording on and reproducing information from the disk-shaped medium. The disk-shaped medium has a data recording region and a control signal recording region. The data recording region is impressed to have convex recording regions for recording data and concave guard bands for separating adjacent recording regions. The control signal recording region has impressed concavities and convexities representing tracking marks (for effecting tracking control of the magnetic head), track number indicating marks and track numbers (for identifying the tracks), and clock marks dividing one circumference into equal intervals along a path of angular movement of the magnetic head. The disk-shaped medium has reduced track pitch and increased recording capacity because the concave guard bands can be very narrow without inducing crosstalk, and the tracking marks, track number indicating marks, and clock marks are impressed as concavities and convexities along the path of angular movement of the magnetic head.

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Kanagawa, Japan

Takayasu Muto