The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 03, 2000
Filed:
Jul. 31, 1998
Arnold H Silver, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA (US);
Dale J Durand, Irvine, CA (US);
TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, CA (US);
Abstract
A control scheme for operating an oscillator/counter A/D converter (10) so that it simultaneously provides frequency downconversion, band pass filtering and analog-to-digital conversion of an analog signal, where the analog signal includes a carrier wave modulated with information by any known modulation technique. The converter (10) uses a superconducting, Josephson single flux quantum circuit operating as a voltage controlled oscillator (12). The voltage controlled oscillator (12) receives the analog signal to be converted, and generates a series of sharp, high frequency pulses based on the characteristics of the carrier signal. The series of pulses are applied to a gate circuit (14) that either passes or blocks the pulses depending on a gate control signal. When the pulses are passed by the gate circuit (14), a counter circuit (16) accumulates the pulses during a sampling period. The sampling period covers a range of gate control pulses so that the accumulation of pulses defines consecutive on/off periods of the gate control signal. Each time the gate control signal passes the pulses from the variable controlled oscillator (12), the converter (10) effectively performs a bit multiplication that gives the frequency conversion.