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:
Mar. 28, 2006
Filed:
Jun. 26, 2002
Robert T. Mason, Jr., Raleigh, NC (US);
Rodney C. Hemminger, Raleigh, NC (US);
Eugene W. Hodges, Holly Springs, NC (US);
Brent R. Brian, Clayton, NC (US);
Robert T. Mason, Jr., Raleigh, NC (US);
Rodney C. Hemminger, Raleigh, NC (US);
Eugene W. Hodges, Holly Springs, NC (US);
Brent R. Brian, Clayton, NC (US);
Elster Electricity, LLC, Raleigh, NC (US);
Abstract
The present invention is directed to a frequency hopping spread spectrum transceiver. The transceiver includes a microcontroller; a transmitter having a voltage controlled oscillator, a direct digital synthesizer, and a power amplifier; and a receiver having an amplifier, a mixer, an IF amplifier, a demodulator, and a data slicer. When transmitting, the transmitter sends a preamble that allows the receiving device to detect the signal and lock to it to receive the data. When receiving, the receiver first scans all channels and sorts them based on a Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and then attempts to lock to the channel with the strongest RSSI value by first sampling the received signal to verify the preamble, then synchronizing to the bit edges of the received signal, then detecting the start of a Start Frame Delimiter (SFD), decoding bits to verify a valid SFD and then sampling data bits to receive the data.