783results about How to "Minimize power" patented technology

A remote monitoring and control system comprising synchronized wireless MESH technology for remote monitoring and control of utility grids (e.g., utility meters), commodity distribution networks, industrial equipment, and infrastructure including remote disconnection / connection and self-generating power.

A circuit for a lighting device comprises a sub-circuit which comprises a series current regulator and a group of solid state light emitters. The current regulator and the solid state light emitters are arranged in series. In some embodiments, the circuit further comprises a fan electrically connected in series in the sub-circuit. In some embodiments, the circuit further comprises a second sub-circuit which comprises a second series current regulator and a second group of solid state light emitters, the first sub-circuit and the second sub-circuit being arranged in parallel. In some embodiments, an anode of the series current regulator is electrically connected to a cathode of one of the solid state light emitters. Also, methods of lighting wherein a sum of voltage drops across light emitters and a current regulator is in the range of from 1.2 to 1.6 times the line voltage.

Systems and methods are disclosed for the management of memory used in a crossfading operation in an electronic device. In one embodiment, a processor is used to alternately decode two audio streams, one which is being faded out and one which is being faded in to implement a crossfade. The two audio streams may be encoded in the same or different formats and may be alternately decoded such that resource usage is reduced. The amount of decoded data of both audio streams and other parameters may determine which audio stream is to be actively decoded. In certain embodiments, the decoded data may be stored in a circular buffer, and a delta is determined between the decoded data and the empty space of the buffer.

In a method of allocating workload among servers based upon historical data, a requested workload profile is received and is compared with a plurality of historical workload profiles. A historical workload profile that is within a predefined range of the requested workload profile and that corresponds to a substantially minimized resource usage for power and cooling is selected. In addition, workload among the servers is allocated according to the selected historical workload profile to thereby substantially minimize resource usage for power and cooling.

Systems and methods are disclosed for using 802.11 based wireless protocols in various energy management applications wherein a host controller uses various types of communication networks to distribute information to an on-premise processor that in turn uses 802.11 based wireless protocols to communicate with various types of end devices, such as utility meters. Various forms of communication are defined between the end device, the on-premise processor, and the energy management host for accomplishing power load control, including determining when to activate or deactivate a load, requesting permission to activate a load, reading usage data, activating or deactivating a meter, and determining rate schedules. A flexible scheme allows control to be shifted to be resident in various entities. The architecture is applicable not only for power load control, but other control type and metering devices.

The invention relates to pulsed oximeters used to measure blood oxygenation. The current trend towards mobile oximeters has brought the problem of how to minimize power consumption without compromising on the performance of the device. To tackle this problem, the present invention provides a method for controlling optical power in a pulse oximeter. The signal-to-noise ratio of the received baseband signal is monitored, and the duty cycle of the driving pulses is controlled in dependence on the monitored signal-to-noise ratio, preferably so that the optical power is minimized within the confines of a predetermined lower threshold set for the signal-to-noise ratio. In this way the optical power is made dependent on the perfusion level of the subject, whereby the power can be controlled to a level which does not exceed that needed for the subject.

A current-mode switching regulator uses adaptive current sensing to reliably monitor an inductor current in a cost-efficient and power-efficient manner. A semiconductor switch periodically turns on to conduct the inductor current. A voltage drop across the semiconductor switch is monitored when the semiconductor switch is on. A variable gain amplifier with an automatic gain control loop generates a feedback signal from the voltage drop of the semiconductor switch when conducting to provide an indication of the inductor current to a controller. The automatic gain control loop compensates for any variations in the on-resistance of the semiconductor switch.

A magnetically-levitated blood pump with an optimization method that enables miniaturization and supercritical operation. The blood pump includes an optimized annular blood gap that increases blood flow and also provides a reduction in bearing stiffness among the permanent magnet bearings. Sensors are configured and placed optimally to provide space savings for the motor and magnet sections of the blood pump. Rotor mass is increased by providing permanent magnet placement deep within the rotor enabled by a draw rod configuration.

A power saving cache and a method of operating a power saving cache. The power saving cache includes circuitry to dynamically reduce the logical size of the cache in order to save power. Preferably, a method is used to determine optimal cache size for balancing power and performance, using a variety of combinable hardware and software techniques. Also, in a preferred embodiment, steps are used for maintaining coherency during cache resizing, including the handling of modified (“dirty”) data in the cache, and steps are provided for partitioning a cache in one of several way to provide an appropriate configuration and granularity when resizing.

N applications are placed on M virtualized servers having power management capability. A time horizon is divided into a plurality of time windows, and, for each given one of the windows, a placement of the N applications is computed, taking into account power cost, migration cost, and performance benefit. The migration cost refers to cost to migrate from a first virtualized server to a second virtualized server for the given one of the windows. The N applications are placed onto the M virtualized servers, for each of the plurality of time windows, in accordance with the placement computed in the computing step for each of the windows. In an alternative aspect, power cost and performance benefit, but not migration cost, are taken into account; there are a plurality of virtual machines; and the computing step includes, for each of the windows, determining a target utilization for each of the servers based on a power model for each given one of the servers; picking a given one of the servers with a least power increase per unit increase in capacity, until capacity has been allocated to fit all the virtual machines; and employing a first fit decreasing bin packing technique to compute placement of the applications on the virtualized servers.

An active organic electroluminescence display panel module comprising a substrate, a plurality of organic light-emitting devices, a light-emitting device driving unit and a temperature sensor unit are provided. The light-emitting device driving unit is electrically connected to the organic light-emitting devices for driving them. The temperature sensor unit is disposed on the substrate for sensing the temperature of the active organic electroluminescence display panel. The temperature sensor unit is also electrically connected to the light-emitting device driving unit for providing a signal to the light-emitting device driving unit in response to the sensed temperature. Accordingly, the light-emitting device driving unit can adjust the driving voltage of the organic light-emitting devices in the active organic electroluminescence display panel to reduce overall power consumption and provide an accurate grayscale to improve the quality of displayed images.

A scanning architecture that makes it possible to update only those ultrasonic transducer subelements of a mosaic transducer array that change from view to view. The configuration of the switch matrix is fully programmable. The switch matrix includes access switches that connect subelements to bus lines and matrix switches that connect subelements to subelements. Each subelement has a unit switch cell associated therewith, each unit switch cell comprising at least one access switch, at least one matrix switch, and addressing and control logic. Optionally, each unit switch cell also includes latches for storing the future switch states of the switches to be programmed. The switches themselves have memory for storing their current switch states.

A radio-frequency based catheter system and method for ablating biological tissues within the body vessel of a patient comprises a radio-frequency (“RF”) generator for selectively generating a high frequency RF energy signal in a deployable catheter having an RF transmission line, an RF antenna mounted on the distal portion of the catheter, and a temperature sensor also mounted on a distal portion of the catheter for detecting temperature adjacent an ablation site. A control system adjusts the RF energy signal so that the detected temperature is at or close to a selected temperature setting or within a selected temperature range.

An integrated circuit with power conservation includes a number of functional blocks, each of which includes a digital circuitry and at least one output control line, and a power controller coupled to the control lines. The output control lines develop clock control signals based upon a functional block's knowledge of the direction of data flow. The power controller the reduces power by deactivating functional blocks that are not needed as indicated by the clock control signals. More specifically, a system with power conservation includes a number of functional blocks capable of processing data, each of the functional blocks including a modulated clock input and N+1 clock control lines which reflect the direction of data flow, where N is a number of neighbors of a particular functional block, and a clock controller having an input clock, the clock controller being coupled to the modulated clock inputs and the clock control lines of the functional blocks. The clock controller is operative to modulate the input clock in accordance with the signals on the clock control lines to provide modulated clocks to each of the plurality of functional blocks. A method for reducing power consumption includes the steps of: a) receiving control signals from a number of functional blocks; b) selectively deactivating a particular functional block upon a request from that functional block or from another functional block; and c) activating the particular functional block upon a request from another functional block.

Disclosed is a remote automatic meter reading (AMR) system for image-sensing, reading and transmitting metering values. The AMR system includes an AMR terminal, a collector and an AMR server. The AMR terminal includes an image sensing module for sensing an image signal of a metering value displayed on a display panel of the meter. A character recognition module performs pattern recognition of the image signal, and a communication module transmits digital data from the character recognition module to the AMR server side. The character recognition module may include a microcomputer and an ID setting During power saving mode, the microcomputer wakes up and decodes received data; and when a meter reading command is received, the image sensing module receives the image signal of the metering value, performs pattern recognition, generates the numeral code to form a packet together with the terminal ID, and transmits the packet to the communication module.

Circuits, systems, methods and software for controlling a power conversion and / or correcting and / or controlling a power factor in such conversion(s). The present invention generally takes a computational approach to reducing or minimizing zero current periods in the critical mode of power converter operation, and advantageously reduces zero current periods in the critical mode of power converter operation, thereby maximizing the power factor of the power converter in the critical mode and reducing noise that may be injected back into AC power lines. The present power factor controller allows for greater design flexibility, reduced design complexity, and reduced resolution and greater tolerance for error in certain parameter measurements useful in power factor correction and / or control.

In one example, a long endurance airship system includes a payload airship and a first logistics airship mechanically joined to the payload airship to form a first combined airship, the payload airship and the logistics airship having design capabilities differing by at least a factor of two with regard to at least one of: power generation capability, propulsion capability, endurance capability, and lift capability, in which the first combined airship is free flying, lighter-than-air, and configured to maintain aloft for greater than 30 days without physical connection to the ground. Illustrative methods for long endurance airship operations are also provided.

A low power Chien searching method employing Chien search circuitry comprising at least two hardware components that compute at least two corresponding bits comprising a Chien search output, the method comprising activating only a subset of the hardware components thereby to compute only a subset of the bits of the Chien search output; and activating hardware components other than those in the subset of hardware components, to compute additional bits of the Chien search output other than the bits in the subset of bits, only if a criterion on the subset of the bits of the Chien search output is satisfied.

An electronic identification tag, usually in very small size, responds to a reader with an identification code unique to the object to which the tag is attached. The stand-alone device responds to a reader signal by storing energy received from the signal, then using the stored energy to generate another signal that is encoded with identification information. In operation, a reader generates RF energy which can reach a multiplicity of such tags over a distance of several meters. The system minimizes power requirements for the tag by minimizing intelligence in the IC. Use of a transmit frequency which is different from the reader's power frequency reduces interference between the power pulse and information pulse, eliminates the need for filters and enables the multiplied clock reference frequency as the transmit carrier frequency.

An apparatus and a method of realizing an antenna matching in accordance with a user's body effect and a state of a mobile device are provided. The method includes determining a state of the mobile device on a basis of a call mode and at least one of whether an external device is connected to the mobile device, whether a receiver is being used, whether a speaker is being used, and whether a proximity sensor is activated, determining an optimal Tunable Matching Network (TMN) circuit adjustment value in accordance with the determined state, and performing the antenna matching in accordance with the optimal TMN circuit adjustment value.

A scanning architecture that makes it possible to update only those ultrasonic transducer subelements of a mosaic transducer array that change from view to view. The configuration of the switch matrix is fully programmable. The switch matrix includes access switches that connect subelements to bus lines and matrix switches that connect subelements to subelements. Each subelement has a unit switch cell associated therewith, each unit switch cell comprising at least one access switch, at least one matrix switch, and addressing and control logic. Optionally, each unit switch cell also includes latches for storing the future switch states of the switches to be programmed. The switches themselves have memory for storing their current switch states.

A sequence of fixed-size blocks defines a page (e.g., in a server system, storage subsystem, DASD, etc.). Each fixed-size block includes a data block and a footer. A high performance block storage metadata unit associated with the page is created from a confluence of the footers. The confluence of footers has space available for application metadata. In an embodiment, the metadata space is utilized to record a “write activity level” metric, and a timestamp. The metric indicates the write frequency or “hotness” of the page, and its value changes over time as the activity level changes. Storage subsystem performance may be enhanced by mapping frequently accessed pages to higher performance physical disks and mapping infrequently accessed pages to lower power physical disks. This approach is advantageous in that the metric is recorded on a non-volatile basis and may be readily communicated between system components (e.g., between a host computer and a storage subsystem).

A Bluetooth master radio frequency unit addresses a slave radio frequency unit, to enable the slave to synchronize to the master, by sending poll packets and optionally null packets over an active link, the master being arranged so that receipt of a response from the slave unit to a poll packet is sufficient to maintain the active link. The slave unit does not have to respond to all of the poll packets. This approach can allow the slave to preserve more (transmit) power by going into a deep sleep mode in which a low power oscillator may be used while still allowing the master unit to detect whether the slave has resynchronized or not (and thus to update a Link Supervision Timer, for example).

A method for biological tissue ablation includes shaping a shapeable RF antenna to accommodate the contour of a body vessel adjacent a biological tissue load; generating a train of radio frequency (RF) energy pulses at an output frequency for transmission in a transmission line to the shapeable RF antenna adjacent the biological tissue load; sensing a reflected signal and a forward signal of the RF energy pulses; and adjusting output frequency of the RF energy pulses to effect a substantial match of transmission line impedance with shapeable RF antenna and biological tissue load impedance.